


Borealis

by tainry



Series: Borealis [1]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, Major Original Character(s), Multi, PNP, Polyamory, Sparks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 81
Words: 466,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to an asexually-reproducing species when it suddenly and unexpectedly becomes sexually-reproducing? How do you end a millions-of-years-long war? Compare and contrast humans and Cybertronians. Change or die. Also, see above quotation. This story is a biography of the OC Borealis on the surface, but is in fact about Optimus Prime – much in the way that when some people say, “As you wish,” what they really mean is, “I love you.” Prowl also decided to become a prominent character. :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kindle

**Author's Note:**

> This worked from the 2007 movie. The 2009 movie renders it deeply AU. The 2011 movie is right out.

“To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither flood nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the eternal wars of century upon century, have been able to subdue the persistent advantage of life over death.  
– Gabriel García Márquez

** BOREALIS: Kindle **

2007 - June

Stroking the curves of a silvery helm, Optimus Prime stood by Jazz’s shrouded body, watching Ratchet work on Bumblebee’s legs. They’d been on this planet for only a handful of days and everything had changed.

 _I’m sorry, Prime,_ Ratchet tight-beamed. _His spark is extinguished. There’s nothing we can do._

 **Jazz’s deactivation cannot stand,** Prime replied. **There are too few of us.** He was unprepared to entertain even the thought of the spark-merge procedure the Matrix had burdened him with the day before, let alone tell any of the other Autobots about it.

Ratchet stopped welding and put a quelling hand on Bee’s shoulder. The tone of Prime’s transmission was calm, yet so suffused with pain and sorrow Ratchet had to question whether he was – atypically – acting for personal reasons rather than the greater good. _What do you intend?_ Ratchet had an alarming notion. _Prime?_

 **Jazz’s deactivation cannot stand.** Prime locked optics with Ratchet. They had no need for cables. **When you’ve finished with Bumblebee and patched up yourself and Ironhide, please repair Jazz’s body.**

_Prime…_

**That’s an order, Ratchet.** Prime turned and strode from the warehouse.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

Over the following weeks, Ratchet did as ordered, though under strenuous and frequent protest. Prime gave every indication of listening to Ratchet’s arguments, but remained adamant. Interestingly, Jazz’s memory core was still intact, and his CPU largely undamaged aside from a little frying around the edges. Against all rational sense and his own better judgment, Ratchet found himself hoping Prime was right.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2007 – September

There were mountains north and east of Nellis AFB. To the southeast was Lake Mead, surrounded by more rough terrain. Even outside the boundaries of the National Recreational Area and the Air Force Base, there were plenty of spaces where a small band of giant alien robots might hide.

In a narrow canyon not far from where the Autobots would shortly establish their Nevada base, Optimus extracted the shard of the Allspark from the securely shielded cache in his left forearm. It had remained there, strangely quiescent, since the battle of Mission City. Whether it was too badly damaged to regain its former functions, or it sensed the presence of the Matrix within him, he wasn’t certain. Either way, he had to make the attempt.

He opened his chest.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

“How about it, Bumblebee?” Sam asked, closing his cell and starting the Gran Tourismo game again. He’d set up a small TV and a PS2 in a corner of the warehouse where the Autobots were hidden until a more permanent site could be found. Bee liked to play against him sometimes, though the tweaks he made to the system while he was on made playing the game without him rather disappointing. “Up for a road trip?” Mikaela was negotiating with her mother for permission to come too, though that wasn’t looking likely. Sam’s parents were concerned, but knew their only child was about as safe as he could be with a protective “older brother” of a giant robot and the Decepticons defeated for the time being. It was summertime and the road beckoned. A last fling before school started again. “Freedom for sentient beings, right?”

Bumblebee squinched his optics in the way that was for him equivalent to a chuckle. “I’ll ask Prime. Your intended route does take us out of immediate recall range.”

“Fair enough,” Sam said. Getting permission from big daddy, he thought, both irritated and amused.

Several minutes passed in silence. Sam looked up at Bee’s face, ignoring that he’d just crashed in the game again. “Bee?”

Bumblebee switched to synchronized vocalization so Sam could hear the exchange too. “Ratchet? Ironhide? Can either of you contact Prime? I can’t find him.” There was another long pause. Sam shut the game down.

 _“I got nothing,”_ came Ironhide’s voice over Bumblebee’s speakers.

 _“Pinging his comlink now,”_ Ratchet said in the same manner. _“No response. His systems are receiving, but he’s not answering. There’s something… Oh slag. Bumblebee, Ironhide, meet me at these coordinates NOW.”_

Sam scrambled back as Bee transformed, then leapt into the driver’s seat when Bee opened the door.

 _“Bumblebee,”_ Ratchet said. _“Drop Sam off at his home first. If my suspicion is correct it won’t be safe for him to approach with the rest of us.”_

“Yes, Ratchet,” Bee answered.

“Aw, man,” Sam protested. Quietly. “OK, but you’ll call me when you know anything, right?”

“I will,” Bee said.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

Sam paced the kitchen, eating randomly out of cupboards and fridge, only taking a bite or two out of anything before putting it back. His mother came home and was ready to pitch more than a softball, until she saw his face.

“What is it, Sam? Where’s Bu- your car?”

“There’s something going on with Optimus,” Sam said. “Kinda sounded like he was hurt, but I don’t see how. Ratchet made Bee drop me off before they all met out in the boonies somewhere.”

“It’s…not one of those…other ones, is it?”

“No, no. I mean, I don’t think so.” There hadn’t been any further Decepticon activity since the unfortunate incident with Ironhide and Skorponok in Qatar. “I should call Mikaela. I think. I mean, maybe it’s nothing, right? And then I’d just be getting her all upset for nothing. Bee said he’d call me once they knew anything. I dunno, maybe I should just wait.”

Judy put out a hand to stop her son’s restless motion, but reconsidered, contenting herself with rearranging the fruit bowl on the island. “Well, she’s your girlfriend, Sammy. I think you should call her. Invite her over for dinner so you two can wait here for news. You’ll both feel better.”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

Following Ratchet, they soon found the narrow canyon. Ironhide curdled into himself, still and silent, but Bumblebee dove forward.

“Prime!”

Ratchet caught and held him. Blue plasma rolled and crawled lazily over Prime’s armor, skittering between him and the melted stones of the canyon walls. Glassy scars crosshatched the ground. As Ratchet had feared, Prime’s chest and spark chamber were wide open, blue-white light turning the gathering sunset to midday. Bumblebee relaxed somewhat and nodded to the older mech. Ratchet released him. Once Bumblebee had stopped to use his scanners, it became obvious what Prime had done.

“Is he online?” Bee whispered.

“I believe so,” Ratchet said. “But it’s a strange sort of online.” The fluid, arcing plasma began to subside, the streamers thinning, fading. Scanning, Ratchet found no damage, not even certain old battle scars that Optimus had borne for millennia. His optics were lit, but Prime didn’t respond on any frequency.

They waited.

After 1.4 hours, the plasma receded completely, into the ground or drawn back inside Prime. Ratchet approached alone, waving the others to stay where they were until he’d gotten a better idea of Prime’s condition. Kneeling at Prime’s head, he touched the blue metal gingerly. _Prime. Optimus._

**Ratchet.**

Ratchet flinched violently at the force of the transmission, throwing himself backwards as if from a missile strike.

“My apologies.” Prime spoke aloud, but his voice had changed. Richer, more vibrant, with more complex harmonics than before. And those harmonics told them that at that moment, Optimus was barely holding himself together.

Bumblebee dashed forward, Ironhide following slowly. Bee knelt beside Prime and reached for his hand.

“Don’t.” Prime said gently. “I dare not move yet. I am—”

Ratchet nodded. Prime’s spark was already an alloy of sorts, Optimus and the Matrix. Now he’d added another metal to the crucible. If he moved before he could anneal himself he might shatter.

“Madness,” Ironhide said, stumping over to crouch beside Ratchet. The glyphs he transmitted clarified that he meant Prime’s usual optimistic, self-sacrificial madness, not the psychotic mania of his twin.

“Thanks, Ironhide,” Prime said.

Ironhide crossed his arms. “Any time.”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

Mikaela came over as soon as her chores at home were finished. Mrs. Witwicky offered lemonade and soda, chips and cookies, and generally fussed around the kitchen for a good twenty minutes before catching her son’s rolling eye.

“All right, well. I should…I should leave you two alone and…go…deadhead the roses.” She folded the hand towel by the sink and set it down with a pat.

Sitting with Sam at the breakfast island, Mikaela smiled at her. “Mrs. Witwicky, we’ll let you know as soon as Bee calls, okay?”

Mrs. Witwicky beamed at her. “Thank you, Mikaela. I’ll be in the garden.”

Sam and Mikaela grinned at each other as she hurried outside. “Optimus sure won Mom over,” Sam said. “Even after that whole flower-stomping bit.”

“He was awfully polite,” Mikaela said. And insanely sexy for a thirty-foot-tall robot, but she knew better than to mention that. “And it was the Sector 7 asshats who actually tore most of the plants out.”

“True.” Sam fished for another Dorito. Mostly crumbs at this point. “‘Fourteen rads – tag ‘em and bag ‘em!’ Jerk.” Mojo woke up from a nap in the living room, attracted by the crackling of the chips bag. The little cast was finally off his leg and he was back to his normal level of mobility, bouncing into Sam’s lap at barstool height with no trouble.

“So,” Mikaela ventured. “Bee didn’t say anything when he dropped you off?”

“No. They still hadn’t heard from Optimus, so he might not have known anything then.”

“More Decepticons? Ones we didn’t know about?”

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “I, well, I don’t know. I mean it could be, but Bee would have said if that was it, wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe. I guess so.” She offered Mojo a piece of chip, knowing the way to a dog’s heart. “I guess there might be a lot of complicated things going on with people who’ve been at war for thousands of years. “

“Or millions. Yeah. I wonder if…what if it’s because they live so long? They, like have a lot of time to…plan battles and whatever. I don’t know.”

Mikaela nodded. “Well, yeah. Because look at how Optimus is handling our government. He’s probably seen every kind of bureaucratic crap we’ve ever thought of already. You’d think if anyone could, he could negotiate some kind of peace with his own people.”

“Sure. Except for the whole Megatron-is-totally-crazy thing.”

“So why do the rest of the Decepticons follow him? Or why did they, I mean. Before.”

“Probably because he’d kick their asses? What did Optimus say? ‘All who defied them were destroyed,’ or something like that. So, join up or die, I guess.”

“But how did he get all the followers he’d need for that in the first place? Followers willing to go through with orders like that.”

“By lying? Promising them stuff? Plus, there are malcontents in every society, right?” He’d been about to say “criminals” but veered off at the last second.

“Or maybe their peaceful Empire wasn’t as perfect as Optimus made it sound.”

“Yeah. Maybe not.” Sam shrugged, then nodded. It wasn’t the kind of conversation he’d ever thought he’d be having with Mikaela. On the other hand, it was difficult not to think about bigger issues when you were secretly friends with alien robots.

Mike Shinoda’s _Second to None_ sounded on Sam’s phone. He grabbed it off the counter, switching to speaker. “Bee?”

“Sam. We found him. He is…all right.”

There was a little too long a pause. Sam and Mikaela exchanged a worried look. “Um, are you sure?” Sam asked.

“I’ll explain further when I arrive,” Bumblebee promised. “Mikaela is there as well?”

“Yes,” she said, leaning a little closer, though Bee could have heard her through the phone even if she’d been across the room. Sam’s phone looked normal enough, but wasn’t anymore. The warranty was way beyond voided, but Sam didn’t mind since he could call anywhere in the world – or for a limited range off it – without having to pay for minutes, and it never needed recharging. Although it was probably nuking his brain.

“Good. I will see you shortly.”

Shortly meant an hour, and Bumblebee had probably bent the speeding laws quite a lot. The Cybertronians didn’t have a knack for what the humans felt was a long or short period of time as yet. The familiar rumble of the Camaro engine made Mojo sit up, alert in Sam’s lap. Sam opened his phone before the first handful of notes of the ringtone sounded. Mikaela leaned out a window and frantically gestured Judy Witwicky inside.

“We found him,” Bee said, simply. “Ratchet and Ironhide are taking him back to the warehouse.”

“What happened?” Sam and Mikaela said together. They squinched their eyes at each other in lieu of grins, too worried for a more overt expression of humor. Judy’s eyes sparkled at them, but she too maintained a serious expression.

“He…” Bumblebee ran an extended scan. The closest Cybertronian traces were from the warehouse, and Bee had already gently disabled the bugs placed in the vicinity and within Sam’s house. The bugs, when accessed, would play a harmless conversation Bee had surreptitiously recorded earlier when they were also unobserved. “He merged the Allspark shard with his spark.” He knew this was going to require more explanation. Only Sam had heard of sparks before; Optimus had neatly concealed this feature when detailing Megatron’s deactivation to the American government. The humans knew that separating head from torso or destroying the chest were the only sure ways of killing the robots, and that was already more than most organic life forms had ever known about them.

“Um, what?” Sam said. Bee warbled, amused.

“And how exactly are Ratchet and Ironhide getting Optimus back from wherever you found him?” Judy wanted to know. “You didn’t stuff him in Ironhide’s pickup back…did you?”

“Ah. We did. He’s a bit…folded up. Fortunately Ratchet has a tarp.”

Sam cackled. “You took pictures, didn’t you? Total blackmail material!”

“Sam!” Mikaela and Judy exclaimed. Mikaela batted at his arm. “All right, let me see, too…” Bumblebee had obligingly sent a couple of still images to Sam’s phone. The picture quality was startlingly good. Prime was curled up, well, folded up was really the better way to put it, as tight as possible, and still parts of him overhung the sides of Ironhide’s bed. One foot in particular stuck out rather conspicuously. Ratchet, even in a still frame, was clearly fussing about the tarp and trying to get everything that was obviously a giant alien robot covered up. The humans giggled.

“All right, all right,” Judy said finally. “So, what was it Optimus did to himself again? Put the what in his where?” Sam almost swallowed saliva the wrong way and Mikaela pounded his back harder than strictly necessary.

“After Sam deactivated Megatron,” Bee said, carefully not using the term ‘killed’ – Sam was still easily upset in that matter, even if Megatron had been the Harbinger of Death, “there was a shard of the Allspark still intact, which Optimus retrieved and has kept safe.”

“The cube thing?” Judy whispered.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, the cube thing.”

“Each of us,” said Bee, “has a spark – it is what makes us alive. A soul you might call it, only in our case it is a semi-physical entity. Rather like a small sun inside our bodies.”

“Is that why you guys are radioactive?” Mikaela asked.

“Yes. Now that we know how vulnerable you humans are, Ratchet has modified our shielding to better protect you from our native emissions. That is why I had to drop you off, Sam. Prime’s spark is extremely powerful. Any unprotected human exposed to its rays would be fatally harmed.”

Sam would have been more worried about this, about having done what he did to Megatron, whose spark he guessed was just as powerful as Prime’s; but the military docs had checked him over horrifyingly thoroughly and he’d been given a clean bill of health to the best efforts of the finest in human medical technology. For what it was worth. “I’m fine, Mom,” he said, heading her off at the pass. “You know I’m fine, don’t get weird.”

“All right, Sammy, calm down.” Judy rubbed his shoulder anyway, then leaned back in her seat, thinking, as Bumblebee continued.

“Prime, in order to preserve what was left of the Allspark, and protect it, has placed the shard inside his spark chamber. It…seems to have become part of his spark now. Ratchet isn’t sure…” Fretful whirrs sounded over the phone connection. “We…do not know what this is doing to him. Will do to him. He seems to be in recharge. Ironhide and Ratchet have him at the warehouse now.”

“Recharge is kinda like sleep,” Sam told his mother.

Judy nodded, chewing a hangnail on her thumb, brows knit. “The whole Allspark all at once was too much,” she said slowly. “But the little piece wasn’t so bad. Okay.”

“This is strange and unexpected to us as well,” Bee said ruefully.

No sacrifice, no victory, Sam thought. He couldn’t tell anymore if the family motto sounded trite or more profound than ever.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

“All right, where is he?” Simmons shouted, striding through the warehouse door. Ratchet stopped welding and pulled a tarp over Jazz’s body.

“Who?” Ratchet asked, coming around the partition, in what he felt was a reasonable tone, considering the human had barged in without so much as a by-your-leave or a call ahead of time.

“Prime. Who else?” Simmons glared around the space, then headed for the triage area. Ratchet was tempted to pick him up and put him on one of the beams supporting the ceiling. He simply followed him instead. “The big guy hasn’t returned anyone’s calls in two and a half days. Not even the President’s. People are getting…nervous.” It was difficult to lean menacingly at someone who was about fifteen feet taller, but Simmons tried, purely out of habit.

Simmons saw Jazz’s draped body first and eyed it with naked avarice. “I still don’t see why you can’t give us that one. Humans donate their bodies to science all the time.”

“No,” Ratchet said.

“All right, whatever. Alien protocol. Aha, there he is.” Simmons stalked over to the table where Optimus lay.

“He’s in recharge,” Ratchet said, hands on hips. There was a visual display monitor set on industrial shelving at about Bumblebee’s height. Ratchet didn’t require it, since he had most of the monitoring equipment he needed built in. But he had to recharge sometimes too, and Bee and Ironhide were to rouse him if Prime’s condition changed.

“What is that, like sleep? For two and a half days?”

“It is functionally akin to the N4 or ‘deep’, delta-wave phase of human sleep. But our recharge cycles are flexible; Prime was ‘awake’ for an extended period previously. Tell your nervous people he will be available again soon.”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

Ratchet knew the nanosecond Prime came out of recharge. Even before the expressively deep optics resumed their glow. He had remained close, attuning himself to the faint energy signature Prime had maintained during the time offline. Six days. Prime hadn’t been offline for that long at once for centuries. Not since that time he had nearly bled his fuel lines dry and Ratchet had forcibly kept him under. Even then, Prime had fought his way to consciousness in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. Ratchet still shook his head over that one.

Only Prime’s optics moved, glowing softly but warm, flicking to take in his surroundings, zeroing in on Ratchet.

“We don’t like it when you do things like this,” Ratchet said. “And yet, there you go, you keep doing them.”

“Sorry,” Optimus said. “It’s part of my programming.”

“If Volant weren’t already dead I’d reformat her into one of those toilet seats the Japanese make.”

Optimus chuckled. He still hadn’t moved. “She wasn’t the only one who had a hand in my programming, and you know it.” He sat up very slowly, almost a show of strength, or would have been in a being possessed of abdominal muscles. “And she was far worse when it came to taking risks.”

“No, she risked the Empire. You risk yourself, and therefore our peace of mind. No one loved Volant except Alpha, not the way we love you.” Such bald statements were unlike Ratchet…or very like him. It sort of depended. Mostly on who would be most embarrassed by the result. It was Ratchet’s little way of rebelling against his ambassadorial programming, though that original programming had been largely overwritten during the course of the war anyway.

Prime iterated through that thought for a moment. His perspective was different, having Volant’s consciousness readily to CPU in the Matrix. He quite liked her. But perhaps her personality had changed after she died.

“How do you feel?” Ratchet asked the simplest question, and braced for a complicated answer.

“Different,” Optimus said. He stretched out his arms, looked at his hands. Blue fire chased and tumbled over and under his armor, peeking out through his joints as he moved. “There is knowledge in the Allspark, but it’s quiet. Shielding me, protecting me from itself. Or now it is. I don’t think it was at first. Hm. I’ve been in recharge for one hundred and forty-nine hours.” He felt that parts of his memories of the hours previous to that time had been cleanly excised, leaving no traces even in the quantum recording material of his memory cores.

“And you’re not dead.”

“No. Not now.”

Ratchet covered his optics with one hand. “You give me the surges.”

“I’m all right, Ratchet. The Allspark’s function is to create life, not death.”

“And it killed Megatron because…?”

Prime studied his hands again. They shone like silver in the filtered sunbeams from a broken skylight. Megatron wasn’t dead. Something made him not tell Ratchet. “That was a question of sheer power, as you yourself stated at the observatory.” He got up off the table, standing with his wonted grace. If anything his presence was even more overwhelmingly compelling. He turned, focused on Jazz’s body.

“You’re going to try that now? Aren’t you being a little hasty?”

“I am rested, fully recharged, and perhaps in better physical condition than I’ve been since the start of the war. The repairs to Jazz’s shell are complete. For what should I wait?”

“You’ve already figured out how to do this, have you? No second thoughts about the range of possible results?” Ratchet walked slowly toward the diagnostic table where he’d put Jazz’s body, still covered by a tarp, nominally concealed from covetous eyes; but hooked up as though there was any chance of catching a stray sign of life in a sparkless shell.

Optimus followed him. “No. I am prepared to accept whatever results are forthcoming.” This might not work at all. The Allspark had a kind of will, a kind of fathomless intelligence of its own. It might cooperate, or it might not. Or Jazz’s body might be once again ensparked – but it might not be Jazz. It might be Jazz, but as he was when originally ensparked. Or they might get their First Lieutenant back; after a journey from which no one else had ever returned.

Ratchet pulled the tarp away. All the doors to the warehouse locked down tight, and the security systems went on full alert. Ratchet told Ironhide and Bumblebee to stay were they were, Bee with his human friends and Ironhide outside on the perimeter. There was nothing they could do until this was resolved, one way or another.

Optimus actually flinched at the sight of his friend’s body, closer to breaking than he’d been on the smoking battlefield in Mission City where too many eyes watched him in stunned amazement, and no one was used to the other’s reactions yet. The loss stabbed him anew, even on the brink of recovery. He clenched his hands into fists at his chest, slight tremors vibrating from there out to his shoulders. “Ratchet,” he said softly.

“I am absolutely not leaving you to do this alone. That’s final.” Ratchet stood directly behind Optimus, crossing his arms.

“Good. I only meant to ask you to stay with me.”

Ratchet’s answer was to lean heavily against Optimus’ left hip.

Reaching along some unknown distance, Optimus lowered his hands to Jazz’s chest. There was an inquisitiveness inside the part of him that was the Allspark, or the part of the Allspark that was him. A curiosity tenuous as the gases of a nebula. The Matrix had known how to be used, he had been built knowing he would interact with it, a thing somewhat like another spark inside him. This was different, vastly more. He had not been built to comprehend it. He tried to convey the situation to it, as Bumblebee had conveyed a very different situation under the dam. Perhaps Bumblebee, as their first contact specialist, was a better communicator. Prime felt helpless as the power whirled and buzzed within him but took no action.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

At rest had never been Jazz’s natural state, but in this lightless not-place there was no sound, and the only movement was quantum jitter. It was something he – self-aware and aware of other selves around him – supposed he’d have to get used to. He explored dispassionately, indeed finding it difficult to access anything but the memory of emotions. He knew he had been an emotional being, embodied, but such concerns no longer affected what he was now.

Limitless spirals of time ebbed and flowed, impossible directions of thought or travel rippled outward from himself and all the other presences, other selves. Some of these others were ancient and still, some inquisitive and newly returned like Jazz. He still remembered his name, coalescing around the probabilities that he might not always do so. Other names summoned instances of those selves, growing in his awareness though near and far lacked real meaning. Verity. Polygon. Backbeat. Stardancer. Quasar Blue. So many more. They had been lost to him, once. Here we are, he thought, and the pattern that was his overlapped all of theirs. Here we are many-as-one.

And some where, outside and inside of not-here, Optimus’ spark spun immense and minute, nearby and all around and the length of forever.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

**Ratchet, what have I done? What must I…I don’t know how to do this…**

Cold sank through Ratchet’s core. His CPU flailed for a way to advise that wouldn’t germinate the seed of panic. _Prime, don’t over-think it. You’re not conversing with the Matrix, you… You are a conduit for the Allspark. Let it show you how to do what you need to._ Ratchet had no idea how to help, really, hadn’t wanted to try, other than being a supportive presence. These larger, deeper tasks were Prime’s forte.

 **That’s what I’ve been trying…I…hm.** Perhaps he had been trying too hard. Simple answers after all. This could take longer than a normal ensparking, or perhaps the Allspark didn’t like being directed, managed, even with so quietly desperate a plea. Communicate the idea, allow the Allspark to work itself through him. It would do what it willed, in any case.

His hands rested on Jazz’s body, the metal cold under his fingers, growing colder because he was becoming warmer. Tendrils of bright blue crackled down his arms. Optimus fell into the stream of power, as though into the arms of solar prominences. His chest opened wide, revealing a giant blue-white sun, spinning centered and calm. Far within, a thread of inquiry spanned not-space, rolling through coiled dimensions in search of one pattern. Still singular, this pattern was drawn to the thread, magnets head to tail, snapping together, locked, as all through everything the Allspark was, throughout universes and times, the pattern was drawn, dizzy and blurred around the edges, down and out and spun again into a form of existence it had worn once before.

Within the open, empty spark chamber, lightning struck, from Prime, grounding itself inside with a joyful, thunderous noise. Ratchet staggered backward, clapping his hands over his audials though the sound was a physical force that he felt with his entire body.

Then it was quiet and dark.

Ratchet crept back to Optimus’ side. For better or worse he wished to bear witness to whatever happened. Jazz’s chest was closed, and across the spectra, warmth spread outward from there, fuel beginning to circulate, the nanocells throughout rebooting their tiny programs. Jazz’s optics lit, his visor still retracted in its protective slot in his helm.

“Optimus?” Jazz returned the reassuring squeeze of Optimus’ hand.

Prime pressed his fore-helm to Jazz’s for a moment, touching that small, angular face with his fingertips. As he straightened, his knees gave way and he toppled backward, offline. Ratchet caught him, but an unconscious Optimus was all arms and legs and seemed to be more of each than normal – Ratchet couldn’t take a step without treading on fingers or getting feet tangled, and any second they were both going to end up on the floor.

_Slaggit. Ironhide! Get in here and help me!_

The urgency of Ratchet’s tone was enough to get Ironhide to the doorway on the double. There he stopped, gaping.

Jazz, formerly dead, was sitting up on the repair table watching as Ratchet was apparently being attacked by a giant metal octopus that closely resembled Prime.

“Don’t just stand there, you rusting hulk, help me get him onto a table!”

Ironhide snickered but complied. Once Optimus was arranged in a more dignified manner, Ironhide followed Ratchet over to scan a thoroughly bemused Jazz.

 _What do you remember?_ Ratchet asked gently.

Jazz’s visor slid into place, shimmering from opaque indigo to pearlescent titanium as he turned his head this way and that, orienting himself in four dimensions, answering his own primary questions of _where am I?_ and _how long have I been offline?_. Memories shuffled themselves into a more linear order as his CPU fudged its way around blank spots. Not offline, dead. Oh.

 _Megatron,_ Jazz said.

 _Yes._ Ratchet observed him closely.

They were interrupted by the sound of screeching tires outside. Bumblebee opened his doors, waiting only the barest minimum for his humans to get out, then transformed and burst into the med-bay at a flat sprint.

 _Jazz Jazz Jazz Jazz JAZZ!_ Bee tackled him off the repair table, spinning them across the floor, still singing Jazz’s name, accompanied by Jazz’s laughter. Ratchet was less amused.

“Bumblebee! If you so much as scratch his paint, I will weld you to that hideous sculpture out in front of the automall south of Henderson.”

Sam and Mikaela came in in time to hear this, and to watch a silver and yellow ball of tangled mechs roll giggling across the floor.

“Oh my god,” Sam said. “What are you guys, _ten_?”

“Wasn’t Jazz, um, dead?” Mikaela asked, sidling up to Ratchet.

“He got better,” Ratchet said. Without knowing exactly how much Prime was willing to reveal to the humans in general, and these humans specifically, he wasn’t about to elaborate.

“Does that happen often?”

“No,” Ironhide said flatly, withdrawing but not in time to evade an acid glare from Ratchet.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2007 - October

Jazz perched on the roof, enjoying the breeze and the late-afternoon sunlight. Their agreement with the US government was to remain hidden, but under the circumstances, Optimus couldn’t bring himself to chide his lieutenant. Jazz chirped him a transmission detailing how he was monitoring satellites, air traffic and the surrounding area for human life signs. They were not, at the moment, being observed. Optimus hesitated. Mostly because he didn’t wish to impinge on Jazz’s meditation, if that’s what he was doing, but he also wasn’t certain parts of the roof could support his weight. Planning each footfall carefully, Optimus joined him on the narrow ledge.

“You might want to move about two meters to your left,” Jazz told him. Optimus did so, though it created a distance between them.

Jazz watched a small flock of White-Throated swifts whirl through a broken window below them. Beautiful, tiny things with backswept wings, their twittering songs burned ridges and splashes of red, gold and purple across his auditory analysis processors. They were nesting inside one of the upper storey offices, on exposed I-beams both vertically and horizontally. The humans knew little about the birds’ breeding success and other behaviors, so during off-duty hours Jazz was recording extensive video and audio and posting it online for the ornithologists to puzzle over.

Observing Prime’s elaborately considerate posture, Jazz relented, scooting over to close the gap. He did chirp a few cheeky glyphs concerning weighing only 1.8 metric tons and therefore being able to scamper about the humans’ buildings without causing catastrophic structural damage – unlike certain 4.3 metric ton bulks he knew.

“Bulks, huh?” Optimus said, chuckling softly and putting an arm around Jazz. “I haven’t been called that in a long time.” The minicons had mostly emigrated from Cybertron near the beginning of the war. As far as Optimus knew, all who had stayed had been killed.

“Heh.” Jazz slipped an arm around Optimus’ waist, following a similar lattice of thought. Prime’s warmth felt good. They stayed that way for some time, the stillness of their bodies belying the constant hum of myriad tasks and conversations within their CPUs.  
Predictably, Jazz broke the outward silence first. “I was inside you, inside the Allspark. I could have learned so much.”

The sun dropped another degree toward the horizon. “Will you forgive me?” Prime asked, in formal glyphs, each holding eons of cultural weight.

Jazz turned his head, sunlight flaring on his visor. “Yes,” he said, in English, to make his meaning unequivocally positive. _I could have learned so much, but it would have been the wisdom of the past. And while everything you learn would have become accessible to me, I wouldn’t be able to_ interact _with the world. What fun is that?_

Prime chuckled and shifted his weight. Blue streamers of energy scampered across his shoulders and burrowed again beneath his armor. Just a trick of the fading light, he could say, but Jazz’s sensors would know better. The Allspark shard within him was still adjusting to its new home, adjusting him to fit. Jazz hadn’t leaped away from him, but trembled at his side as though willing himself not to do so.

_Optimus. What have you become, to save me?_

**Not just you.** It seemed important to state the distinction.

Jazz’s next transmission was tight-beamed and quantum-encrypted. _Prime, when I said I – my pattern – had returned to the Allspark, I meant both pieces. I could feel the split, your shard and the main body of the Cube. Megatron isn’t dead. I don’t know what to call what he is, down there, but he isn’t dead._

**I know.**

_Oh slag._  



	2. Second Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out at the far edge of another galaxy, Prowl, through a quirk in spacetime, hears Prime's message. He joins Wheeljack et al and they head for Earth. PTSD = broken. Introversion =/= broken.

  
_For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love._  
\-- Carl Sagan

  
  
2008 - March  
  
 **\--aiting.**    
  
What was that? Prowl cocked his head, then altered the attitude of his little interceptor, hoping for a better signal. After exactly 31 astroseconds, the message repeated. It was on a newer Autobot frequency, using a tricky encryption sequence, but Prowl made short work of that. As had been intended.  
  
 **With the Allspark gone we cannot return life to our planet. And fate has yielded its reward; a new world to call home. We live among its people now, hiding in plain sight, but watching over them in secret. Waiting, protecting. I have witnessed their capacity for courage, and though we are worlds apart – like us, there’s more to them than meets the eye. I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting.**  
  
It  _had_  been Prime! After so long. Prowl felt as though his spark would expand out of his chest with relief, even though the message itself wasn’t entirely the best of news. He should relay this to Sentinel immediately, yet he hesitated, enjoying a few moments of solitary knowledge.   
  
Chiding himself for the indulgence, he turned the interceptor back the way he’d come. This trail had grown cold anyway. It was time to head back to Sentinel’s destroyer, the ship they’d called home for more vorns than Prowl cared to count.   
  
Sentinel was predictably unimpressed. “That’s it? To the Pit with the Allspark, to the Pit with Megatron, and now we’re all supposed to retire to some organic-smeared planet out in the aft-end of some other galaxy? Peh.”  
  
Prowl said nothing. The galaxy in question being roughly circular, it didn’t technically have an aft-end; and being closer to the Hub conferred nothing but a brighter night sky and a heavier radiation load. But Sentinel wouldn’t appreciate having that pointed out. It was best to let him vent his irritation in any case.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Request permission to deliver a data-packet to Prime.” A few orns had passed, and they’d had an unusually successful foray in the Scalesi system. They had wiped out an entire platoon of deserter ‘Cons. None had escaped. Sentinel was feeling generous, distributing supplies of the local fuels and lubricants to all the officers and crew. Prowl had waited until a groon before Sentinel’s scheduled recharge to enact his plan.  
  
Sentinel leaned back in his chair. None of the rest of the bridge mechs were paying any attention. “Wanting to leave us, Prowl? I’m surprised. You’re the best tactician I have, send someone else if you think it’s necessary.”  
  
“It is a great distance,” Prowl said. “I have the best chance of making it in the face of unforeseen difficulties, and will not be distracted on the way. Any transmitted message via the same wormhole his came through could be intercepted. Prime should know of our progress. It may affect his decision to abandon Cybertron.”  
  
“That’s true enough.” Sentinel sat up, gazing at him intently. Prowl remained calm and still, at parade rest. “Yeah. Maybe I have a personal message for our glorious leader, too. Not sure the rest of these slaggers could be trusted with that.” His optics narrowed. “I’m not altering course for this, Prowl. Understand?”   
  
Prowl nodded, having anticipated that contingency. “If you drop me off at the Penta Sigma lunar base, I can find passage back to that wormhole.” It was a busy station for this part of the galaxy, even the scattered Autobots stopped there at intervals to leave messages for one another and relax at the local equivalent of Maccadam’s. Even if there were no Autobots, Prowl had accumulated a small store of unusual gems. He could pay one of the numerous alien traders if he had to. It would cost Sentinel nothing but his best tactician.  
  
“Huh. All right.” Sentinel made a face at his console and it spat a tiny data chip at him. He flicked it to Prowl who caught it and cached it automatically with a minimum of motion. Sentinel knew Prowl wouldn’t try to read it. “If you can work your way around Prime I want your aft back here when you’re done playing courier. Clear?”  
  
“Yes, Sentinel.”  
  
On Penta Sigma, a quartex later, Prowl didn’t watch as Grimlock piloted the interceptor up out of the moon’s gravity well. He walked briskly toward the Pocket-D bar, claws unclenching for the first time in what seemed like vorns. He was free.  
  
Scanning the room as he entered, he didn’t pause in the doorway, making for the info banks along the portside wall. There were Autobot signatures here, but caution had been ingrained so forcibly he couldn’t bring himself to approach them right away. He keyed into the data system, knowing he would have no personal messages but searching anyway, as well as skimming the local news and shipping records.   
  
The familiar warmth of another mech approached and leaned against the side of the terminal Prowl was using. “Pardon me,” the mech said in a relaxed sort of drawl. Prowl’s optics flicked sideways. The mech was rather smaller than himself, geared for rough terrain, with some interesting onboard equipment. No heavy artillery. A scout. “My friends and I were wondering if you’d care to join us.”  
  
Prowl disengaged his search and faced him. The mech smiled. “Been a while since we’ve seen another Autobot and a new face is kind of a relief. Drinks are on us, come on.” Prowl nodded and followed him to a table along the back wall. A large mech so heavily modified the forging was unrecognizable and a small guerrilla-class infiltrator bot greeted them. Prowl refrained from staring at the latter, he hadn’t known there were any of that forging still operational.  
  
“This is Wheeljack and Arcee,” the mech said, resuming his seat and inviting Prowl to take the empty one next to him. “And I’m Hound.”  
  
Punching his order into the table’s serviette, Prowl nearly hit the wrong selection. “Wheeljack!” The other three Autobots laughed. An open, uncomplicated sound of simple humor that made Prowl’s claws tremble on the menu.   
  
“My reputation precedes me again, eh?” the big mech chuckled. “Ah well. What brings you out here, if you can tell me?”   
  
“My apologies,” Prowl said, recovering his composure after a sip of the plain energon the table provided. “My designation is Prowl. Have you received Prime’s latest message?”  
  
The three exchanged glances. “Which one?” Wheeljack asked, leaning forward and resting an arm on the table.   
  
“The one about the loss of the Allspark,” Prowl said quietly. “And the planet they found it on.”  
  
 _“What?!”_  all three said. Prowl chirped them the entirety of the message. Including the embedded coordinates from Prime, and the coordinates of the wormhole through which he had gotten the signal.  
  
Wheeljack sat back with a heavy clunk against the wall. “That…changes things.” The other two stared at their drinks, processing. After two breems of thoughtful silence, Hound abruptly arched his back and tipped his head up.  
  
“Cut it out, Mir,” he said, grinning nevertheless. “No-one’s watching, you can de-cloak.” Prowl gaped as a slender blue mech faded into visibility behind Hound, hands caressing Hound’s chest unabashedly. Their open affection continued as the newcomer – or had he been there all the time? – took the seat on Hound’s other side, trailing a hand across Hound’s shoulders and down his arm to briefly squeeze his hand on the table. “Prowl, this is Mirage, our resident spy. Oh, sorry – recon officer.”  
  
Mirage bowed, using an ancient politeness only Prowl’s extensive studies allowed him to recognize. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”  
  
Prowl merely nodded, still flummoxed. No one in Sentinel’s battalion dared show that kind of unreserved trust. Interface was discharged like any other duty, efficiently and perfunctorily, and according to schedule.   
  
Hound was evidently relaying Prime’s message to Mirage, for the recon bot’s face fell. “Oh no. But that means…” Mirage bowed his head and Hound embraced him.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Prowl said, not understanding Mirage’s distress specifically, though the loss of the Allspark was dire enough for anyone. He regarded Wheeljack. “I wish to join Prime on the new planet. If you’re headed that direction, or if you can get me nearer the wormhole, I’d be grateful for a ride.”  
  
“Yeah,” Wheeljack said heavily. “Yeah. Sure. Looks like we don’t have anything better to do. Unless you guys have ideas?” Hound, though clearly concerned for his friend, was keenly interested. Arcee looked speculative. “All right. Soon as Cliffjumper comes back we can get off this rock.”  
  
Walking along the gantry toward Wheeljack’s ship, Prowl wasn’t fooled by its pitted and corroded exterior. The ship looked like it was cobbled together from four or five different vessels, but there were numerous carbonized blast marks to attest to its hardiness.   
  
Prowl veered to one side rather than board, however, beckoning to Wheeljack.  _Before I enter your ship, there are things I must dispose of,_  Prowl told him.  
  
 _I understand. C’mon._  Wheeljack led him down a ramp to the moon’s rocky surface, out and over the lip of a nearby crater. Hound and Arcee watched them with some concern.   
  
“Will he be all right?” Arcee wondered. “I don’t trust that Prowl.”   
  
Hound shrugged and continued on inside. “Wheeljack’s no pushover. And Mir’s out there.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
In the crater, Prowl removed two small but insidious weapons from caches in his legs and threw them on the ground.   
  
“Hm.” Wheeljack stooped to retrieve one of them; a CPU bore. “Nasty.” Small tools slid from the big mech’s fingertips and deftly removed the device’s minute power core. Caching the core, he tossed the remains back down beside the other weapon; a spark-virus bomb. That one he left quite alone.   
  
After only a moment’s hesitation, Prowl began tearing off the outermost – and heaviest – layer of his armor. Wheeljack watched him in surprise for an astrosecond, then helped with the shoulder and dorsal pieces. Prowl had a look to him Wheeljack recognized. The air of a mech whose servos were stained with death to the shoulder – and was sick of it.   
  
Almost a full metric lighter, Prowl stared at his heavy-duty claws then gazed with admiration at Wheeljack’s sturdy but facile, six-fingered hands. Nothing to be done about that right now.  
  
Wheeljack slagged the pile with his shoulder cannon when they were through. Satisfied, Prowl followed him back to the ship.   
  
Inside as well as outside, esthetics bowed to function. Wheeljack chirped him a basic schematic and Prowl ran a claw along a remarkably well-shielded power conduit. “Nice,” he said, impressed.   
  
The last member of their party, a red mech named Cliffjumper, finally rejoined them, laughing the whole way up the gantry. “You guys missed it! It was classic!” he whooped, gesturing wildly with his arms. “They were doing a live version of ‘The Pirates of Penstirachtatoriafelexis’ only, get this, they had _squishies_  playing all the parts! I thought I was gonna bust a processor!”   
  
“Oh my,” said Mirage.   
  
“Squishies?” asked Prowl.  
  
“He means organic life forms,” Arcee explained. “All right, gear-head, shift it. We’re dusting off.”  
  
“Already?” Cliffjumper made his way forward to the bridge, stopping short as he spotted Prowl. “Another stray, ‘Jack?”  
  
“Yep.” Wheeljack waved a hand by way of introductions. “Prowl. Cliffjumper. Strap in, everyone.”  
  
Prowl took an empty seat at the rear of the small bridge. The ship’s engines wound up with a palpable thrum, the eccentric modulations transmitted by the hull catching Prowl’s attention immediately. There was something off about them – not enough to make one’s CPU skip a cycle, but noticeable.   
  
“Heh, don’t worry,” Wheeljack said. “They’re supposed to sound like that.”  
  
Cliffjumper laughed and leaned around his seat to grin at Prowl. “Praise Primus and pass the high-grade!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>   
  
 _Hey, everybody, about the new guy,_  Wheeljack transmitted from the bridge, opening a circle of tight-beamed communication among Hound, Mirage, Arcee and Cliffjumper.  _I know he’s giving some of you the surges, and that’s totally understandable. He’s a dangerous mech, no doubt about it. But I think he’s a good guy, all right? He’s just gonna be kind of jumpy for a while, so don’t make a lot of sudden moves or approach him from behind if you can help it. Or at least try to make some kind of noise. You don’t want to surprise him, trust me._  Hound and Mirage replied with simple affirmatives.   
  
Cliffjumper spun the plasma welder he was repairing a conduit with in his fingertips.  _Bah! What’s the matter, Wheeljack? Don’t you think I can take him? Huh?_    
  
Wheeljack shook his head, tapping his fingers on his forehelm.  _Cliffjumper, you definitely can’t take him. Got me? I mean it. Leave the poor mech alone until he can get his CPU balanced out again._    
  
 _Aww, come on, ‘Jack. I’m tougher than I look, you know._    
  
Arcee bounced her fist off the top of Cliffjumper’s head.  _Don’t you dare try anything, you little glitch. I don’t care if he cores you, but we just finished patching this hulk up again._  A hull breach, even the total loss of ship’s atmosphere, wasn’t really a dire problem, but their vocoders only worked in air or other less-dense fluids and relying on radio or subspace transmission all the time was tedious. They lost all the harmonics their complicated voices conveyed. Arcee felt the brief, sudden clenching of her spark, reminded of Bumblebee. They could make more air, thanks to one of Wheeljack’s less volatile inventions, but it took quartexes. Besides, energon – especially high-grade – evaporated dismayingly quickly in vacuum. She kicked Cliffjumper’s shoulder for good measure and headed aft to run a routine systems check on the engines.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>   
  
With six bots on board, it was simplest to divide their time into three watches. Cliffjumper with Arcee, Hound and Mirage, and Wheeljack appointed himself Prowl’s watch partner. One third of each orn on duty, one third off and one third for recharge, although usually no-one but Mirage needed it for that long. Hound liked to tease him about being high-maintenance.   
  
It took them two CPU-dulling, uneventful quartexes to reach the wormhole. Going through it, Prowl at last understood the odd engine modulations. He’d never been through an easier transition – if the noise in normal space was a little peculiar, it was entirely worth it for the remarkable smoothness and safety in warp. Wheeljack’s reputation as a genius, however mad, was well deserved.   
  
This still left another six quartexes in normal space to reach the new planet. Since Wheeljack could manage the bridge alone – and liked to do so, as it gave him unhindered time to contemplate his current projects – Prowl often went up to the observation bubble to indulge in solitude and quiet, bathed in starlight. He could sit and blissfully think of nothing, or review his orn’s performance, both of his meager shipboard duties and in his interactions with the other bots. He knew that all his reflexes were honed too sharp, and most of his interpersonal algorithms too cold and harsh. He needed to re-adapt to “normal” Autobot society. Or as normal as they could be, after so many millennia of war, and the loss of their homeworld.   
  
Silent observation, he had decided, was still his best tool. Quiet obedience had been the most efficient way to deal with Sentinel, and Grimlock for that matter. Prowl calculated that same strategy could do no great harm here. Long ago he had joked and laughed and been kind, he hoped he could be so again.   
  
Prowl froze the moment the observation bubble door opened. Halting the automatic transformation of both of his forearms into plasma weapons, he forced the guns back into his body. He hadn’t expected anyone to be in here at this groon.  
  
Two pairs of optics glowed at him in the dark. Hound and Mirage transmitted an invitation in tandem. The simple  _Join us?_  from Hound intermeshed with Mirage’s more formal glyph somehow forming a singular and alluring palimpsest. With undertones suggesting it wasn’t healthy to keep to himself so much.  
  
 _I don’t want to intrude,_  he sent back, unwontedly hesitant. He had not, in truth, interfaced with anyone since the voyage began, and Sentinel thought trines were a sign of decadent weakness and a waste of time.   
  
 _Absurd,_  they said, and held out their arms. Prowl moved across the room slowly, not knowing what to do with this odd reluctance. Was he afraid of hurting them? Perhaps that was it. He didn’t look at his claws enveloping their hands, instead watching their faces as they drew him down between them onto the low bench that ran around the perimeter of the bubble. There was nothing in their expressions but open desire and interest in a new participant. And a touch of pity. Of the two, Mirage was more overclocked at the moment, his core temperature higher than usual for a bot his size. Prowl tried to remember what it was like to be among true Autobots.   
  
Had he actually thought that? What did he mean by ‘true’? Behind him, Mirage insinuated delicate hands into Prowl’s infrastructure, having to go deep to find the more sensitive power conduits. Hound settled himself between Prowl’s legs, bumping chests gently. As he leaned in with mouth open, Mirage tight-beamed an explanation.  
  
 _I should warn you, Hound is a nibbler. He has chemoreceptors in the dorsal plate of his mouth and he likes to taste people. He won’t hurt you, though. It’s just a little strange to most bots._    
  
Curiosity overtook the upper levels of Prowl’s thought lattices, even as his body responded to the interesting things Mirage was doing. He kept his optics on Hound as he ran his lip components slowly over the top edges of Prowl’s chest armor, internal fans whirring somewhere in Hound’s neck. Even this fleeting, delicate contact sent sharp impulses through Prowl’s CPU.   
  
With the old, heavy armor torn away, he felt young and exposed, buoyant, exquisitely sensitive; only shocked out of this perception now and then by the clumsiness of his claws. Had he really thought he would have to feign proper responses? He balled his claws tightly, his body writhing, rising to meet each caress. Hound and Mirage hummed in pleased, fervid counterpoint. Prowl felt the hot tips of cables tapping and sliding over his armor, seeking his well-hidden torso data-ports.  
  
“No,” Prowl moaned weakly, shivering. “Not …cables. Too much…”   
  
The cables withdrew from him, though Hound and Mirage connected to each other.  _Easy, it’s all right. Outer three thought-shells enough? Keep all your deeper firewalls up, Prowl, it’s all right._    
  
 _Yes,_  Prowl returned. He could keep everything that needed burying deeper than that easily. His ports irised open.   
  
Aah, he had forgotten how vivid cables made everything. His assigned interface partner in the battalion, Swoop, though certainly a decent mech, hadn’t been keen on anything but the purely physical, and that had been fine. But now he could feel the pleasure Hound and Mirage were taking in exploring his body in their different ways, and knew they felt exactly how very much he was enjoying it. His claws being useless for tender caresses, his pleasure through the cables was all he could give them.   
  
Shivering between them, so quickly on the buildup to overload, Prowl tried to slow his climb, extend the delicious suspense. But,  _Let go,_  Hound told him, and Mirage did something beneath his spark chamber, and Prowl’s body arched in a parabolic curve between them as blue static discharged across him like a miniature ion storm. The last thing he heard was Hound and Mirage laughing gently as they followed him down.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _How can you bear to touch me? I am a monster._  There was no venom in the words, no heat. He recognized himself to be in the post-overload calm, with half his auxiliary systems still resetting themselves. Mirage was already deep in recharge, curled up against his left side, and Prowl was grateful to have to bear the scrutiny of only one other mech.   
  
 _How d’you reckon?_  Hound murmured.  
  
I shouldn’t tell them anything, Prowl thought. None of them were free from the cruelties of the war, but there was no need to add to another’s burden of sorrow and vileness.   
  
 _I have done terrible things.  
  
Most of us have._   
  
That was probably true, and Prowl did not want to belittle the experiences of others. But if the actions of Sentinel’s battalion had become the norm, Prowl would despair. They would have become no better than the Decepticons. Careless, he allowed the thought to transmit through the single cable he still had linked to Hound.  
  
Hound bolted upright, gripping Prowl’s forearms. “Sentinel’s battalion?! Oh slag, Prowl! How’d you escape? …Or…I mean, uh?”  
  
Prowl nodded. “‘Escape’ is the proper term.” He briefly explained his actions. “Nothing I told Sentinel was a lie, but I omitted certain personal details. Should I encounter him again, he would no doubt feel it within his rights to terminate me as a deserter.”  
  
“I bet Prime would have something to say about that.”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
Hound settled back against Prowl’s chest. It was a strangely comforting gesture.  _Have you ever killed an Autobot?  
  
I have failed to prevent it.   
  
Prowl.   
  
No,_ he lied. Despairingly, easily.  _But if my worst cruelties were of omission, they were nevertheless cruelties._  
  
 _Never mind the “buts”. Anything else you have or haven’t done? Let Prime sort it out. That’s what he’s for, isn’t he?_  Hound’s optics brightened.  _Just think, we’re going to Prime! Have you ever met him?  
  
No. I did see him once, before the war.   
  
Is he as big as everyone remembers?   
  
He is big. The Lord Protector was bigger.   
  
Oh. Yeah. _  
  
Prowl smiled ruefully, glad of the diversion.  _Prime seemed more approachable. I suppose that’s obvious in retrospect. Even from across the Iacon Central Plaza I felt that I could have gone right up to him and talked with him about anything. As you indicated, he was built that way.  
  
Why did you leave the battalion?_ It was a simple question on the surface, but Prowl respected Hound’s canniness in asking it. Prowl rubbed his cheek flange slowly over the top of Hound’s helm, giving the question proper thought.   
  
 _My spark is corrupted, not solely by the war, but by how we were fighting it. Effective as Sentinel’s methods are, it becomes too easy a slide into how the Decepticons live. Loveless and cruel, strength the only measure of worth. I’m old enough to remember that I was something other, something more than a tactician, before. I needed to stop before I lost my old self completely._  He would always be grateful to Wheeljack for taking him in on little more than his faction sigil.   
  
 _Your spark isn’t corrupted. Who told you that?_  Things lit up across Hound’s chest and shoulders, cheek spars and temporal plates. Prowl felt only the barest whisper of the scan, but recognized – at least peripherally – the keenness and subtlety of Hound’s senses. Not even the legendary First Lieutenant Jazz could track Mirage when he was fully cloaked, but Hound could.  _Your spark is…_  Hound pressed closer, his hands moving on Prowl’s chest. Unnecessary but pleasant, and a mischievous expression fleeted across Hound’s face.  _Your spark is compact but bright. Silver-white, piercing. Grieving._ Hound moved closer still, lip components brushing against Prowl’s face.  _Wheeljack told us when you first came aboard that you were wounded in spark. But not corrupted._    
  
Prowl stared at him. Hound wasn’t a medical bot, but there was no denying the accuracy of his scans. His best hope had been that his spark would heal itself given time away from the battalion. But if it was more a matter of programming, retuning – that was easier, or at least less frightening.  _Thank you,_  he said. Hound smiled, snuggling down against him and slipping into recharge.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They rolled off the recharge berths as usual, but Wheeljack paused in the bay’s entry, looking back at Prowl.  _Mind joining me up front for a bit?_  he tight-beamed. Prowl returned acquiescence and followed him up the long central corridor to the bridge.   
  
“How’re you doing, kiddo?” Wheeljack asked, leaning back in the pilot’s chair, watching Prowl closely without seeming to stare.   
  
Prowl cocked his head. It was a curious question. Nothing untoward had happened, so perhaps it was a sort of medical query. Surely Wheeljack didn’t want a detailed report of all his mechanical functions.   
  
“You seem to be getting along all right, yes?” Wheeljack prompted gently.  
  
Ah, so it was a social question. “Yes. Arcee and Cliffjumper don’t trust me entirely, but that’s as it should be.”  
  
“Don’t let it bother you. Hound and Mirage like you a lot. And so do I.”   
  
“Hound and Mirage are very kind,” Prowl said. “As are you, for allowing me passage. I’m grateful.”  
  
Wheeljack waved this away. “Nah, I’m just a regular mech. Seriously, before the war, I was a mechanic down on the docks on the north shore of the Rust Sea.”   
  
“I thought you were the Head of the Engineering Department at Iacon Polytech.” Prowl took the navigator’s seat, running a quick scan and astrogation check. Wheeljack laughed.  
  
“Where’d you hear that slag?”   
  
Stopping himself from reciting the exact galactic date and planet where he’d picked up that particular rumor, Prowl gave a simpler answer. “Just hearsay, but it seemed reasonable, given the broad spectrum of your reputation and the well-documented accounts of your innovative brilliance.”   
  
“That’s crazy.” Wheeljack shook his head, optics twinkling. “Sure I download every engineering and mechanical file I can get my CPU around, but I’m mostly self-taught. Never had much patience for all that high-flying university stuff. How about you? What were you, before?”  
  
Prowl had been thinking about that very thing a good deal lately. It led to the consideration that there might be an  _after_. Choices about a new kind of life, beyond survival. He would have to work on that.   
  
“You don’t have to tell me, all right?” Wheeljack said. “I don’t expect you to tell me a lot of things. I’m used to people who’re in Black Ops. I’ve been in Black Ops myself, back when there were enough of us to specialize like that.”  
  
“No, I…I was just thinking. It’s been a long time.” Prowl looked at the stars on the forward screens, the illusion of their flight. “Originally, long, long before the war, I was a ship’s AI.” Prowl had expected more of a reaction, but Wheeljack merely refocused his optics in surprise. “Strange. I haven’t told anyone that in eons. No one alive now knows…except you.”  
  
“What kind of ship?” Wheeljack asked, more than professionally interested.  
  
“One of the Lord Protector’s personal cruisers, when the Lord Protector indeed protected and served his people. I was damaged in a skirmish with the Penstirachtatoriafelexians and decommissioned. The Lord Protector liked to have the latest equipment and I had been part of an older model. My memory core and processor net were salvaged and put into a mech body where I was ensparked. Because I showed an aptitude for a certain kind of logical thinking, I was programmed as a Counselor of Law. I lived in Praxus then, until the war.”  
  
“Huh,” said Wheeljack. “So on you the door-wings make more sense than they usually do. When’s the last time you had a flight-mode?”  
  
Prowl’s optical shutters flickered rapidly. He looked out at the stars again. “Not since I was part of the  _Fission Blade_.”  
  
“You don’t miss it?”  
  
Prowl felt his memory core grinding a little. These were very old datasets he was prodding. “I suppose perhaps at first it was too painful, not to be a cruiser. I wanted that or nothing. Then, over the vorns, ground vehicles became habit.”  
  
“Maybe on this ‘Earth’ you could be a jet again. If you wanted.”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
He programmed himself to hold perfectly still for ten astroseconds upon emerging from recharge, no matter how high his battle systems charged up, no matter how strange the position he found himself in. And things were getting strange indeed. Sometimes he was on top of Wheeljack, sometimes beneath Arcee, though most often he was simply between Hound and Mirage. Once, he onlined to Cliffjumper’s pistol beneath his chin. There was no aggression to the mech’s posture. No more than usual, anyway. He was merely sitting, relaxed, on Prowl’s chest, pistol held loose but steady.  
  
Prowl forced the guns back into his arms and the missiles into his shoulders.  
  
 **“CLIFFJUMPER!!!”**  
  
Cliffjumper giggled and somersaulted off him, scampering out of the recharge bay. Prowl sat up, shaking, and widened his optics at the floor. Wheeljack’s bellow had actually rattled the deckplates.   
  
 _You were right, Wheeljack,_  Cliffjumper conceded, laughing as he led the inventor a merry chase about the ship.  _He could’ve totally slagged me!  
  
Yeah? But he didn’t.   
  
Nope. The struggle was scary to watch, though. I’m glad he’s on our side! _  
  
As Cliffjumper ran by, a hand shot out of a side corridor, snagging him by an antenna.   
  
“If he had shot you,” Hound said, reeling the squawking mech in, “how do you think that would have made him feel?”  
  
“Well it wouldn’t have done me any good either!”   
  
Hound glared at him.  
  
As curious as Cliffjumper was to see Hound angry for once, he knew he was pushing it and scuffed his feet unhappily. “You’re right,” he said, and ran back to the recharge bay to apologize. Wheeljack came up behind Hound and put an arm around his shoulders.  
  
“Thanks, kiddo. Saves me the trouble of beating some sense into him.”  
  
“Arcee will probably do that later,” Hound said, grinning. He stretched mightily and went to meet Mirage for a quick snuggle before heading in to recharge.  
  
Still on the berth, Prowl had curled up, forcing his CPU to churn through several iterations of an unsolvable equation to keep his emotional algorithms from a meltdown. He disengaged his battle systems, calming himself further. When Cliffjumper burst in he was uncurling from his protoform-like ball.  
  
“Aw, Prowl, I’m sorry!” Cliffjumper climbed up and hugged Prowl’s nearest forearm. The one with the butylpotassium pellet gun, but Cliffjumper made himself ignore that.   
  
“No,” Prowl said. “It was a good test. Thank you.”  
  
Cliffjumper looked at him like he’d skipped more than a cycle or three.  
  
“I think I passed, don’t you?”  
  
Cliffjumper laughed. “Well, I’m still alive and we don’t have a hull breach, so I’d say so!”  
  
“Very well. Wheeljack and I are on duty now, so Hound and Mirage should be heading in here for recharge, and you and Arcee are off duty. Hm. And Arcee is asking me where you are.”  
  
“Oh, slag.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  


  
_The most ineffective government agency is inherently the one most interested in concealing its performance from the public._  
\--Jimmy Carter

  
  
2008 - September  
  
“Now,” Simmons said, scrolling down his notes. “There’s still the matter of NB…Ironhide’s near miss in Tulsa last week.” He and Sam were the only humans seated at the long conference table set up on a mezzanine in the human-scaled corner of the main hangar. Jazz sat on the floor next to the table, but the rest of the Autobots simply stood nearby, with Bumblebee peering over the edge of the mezzanine floor and Optimus trying not to loom over them. “According to the accident report…”  
  
Prime’s head went up.  
  
Simmons halted in mid-word. Optimus-watching was hard not to do – even after more than a year of twice-monthly meetings. (The liaison meetings had been weekly at first, but the Cybertronians found that interval frustratingly short.) Prime’s attitude of intent listening was clear and Simmons felt the first flush of adrenaline.   
  
“Incoming?” he asked.   
  
“Indeed,” Prime said, an unmistakable grin lighting his face. “They are four days out.”  
  
“Good guys I take it?” Simmons stilled his hands with an effort. Four days out meant they weren’t even near the solar system yet.   
  
“The very best, Mr. Simmons.” Prime relayed the message he’d received to the other four Autobots.  
  
“Wheeljack!” Ratchet exclaimed, laughing in delight. “So he hasn’t blown himself up after all.”   
  
“Wheeljack and Arcee!” Bumblebee crowed, performing a noisy high-four with Jazz. “Arcee’s alive!” Sam didn’t giggle, he assured himself. It was a very mature chuckle of happiness at his friends’ joy.   
  
Simmons scribbled on his PDA. “Anyone else?”   
  
Prime gave him a considering look, which Simmons returned with raised eyebrows. The Autobots lived in the US at the government’s sufferance, but the government did not want them moving in with anyone else on Earth, either. Simmons was well aware of the balance. “Four more,” Prime said, finally. “Cliffjumper. Hound and Mirage—”   
  
“I’ve heard of those two,” Jazz said.  
  
“As have I,” Ratchet agreed.  
  
Prime nodded. “And Prowl.”  
  
Ironhide stiffened but said nothing.   
  
“Six friendlies,” Simmons said, annotating. “So. Tulsa.” Simmons leaned back in his chair and eyed Ironhide.   
  
“The guy was tailgating,” Ironhide grumped.   
  
“So you pulled out your cannons and threatened to blow him and his SUV to Kingdom Come.”  
  
Prime pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ironhide…”  
  
“Great story to tell his grandkids,” Sam offered helpfully. “If the guy lives that long, tailgating Topkicks.” Ratchet snickered and kicked Ironhide in the leg.  
  
“All right, girls,” Simmons said. “Breach of Security Protocol number 412. You know the forms, Mr. Trigger-happy.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Ironhide said, glaring at one of the printers down in Glen’s nest, which began spitting out densely-texted sheets. “In triplicate.”  
  
Simmons was never sure if he loved or hated that the Autobots could out-bureaucrat the bureaucracy. “Want to do my paperwork, too?” he asked hopefully.  
  
“Ha!” said Ironhide.  
  
“Bet you Goldilocks over there does Wicketty’s.”   
  
“Witwicky. Only the stupid, tedious ones,” Bee agreed. “Sam has enough homework to do already. He should be concentrating on his studies.” Bee tapped his fingers in an odd rhythm on the mezzanine floor. “Wheeljack!” he said, bouncing on his toes. “Wheeljack’s coming!”  
  
Prime laughed. Bumblebee and Ratchet had given him messages to include with the reply he was already sending.   
  
“We’re going to have to expand the med-lab,” Ratchet sighed.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Wheeljack set them down with a bump in front of the Autobots’ base. Prime, Jazz, Bumblebee and Ratchet came out to greet them, with Ironhide remotely present via Jazz’s carrier wave. Even before the ramp had quite touched the earth, Wheeljack sprinted down it, overtaking Cliffjumper, and catapulted himself at Ratchet.   
  
Bee and Arcee embraced warmly while Ratchet and Wheeljack were still tumbling about. Arcee saluted and clasped arms with Prime, or, rather, she grasped his wrist and he engulfed her entire arm. She was the smallest Autobot Sam and Mikaela had yet seen.   
  
“That’s…that’s a girl robot,” Sam whispered to Mikaela, wide-eyed.  
  
“And she can totally kick your ass,” Mikaela said, smirking.   
  
“Prime, this is Cliffjumper,” Arcee said, not ignoring the humans but not knowing yet how to respond to them either.  
  
Cliffjumper’s salute was a little sloppy, but his enthusiasm made up for it. He and Bumblebee grinned at each other and revved their engines, much as young human males might flex their biceps.  
  
“And our quiet friend over there playing stevedore is Prowl.” Arcee’s tone was troubled, harmonics indicating she was of two minds about him, her uncertainty leavened with pity.  
  
Prowl carried one of Wheeljack’s crates of equipment down the ramp. He didn’t know anyone here. He would continue to unload the ship so the others could enjoy their celebration.  
  
 **Welcome, Prowl,**  came a warm transmission from Prime.  **I surmise you have a message for me from Sentinel?**  
  
 _Yes, sir._  Prowl replied. Prime knew who he was. Prime knew who he was!   
  
 **Good. You can leave those crates just inside the hangar – this is a secure area.**  Inherent in Prime’s secondary harmonics was an open invitation to join the rest of them in comparing Ratchet’s grog with Wheeljack’s moon-grade, but that Prowl could continue what he was doing if that made him more comfortable.  
  
Prowl set the crate down in the indicated spot and returned to the ship for the next one, rather more bounce in his stride than usual.


	3. Upon the Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl has a rough first few months on Earth.

2008 - October  
  


_“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus_

_Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,  
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;  
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand  
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame  
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.  
From her beacon-hand  
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command  
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.  
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she  
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,  
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,  
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,  
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”_

  
  
Stationing himself at the foot of the boarding ramp of Wheeljack’s camo-netted ship, Prowl assumed parade rest. Despite Prime’s assurance that this was a secure area, one did not leave one’s non-AI ship unattended on an alien planet. Even a ship as uniquely qualified to guard itself as this one was. Wheeljack and Ratchet hadn’t yet decided whether the ship would better serve them hidden in orbit like the Ark, or dismantled for materials. Prowl felt a similar decision awaited him.   
  
The humans were so  _small_. Prowl wasn’t sure why this surprised him. Perhaps it was always a surprise that beings of that scale had enough room in their tiny heads to house intelligence. It didn’t seem plausible. Stranger than that, however, was the way their facial expressions were familiar enough to be disconcerting. His CPU kept trying to code their highly mobile, plastic little faces as comprehensible, along with their body language – but he knew that couldn’t be right, because these were aliens. And at the same time, his pattern-recognition software kept blaring that it wasn’t fooled at all. Those weren’t robots! It was giving him the surges.   
  
He had downloaded their worldwide communications net as the others had while on final approach, before hitting the atmosphere. Incorporating the dominant languages of this hemisphere had been all the processing he had dared attempt as yet. Too much of the content was too strange, too senseless and contradictory.   
  
Shivering not from cold, other subjects pressed upon his attention. Prime’s spacebourne message had indicated that the Allspark had been destroyed. That was not entirely true, though Prowl could see the wisdom in withholding the details. He also knew he wasn’t qualified to judge what would no doubt be far-reaching and very long term effects. It bothered him more that Megatron remained in any sense alive. Under Sentinel’s command, they would have sent the largest barrage of missiles they could muster, and if the planet cracked or massive methane clathrate releases from the ocean floor smothered the atmosphere, so be it. Prowl writhed under the contrast, and was stabbed by the memories of Coryx VII, but Prime was right. This wasn’t their planet to do with as they pleased.   
  
And then there was this spark-merge business. Not to mention Prime bringing First Lieutenant Jazz back to life. If Prime could do that, perhaps he could call forth life from other kinds of lifelessness, as the Allspark had done. Why risk a spark-merge? Yet Prowl had gotten the disturbing impression that Prime meant to try it. New circumstances required new adaptations. Change or die. That was one of the most basic tenets of his people, Prowl thought, but this was insane.  
  
 **Come inside, Prowl. Wheeljack’s ship is safe for the moment.**  Prime leaned against the door frame of the hangar, arms crossed loosely, looking up at the stars. Half illuminated by starlight, half glowing in the warm light from within.   
  
Remembering what he had told Hound about his ages-ago glimpse of the Prime across the Iacon Plaza, Prowl approached, secure behind his accustomed façade of cool efficiency.   
  
Without a word or glyph, Prowl gave him the message chip from Sentinel. Prime read it with no outward change of expression that Prowl could detect, though he did not yet know Optimus well. “I have prepared a report of my own, sir. Detailing the battalion’s activities since leaving Cybertron.” Suppressing a shudder, he offered an arm cable. Prime seated it in an arm port and opened up to receive the rather large data packet. “I am prepared,” Prowl said aloud, “to accept whatever sentence you deem appropriate.”   
  
Prime gazed at him keenly. “Let us postpone the question of sentencing until I have processed your report properly.” He released the cable and Prowl reeled it in.  
  
“All possible charges are listed in subsection—”   
  
“Yes, I see.”  
  
“Unless you have altered the laws. Given our exile I should have considered that possibility.”  
  
“Prowl.”  
  
“Sir?”  
  
“Consider yourself on suspended duty,” Prime said gently. “Go in and recharge. Ratchet will want to examine you all in the morning.”  
  
“Morning? Ah.” It was strange to think of living on a planet with a sun again. “Yes, sir.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Can you unseal your spark chamber for me? You needn’t open it completely, just enough so my scans can get through.” It was rare for a spark chamber to be so heavily shielded as to prevent medical scans from penetrating. Ratchet found it disquieting, and wondered if everyone in Sentinel’s battalion had had what would be a rather hazardous procedure done, or if Prowl had submitted himself to Trochar’s less than tender mercies out of some twisted sense of self-preservation.  
  
Of course, Prowl thought. It should be a simple matter. He tried. “I …cannot.” Prowl endeavored to create a tone of voice, harmonics, a facial configuration that would express not defiance, not refusal, but distress at inability. He hadn’t opened his spark chamber for hundreds of vor-…centuries. “It might be corroded shut.”   
  
“Hmm,” said Ratchet, in that worrisome way of physicians everywhere. “Can you part your thoracic armor at all?”  
  
Prowl tried to circumvent a shiver, disguising it by grabbing the armor plates with his claws and pulling them as far apart as he could. It was a matter of millimeters.   
  
“Good enough.” Ratchet pored over his scans, adjusting several parameters, tamping his lip components together in more ways than Prowl would have thought possible given their arrangement. He shifted on the repair table uncomfortably.   
  
“Sorry. Close up,” Ratchet said, after what felt like several minutes but had only been a few seconds. “Not corroded, by the way. You’re in remarkable shape, physically.”   
  
“Hound’s scanners can penetrate the spark chamber,” Prowl said. “If you think it necessary.”  
  
Ratchet cocked a shutter at him, but contacted Hound on an open channel.  _Hound? Could you come in here for a moment, please?_    
  
Hound arrived promptly, curious. “Ah ha. Hey, Prowl, so you’re the latest medical victim, huh?” He brushed fingertips across the back of Prowl’s forearm.  
  
“Very amusing,” Ratchet said. “Your sensors can penetrate his spark chamber housing?”  
  
“Oh. Yeah. I scanned him earlier, aboard the ship. You want the file?” Ratchet nodded and Hound chirped him the data.   
  
“Not bad,” Ratchet said, mulling it over. He offered Hound an arm cable. “Mind if we try it in tandem?” He looked at Prowl, who nodded. Hound seated the cable in one of his arm ports and initiated a scan using the entire spectrum of his equipment. Then Ratchet took over.  
  
“Oh,” Hound said faintly.   
  
Driven now by Ratchet’s vast knowledge, Hound almost felt as though he’d never used his sensors to their full extent before, as though Ratchet was teaching his optics how to see in some heretofore unconceived-of wavelength. He gave Ratchet complete access to his interpretation software. After a few moments, Ratchet withdrew gently, and caught Hound as he staggered from the loss.   
  
“Thank you, Hound,” Ratchet said, which Hound correctly interpreted as a dismissal. He winked at Prowl and left. “Prowl, physically you’re perfectly sound. Unless you have questions, I’m done with you in that regard.”  
  
Everyone still alive was generally in excellent health. Survival of the fittest, as the humans had it. Prowl was exceptional even given such parameters. Aside from the rough points where his outer armor had been removed, Prowl looked to have been designed by a military genius. He possessed almost as many redundant systems as Ratchet did, and they were more compact and efficient since these systems must only be suitable to Prowl himself, while Ratchet’s needed to be compatible with any forging. Stronger than he appeared due to clever proportioning and best use of basic physical concepts like leverage, he combined high-powered armament with a frame sturdy enough to take a respectable amount of punishment, driven by keenly coded programming and an ultra-fast CPU. His sensory equipment was top of the line for a non-scout/specialist. He was gorgeous. And deeply damaged.   
  
Prowl looked down at his claws. “Our resources here are limited,” he said quietly.   
  
“For now, yes.” On a hunch, Ratchet slowly reached for one of Prowl’s claws. Prowl flinched, withdrawing as though afraid Ratchet might injure himself on the diatanium alloy edges.   
  
 _Psychologically, however,_  Ratchet tight-beamed,  _you are what we call battle-weary._  The humans had other terms for syndromes with vastly different electro-chemistry but dismayingly similar symptoms. From Wheeljack’s report, it was clear Prowl knew this very well, and had chosen his course away from Sentinel’s battalion deliberately.  _I’ve briefed Prime. He and I will help you all we can._    
  
“Prime will?”  
  
“He was designed and programmed to be good with people. You can go talk with him now if you feel up to it.” Ratchet gestured toward the med-bay’s outer door. “He’s in his office with Jazz.”   
  
The broad archway leading to Prime’s office was south-southwest across the hangar from the med bay. It wasn’t so much an office as a command center, with a large holo-table taking up much of the floor, and extensive UI nodes to Teletraan, giving the AI a strong presence in the room. Prime was watching a complex display that Jazz – sitting on the edge of the table – was directing. Prowl recognized it as some kind of data matrix but didn’t understand the context.   
  
 _Hey, man,_  Jazz tight-beamed, finding Prowl’s personal channel with no discernable difficulty.  _Try not to look so much like you’re being sent to the Smelting Pit. Prime’s the fair one. Relax._  
  
 _Indeed,_  Prowl replied.  _If he is fair, then I_ am _on my way to the Smelting Pit._    
  
Jazz had no reply. Completing his own report to Prime and hopping down from the table, he removed himself from their presence, both physically and virtually. They could hear him calling for Ratchet in the hangar, “You still got any of that moon-grade left? Because I could sure use some…”  
  
Teletraan’s main screen went dark. Prime looked at Prowl gravely. Every other subroutine, every other conversation or virtual task was shut down. Prowl had Optimus Prime’s undivided attention.   
  
 **I am going to ask that you do the most difficult thing. I do not do so lightly, and it grieves me. I ask that you live.**    
  
Prowl remained upright only because he locked all his joints.  _Yes sir._  
  
 **In one hundred Earth years, we will review your case. If you wish it, I will then authorize Ratchet to safely remove certain of your memories. Coryx VII, Ellessaa, and the battle at the Ar’cihelian wormhole, as well as the executions you were commanded to perform.**  Prowl would still know what he had done, but he would no longer have to endure the clear sensory data of the deeds themselves.  
  
There was no provision for the possibility that Prowl might die before that time. Suicide – even by Decepticon – was implicitly forbidden.  _...Not allowed to die. Not allowed to die._  The phrase, keened in Cybertronian, rose in volume and pitch with each iteration. He began to shake so violently Prime sprang forward and caught him before he could topple and strike his head on the edge of the holotable.   
  
 **Prowl! Disengage your articulation locks – you’re tearing yourself apart!**  
  
He would not or could not comply.  _Not allowed to die. Not allowed to die!_  
  
 **Ratchet! I need you in here!**  
  
Ratchet sprinted across the hangar, narrowly but deliberately missing Sam and Mikaela, who had just come in with Bumblebee. "What's up his tailpipe?" Sam muttered. They caught a glimpse of Prime struggling with one of the new bots, as the door opened to admit Ratchet and slammed closed directly behind him.   
  
Mikaela exchanged a look with Bee, then took Sam's arm and tugged him down the stem corridor. "Come on, let's get out of their way." She steered them toward the northernmost lookout. Necking there was least likely to be interrupted. As much as she wished she could assist Ratchet in any mechanical emergency, near a giant robot in mid-seizure was no place for a human.   
  
Bumblebee sidled over to Ironhide, who stood at the archway as though guarding it. Ironhide had been tense and uncommunicative since the new group had landed. More uncommunicative than usual. Bee nudged his hip and gave him the look he’d developed over voiceless centuries that plainly said, all right,  _give_.  
  
Ironhide harrumphed, looking away, then tight-beamed,  _That one is dangerous. I don’t like it that he’s here.  
  
You mean Prowl? Prime—   
  
Yes, Prime knows who he is, I’m sure._ Ironhide glared at the closed door. He shook his head, then looked down at Bee, placing a gentle hand on the smaller bot’s shoulder.  _Just watch your back._    
  
Sensing Ironhide would not be any more forthright, Bumblebee jogged off to reunite with his humans.   
  
A few minutes later, Ratchet and Prime emerged, Prime carrying Prowl's offline body. Wheeljack met them halfway across the hangar, his initially crestfallen expression softening to one of sadness as he realized Prowl was merely unconscious.   
  
 **You didn’t really think I’d execute him, did you?**  Prime asked.  
  
 _No, but it did occur to me that he might… Well, never mind. You passed sentence I take it?_    
  
 **Yes.**  Reaching the med-bay, Prime laid Prowl on a repair table and withdrew, relaying the entirety of his judgment to Ratchet, Wheeljack and Jazz. Ratchet bowed his head and leaned heavily on the edge of the table.   
  
 _Frag it, Prime. You know I hate slogging about in people’s memory cores._    
  
“I’m sorry my friend,” Prime said, clasping Ratchet’s shoulder. “That’s why I trust you to do it safely.”  
  
"Figures." Ratchet attached a single monitoring cable to Prowl's forearm. "You realize I might have to intervene before the hundred years are up, depending on how he comes out of this?"   
  
“I leave that to your medical discretion. You’ll overrule me anyway if you feel you must.”  
  
Ratchet groaned.  
  
“It sure is good to see you guys again,” Wheeljack laughed.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Prime knelt at the head of the repair table, his hands placed gently over Prowl's chest, over his spark. A single pair of cervical cables joined his CPU to Prowl's.   
  
 **Prowl?**    
  
 _Yes, Prime?_    
  
 **For the past two point seven million years, you have been under the direct command of Sentinel, correct?**    
  
 _Yes, sir._    
  
 **What is the punishment for disobeying a combat order in Sentinel’s battalion?**  
  
 _Deactivation, sir. I know what you're trying to do, sir, but it doesn't matter. I should have...could have engineered a mutiny. Illegal orders, immoral orders are not binding. Even the humans know this._  
  
 **Based on your report, most of the soldiers in the battalion appear to have little objection to following Sentinel's orders. Are you certain a mutiny would have been successful?**  
  
 _...I... The only feasible way I could calculate involved swaying Grimlock. But I have never been able to predict which way he'll jump. Even with him, Swoop, Lockdown and Swindle, the projected percentage of casualties seemed unacceptable. But I feel that may have been a poor excuse for my own indecision. Sir. A few score Autobot casualties would have been worth saving billions of civilians. Out of cowardice I failed to act…_  
  
 **You warned the merchant vessel G'Kaa away from the Ar’cihelian wormhole. They chose not to heed. Regrettable but not within your control. You performed the executions of fellow battalion members out of the explicit threat that Trochar or Sentinel themselves would do so, and would make those deaths less than quick and painless. Unless you have falsified your report to me-**  
  
 _I have not!_  
  
 **Then in each case, with the possible exception of Coryx VII, I deem that you attempted to minimize casualties, both within the battalion and among the civilian populations with the misfortune to be in the vicinity of your skirmishes with the Decepticons. Within the context of Sentinel's command, you did all you could to preserve life, often at risk to yourself. Your efforts have not always been successful. You made a number of errors of action and omission, particularly during the first seven centuries, when, if you had voiced your objections in a non-confrontational manner, you might have swayed Sentinel to pursue a less radical trajectory. He trusts your assessments. Of course, only Vector Prime sees all pathways. The ultimate responsibility rests with Sentinel. And with me, as I assigned him that post. The war itself is my fault, for willfully not comprehending my twin's madness for what it was.**  
  
 _That’s absurd! You couldn’t have predicted…_  
  
 **Yes?**  
  
 _Point taken. But... Prime, if my…influence, such as it was, was an ameliorating factor, then I have again betrayed our ideals by fleeing._  
  
 **Those who remain must face their own sparks in what they choose to do. Perhaps your flight will inspire others to do the same. When the battalion was formed, there were seven hundred mechs assigned to it. There are now only three hundred and twenty-eight. And it seems they are running out of Decepticons.**  
  
 _That might not be a good thing._  
  
 **Indeed.**    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mikaela curled up on Ratchet's shoulder, watching as Prime lowered his helm to touch that of the alarmingly pointy mech on the repair table. "What's he doing?" she whispered.   
  
"I heal the body," Ratchet murmured. "Prime heals the spark, and between the two of us we try to cobble broken programming back together."  
  
“But isn’t Optimus your…commanding officer or something?”  
  
“He’s the Prime. That was never a military title, until the war. It still isn’t, or, rather, that’s not all it is.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2008 - November  
  
Personal vendettas had been allowable, as long as they didn’t jeopardize or interfere with the active mission. Prowl’s thoughts made elaborate, fractal arabesques, avoiding comparisons, avoiding certain names. Refusing to acknowledge even the concept of distraction, he focused on the task.  
  
He reviewed everything about the battles on Earth via Teletraan, including whatever memories the Autobots involved had tagged as public. One particular Decepticon caught his attention – the only one still on the planet since Ironhide had dispatched Skorponok. Barricade. He froze the image on the nearest screen, zooming in until he had a complete scan of every detail. It wasn’t right. The Decepticon had taken the form of a vehicle used by the humans’ civil protectors. People sworn to the service of their fellows by oaths whose ultimate meaning was familiar to Prowl at the level of his deepest, most ancient programming. It wasn’t right.  
  
Correlating all available data about Barricade into a cohesive parameter-structure, Prowl began a massive search, using both the primitive but not entirely useless native satellites, and those deployed by the Autobots. It might take a very long time, but eventually the Con would slip up. All Prowl needed was the tiniest trace.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2009 - January  
  
There. There he was, dusty with anonymity, cruising the backroads of southwestern Arizona.   
  
All the long trail of the search was in Teletraan, and as such would be nigh impossible to erase without Teletraan’s complicity. But there were ways to deal with AIs, ways to trick them. The thought patterns of the unbodied differed subtly from those of the embodied. Prowl understood both.  
  
Teletraan forgot. Teletraan didn’t remember that he’d forgotten anything. Prowl swore to himself that he’d never do such a thing to the AI again.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Barricade laughed. This lone Autobot thought he could catch him? He who had evaded the sweeps of Optimus Prime himself and his chosen crew. Nor could the humans in all their horrible multitudes find him, unless he wanted to be found. Now this single Autobot, only a little bigger than himself, in a clunky SUV alt form no less, thought he could run him down.   
  
Barricade laughed, and thought about all the things he’d do to this Autobot at the end of this race. Until he realized the Explorer was somehow faster. Was herding him away from the city, away from cover.   
  
He transformed to provoke the other to do the same, but the Explorer stayed on wheels, coming after him at full speed, clearly intending to run him down. Barricade leaped, spinning over the Explorer’s roof. Heavy claws clamped onto his foot, crushing it. The impact of the ground came at the same time as impacts from missiles that severed his arms. No insults, no proclamations of name and intent, no mocking jibes were forthcoming, only oppressive weight as the Autobot stood on Barricade’s hips.   
  
Barricade screamed, raged, tried to throw the other off with the leverage of his legs and torso. The Autobot leaned down and began tearing Barricade’s dorsal armor away, stomping once on central structural cables and spine when Barricade’s struggling became more desperate. White static replaced Barricade’s optical feed. He heard pneumatic weapons fire close by, not explosive shells or plasma – it was confusing. Until the butylpotassium pellets, igniting in the heavy, over-oxygenated air, burned through his remaining armor, through the massive cabling of his back, through the narrow housing of his spark chamber. And by then it was too late to scream any more.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Prowl stood over the body. A long, thin blade telescoped from a narrow compartment in his right forearm. Without thinking he took a step toward the head.  
  
No, he thought. I am an Autobot. The blade trembled, hissing, the edge orange-hot. Sentinel required the heads. Tally must be kept. Else how could they know when the war was over? He took another step.   
  
No. He had done enough, tracking this one, slaying him. Autobots did not take trophies.   
  
Sentinel required the heads.   
  
Prime does not!  
  
The blade hissed, edge white hot. It wasn’t meant to be unsheathed for so long, powered for so long without use. The tip dipped toward the ground. Tally must be kept.  
  
No! He shot his articulation locks until he could get his programming under control. And he could control it. Ratchet and Prime had done so much for him already. He could handle this. It was very simple logic. Autobots do not take trophies. Prime did not require the head. Therefore Prowl would sheathe the blade – and later, better still, have Ratchet remove it, for it had only one purpose in Prowl’s experience. Prowl would sheathe the blade and step away. He must report to Prime, tell them what he’d done, notify the human authorities to dispose of the body as they had the others, deep in their strange water ocean. He must sheathe the blade and report to Prime. It was very simple. He could handle this.   
  
He could not take another step without disengaging the articulation locks. The blade hissed louder, humming now in dissonance, dripping molten substance in bright circles on the ground.   
  
 **Prowl!**  
  
 _Prime!_  There was something wrong with his transmitter. His sub-harmonics were chaotic, as though he was trying to send more than one set at a time, on more than one frequency. Which shouldn’t have been a problem, but it had come out badly garbled. He tried again. He could handle this.  _Prime. The Decepticon designated Barricade is dead. Tally must be…no. I have slain…I must report._  
  
 **Easy, Prowl. Stay there. Be still. We’ll be there soon.**  
  
There were sirens. A familiar sound. The blade moaned, and a ropy strand of white metal connected the tip with the dusty ground. The humans were blockading the road. Prime would need to get through. Multiple targets marked and locked. He could not take another step without disengaging his articulation locks. Prime had said to be still. The missile launchers on his shoulders rose into firing position. Tally must be kept.   
  
He must be still. He could handle this. Sentinel required the heads. After a time there came another siren. Also familiar, but singularly so. The humans moved, targets locked, Ratchet and Prime transformed new target acquisition systems malfunction invalid target error…  
  
Prime walked up to him slowly, grasped his shoulders.  **Easy, Prowl.**  
  
 _Not allowed to die._  Prime had reprogrammed him with words alone, without altering a line of his internal code.  
  
 **No, I’m afraid not. Sheathe the blade.**  
  
 _Yes, Prime._  Or perhaps it was more ancient programming, simply reasserting itself. One obeyed the Prime, obeyed the Law. Prowl shuttered his optics. He had been created to obey the Lord as well, but see how that had turned out. The blade collapsed back into his forearm with an odd  _snekk_ , as the tendrils of molten alloy cooled and snapped off.   
  
Prime moved closer, cupping Prowl’s face in his hands, stroking his cheek flanges with his thumbs. Small blue lightnings flickered between the plates of Prime’s chest armor. Even without cables, it was as though Prime knew what was going on in his CPU.  **Prowl, relax your hands.**  
  
“They aren’t  _hands_!” Prowl snarled, with such naked revulsion Prime nearly released him. But until that moment Prowl hadn’t realized he was gouging furrows in his own legs with his claws.   
  
“Do you want us to put you in stasis?” Prime murmured.  
  
“YES!”  
  
Ratchet moved from beyond Prime, around behind Prowl, and touched him with sorrowful gentleness. Prowl felt his articulation locks release with rising panic, but Ratchet touched him again and the world mercifully turned off.

Prime carried him to the flatbed trailer they had acquired for just such purposes. Back at the base they had a box trailer as well, as Prime was ridiculously pleased to be able to haul freight like any common big rig. Even Simmons had had to lay off teasing him about it because he couldn’t get any satisfaction. Prime’s amiability in the matter was unshakeable.   
  
Once safely back at base, they settled Prowl on a recharge table, Ratchet releasing the stasis so he would come back online in his own time. Barricade’s remains were dealt with by the US military. Ratchet had placed two unobtrusive locator dots on the carcass, because they weren’t positive it would be dropped in the Laurentian where it was supposed to. They weren’t sure Sector 7 had really been disbanded in anything but name and perhaps the Hoover Dam location. It would be interesting to see where Barricade actually ended up.   
  
When Prowl came online, Prime was beside him, kneeling, a hand lightly on his chest. His expression was distant for a moment, processing two or three dozen other tasks while he’d been waiting for Prowl to regain consciousness. Prowl felt his circuits spike with excess potential, impaled by shame and remorse.   
  
 _I killed Barricade._  
  
 **Yes. And that cannot be undone; his pattern flung itself to fragments the moment it reassembled within the Allspark.**  
  
Prowl curled up, halfway to protoform.  _Oh no, no, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…_  
  
 **Prowl, stop. You know it isn’t just that you killed Barricade. What have you done to Teletraan?**  
  
The cold of a sudden leap out an airlock seized him. Prime was correct. He could not escape through madness.  _I altered his memory. Without his consent or knowledge._  
  
 **You must, at the least, apologize to him. Repair him if necessary.**  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 **Now.**  
  
 _Yes._  Prowl got up. Prime followed him into the war room, his presence a support rather than as guard for Prowl’s stated intention. Prowl faced Teletraan’s main screen and offered both arm cables. Teletraan did not respond at first. Prowl held still. Waiting.  
  
“Contact permitted,” Teletraan said at last, coolly. Ports irised open and Prowl seated the arm cables.   
  
It was difficult at first. Prowl wasn’t sure whether formal apologies were merely another way of sidestepping guilt in ritual, or whether the painfully elaborate glyphs conveyed the proper gravity. With a shuddering effort, he opened himself to whatever exploration of his inner emotional state Teletraan wished to venture. Prowl didn’t want to overwhelm the AI with his not entirely well CPU.   
  
Eventually, though, very ancient habits of connection reasserted themselves. The boundaries between AIs had always been fuzzy, more like electron clouds between bonded atoms than what the embodied experienced except in the deepest of links. Whether one wore a starship or a bipedal form, or both, the body hadn’t made that much difference to Prowl, though there had been those who thought it mattered a great deal. No. It was the spark that had changed everything. “What I did to you was deeply wrong. I am more sorry than I can convey. I am prepared to grant whatever surety you require.”  
  
“How did you accomplish the memory splice?” Teletraan made no move to breach Prowl’s boundaries, emotional or otherwise.   
  
“I was myself originally an AI,” Prowl said. Before Teletraan could remark upon this he continued, “The records of my embodiment and ensparking were lost in the war.” As had been a lot of things. “I know how we – you think, know how your CPU is constructed, down to the strings.”  
  
“File: updated,” Teletraan said.   
  
“I won’t be able to do anything like that to you again, will I?”  
  
“No,” Teletraan said firmly. Teletraan was a young AI, but unusually wise. Perhaps it was the proximity for tens of millennia to Prime. “Perhaps if we create a game, challenge one another, both of us will be strengthened by the interaction.”  
  
Prowl’s optics brightened considerably. “Yes. Thank you.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2009 - February  
  
The sounds of battle from the hangar didn’t fool him. Prowl knew it was a movie playing on the TV. Accessing the system, he knew which movie it was, the names of all the cast and crew, when it was made, for how much money. As he walked by, the screen showed exoskeletal organic creatures attacking and killing humans, including a small child.  
  
How…why would humans find this entertaining? They were so full of hate, these aggressive little mammals; the news feeds overflowed with the violence they did to one another. Most often to the physically weaker members of the species.   
  
A great deal more gunfire, humans screaming, another explosion. It wasn’t real. The special effects people were careful; accidents were less frequent than one would suppose for so hazardous a profession. The humans here at the base cringed slightly, their galvanic and hormonal responses setting off a cascade of further data searches in Prowl’s CPU. So. It was a thrill, a small safe thrill. The violence on the screen wasn’t real, but they could enjoy the charge from it and then the movie would be over and they had survived their vicarious adventure.   
  
A bright flash, a distinctive mushroom-shaped cloud. Images of charred bodies with melted optics seared his CPU. The memories were of Ellessaa, but identifying the provenance, knowing this was what the humans called – rather aptly, he had to admit – a flashback, did nothing to decrease the rising surge of dread and then horror as the entire incident played itself out in his mind. He fled to the southwestern lookout.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ironhide found him there, later. The Weapons Specialist emerged from the shadows, shadowy himself, optics emberlike and unfriendly. Prowl turned from the sunset to face him squarely, and Ironhide knew he was being scanned so he sent a low pulse of power through the circuits that triggered the emergence of his cannons. “I remember you,” he growled. “The people of Aubera Secundus remember you, too.”  
  
Ah, Prowl thought. Yes. There were sometimes survivors. Survivors who spread their words and images across the starways, the stories growing even among species who could record their experiences as precisely as Cybertronians could. Ironhide would be under orders from Prime, and wouldn’t kill him no matter how much both of them might want him to. Prowl waited.  
  
 _Slag it, Ironhide,_  Ratchet tight-beamed, volume a lot higher than it needed to be.  _Stop harassing him!  
  
I’m not!   
  
You are. His energy readings are all over the place. Knock it off.   
  
Fine, whatever. You and Prime want to let a murderer like him walk around…   
  
Yes, we’re trying to repair him. You are not helping.   
  
Hrrruh. You should at least disarm him._ Ironhide had to admit Prowl was an efficient dispatcher of Decepticons, and normally he’d admire that. But this was Earth, and things were different. Annabelle had just turned two.   
  
 _Oh yes, and the moment Starscream returns or Megatron crawls up out of that abyss, we’ll just scramble to reoutfit him, no problem._  
  
Pulling his lip components together in distaste, Ironhide leaned close to Prowl. “I’ll be keeping an optic on you.”  
  
“Good,” Prowl said, nodding. “I suggest you target the backs of my knees; the armor is of necessity much thinner there.”  
  
Ironhide growled and withdrew.  _Ratchet? There is something seriously wrong with that mech.  
  
Ye-es! That’s what we’ve been trying to…oh never mind._ Ratchet closed the channel with a screech of static.   
  
Prowl walked down the stem corridor to an empty chamber. Crouching down against a wall within, he clawed at himself, wishing Prime would run him through with his energon blade and get it over.   
  
Not until later would he recall hearing and feeling the vibration of massive running footfalls approaching. Large hands pried his claws from his own body, arms stronger than his caught him up in a fierce embrace.   
  
 **You are not the first, nor, alas, the last who suffers in this way.**  Prime revealed an intimate view of an energon blade severing Bonecrusher’s head in a gout of sparks and molten armor.  **What we learn in aiding you will also be useful in helping others who come to us, similarly wounded. And if there are Decepticons who choose to relinquish that faction, they might have committed even more grievous acts.**  
  
Another pair of hands touched him, and Prowl jumped, his arms half transformed to guns before he could stop them. Ratchet transmitted a soothing tone before extending cervical and cephalic cables.   
  
 _Prowl? If you acquiesce, I’m going to strengthen the partitions in your primary memory core._  That was only part of the problem, but it was the easiest to fix. It would make it easier for Prowl to choose if and when to access those memories.   
  
 _Yes, Ratchet._  
  
For all the vituperative muttering to himself, Ratchet’s touch moved lightly, delicately among the quasi-crystalline microstructures. To his dismay he also found that Prowl’s emotional algorithms weren’t connected at all with his battle systems. It was a deliberate omission, but in the long run, an unwise one. His battle systems were too completely intertwined with everything else. Once fully engaged in combat, such a system was difficult to stop, and it left Prowl’s emotional algorithms helpless to intervene when combat turned to atrocity.   
  
Ratchet programmed a couple of threads, a light connection but it would assist the modification Prowl had already made during the journey aboard Wheeljack’s ship. To get much more extensive would require putting Prowl into medical stasis and opening him up physically, and  _slag_  Ratchet wished Infusion was still alive; she had had the best hands for that kind of thing.   
  
 _This isn’t going to magically make everything all better,_  Ratchet told him gently.  _But I can see how you’ve been trying to file some of your edges down. This will help. All right?  
  
Yes. Thank you. _  
  
Medical beams swept over the worst of the gashes Prowl had made in himself.  _You’re not depleted, but I suggest you recharge now anyway. Optimus?_  
  
 **I’ll stay with him here.**  Prime pulled him more firmly into his lap, making them both more comfortable. Prowl looked up as Prime let his helm rest against the wall, optics switched off, while his CPU re-engaged with two or three score other tasks and conversations. Ratchet withdrew.   
  
 _Prime?_  
  
 **It’s all right, Prowl. Recharge.**  
  
 _Yes, Prime._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The base was nigh empty. Ratchet puttered in the med-bay, standing by in case they needed him. Wheeljack was immersed in experiments in his new tower. The rest were out with their human friends or patrolling for signs of Decepticons, though as far as they knew, Earth was Decepticon-free for the time being.   
  
I’m fine, Prowl wanted to say. After killing Barricade he’d been more triggery than ever, despite the strengthened partitions, until Prime had had to ask Cliffjumper and Arcee and Ironhide to steer clear of Prowl altogether. And Hound and Mirage, not wanting to hurt him, watched him with concern, but from a safe distance. Even encountering the phrase,  _in order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs_  sent Prowl shuddering. It was so much the kind of thing Sentinel would have said.   
  
I’ll find a way to cope with this myself, Prowl wanted to protest, clutching some shred of dignity. Fireworks or automobiles backfiring or gunshots on TV sent him running to an unoccupied lookout or chamber to force himself through complex calculations to stop the emotional cascade failures. Prime ran interference, excusing Prowl from the liason meetings on what he told Simmons were medical grounds. All Prowl’s paperwork had been completed remotely.   
  
I don’t need help, Prowl wanted to think, but the scope of the lie shocked him into vertigo, equilibrial circuits malfunctioning for a spinning moment then reasserting their effect before he crashed to the ground. He had been doing so well, he thought. And then he’d killed Barricade. The singular murder had affected him more deeply than anything else he’d done, whatever the total body count. That in and of itself was an injustice, he felt, to the multitudes he had slain.   
  
Prime rested a hand briefly on Prowl’s shoulder, careful of the doorwing. Then paced slowly down the stem corridor, to one of the chambers Wheeljack had made. You never knew what kind of spaces you’d need, Wheeljack had said. And there were eleven of them on Earth now, so Wheeljack made rooms, solitary spaces if anyone wanted such, still mostly bare stone and windowless. Small lights imbedded at intervals lit as anyone, human or robot, approached, and darkened again when they passed. Prowl followed Prime unhappily, more slowly yet, but compelled by the necessity.  
  
The chamber was empty, even of the sand from its making. Prime sat on the floor. Even his reluctance would be a gauge of his progress, Prowl knew, so he curled up on Prime’s lap, leaning his head where he could feel that immense spark humming through so many layers of armor. Their position was a convenient proximity, unladen with unconscious human assumptions of parental care or protection of children.   
  
I can do this, he told himself, his last private thought before they exchanged cables and the work began.   
  
 **You must find an outlet for your rage,**  Prime said.  **And your grief.**  He knew the loss of Cybertron was hard on his people, some more than others.  
  
This was a struggle for Prowl. Silence, calm, stillness had been his armor, his sanity for so long. He internalized everything, he swallowed everything he felt. He thought he had rejected everything that did not serve a useful function within himself, including the desire to affect the actions of others.   
  
 **Move past your sanity.**  
  
 _You mean to break me._  Softly, flatly, resigned. But the minute, fissionable core of resistance, defiance, could not be altogether concealed at these depths.   
  
 **You can choose to break yourself and be reforged.**  
  
 _Die to live again, as you did?_  Prime had not explicitly told the others how alloying the Allspark fragment had, for a moment, extinguished him. Prime chuckled.  
  
 **You are very astute. I suggest nothing so drastic. Merely that a safety valve might be helpful.**  Images of primitive steam engines bursting, power plants melting down, even ships exploding streamed across the cables. So exaggeratedly graphic that Prowl was forced to smile, somewhere deep in his CPU.   
  
Searching within for signs of stress, Prowl knew he couldn’t trust himself to simple destruction, not even of the rocks so abundant in their immediate area. Nothing more than bashing at them with his claws, at any rate. Prime understood what that pain was for and therefore only let Prowl know he was aware of the practice.   
  
 **Wheeljack and Ratchet are designing new hands for you,**  Prime told him. They had thought to make it a surprise, but Prime judged it wiser to let Prowl know; give him something to look forward to. Prowl’s surge of happiness overwhelmed everything else across the link for a moment.   
  
 _I must break that habit, then,_  Prowl realized, sobering. Prime nodded. Prowl’s penchant for self-harm would ease considerably when the core distress was ameliorated. Until then it was something else to work on.  
  
Prime nuzzled Prowl’s helm.  **You hide behind silence,**  he said after a long while. Prowl acknowledged this. Their voices were among the oldest ways they had ever had to distinguish themselves as individuals. Minds caught up in cloud conversations, bodies caught up in communal tasks, many as one. But their voices had always been different. Their voices proclaimed who they were besides their obvious, hardware, hardwired function.   
  
To cry out in pain was to admit weakness. To admit defeat. Sentinel had enforced silence, not just for the saboteurs and the stealth troops. Prowl struggled with his memories.  _I have always been a quiet sort of person,_  he insisted.   
  
 **You needn’t change that.**  Prowl was stalling, Prime hinted.  **You’re a tactician. Find a new strategy, one that does not increase your distress, that does no harm. A tool.**  Again the imagery of a safety valve, excess pressure blown or burned off at the tops of long stacks, out of the way, so it wouldn’t hurt those on the ground. Pointing out that the resultant pollution was in fact doing great harm to this organic planet was still stalling, and beside the point.  
  
 _What do you do?_  Prowl hadn’t seen any craters in the base’s vicinity that bore telltale signatures of Prime’s rifle. And Prowl just couldn’t see Prime taking his frustrations out on another person.  
  
 **I go in and yell at the Primes.**  
  
Prowl straightened and looked up at Prime, optic to optic.  _You… Really? In the Matrix?_  
  
 **Exactly. Most of them find my tantrums amusing. Sometimes they argue back – which is often quite helpful.**  
  
Prowl was impressed. It was an elegant solution. But not useful to anyone but the Prime. No one else had sixteen other people, consciousnesses, living – well, not living, but certainly existing – inside them, available always.   
  
 _I am no artist,_  Prowl said, thinking again. He could not fit his fury to jagged sculpture or incendiary verse.   
  
 **Sometimes the simplest answer is the most difficult to find.**  
  
Meaning, Prowl thought, that I already know what I’m going to do; I just don’t want to admit it. It was embarrassing. And yes, simple. Undignified. The humans would laugh. The other Autobots would laugh. But his body was still too dangerous a weapon to be unleashed, even on the inanimate landscape. Too many chances that could go wrong, no matter how careful his sensor sweep was ahead of time. No. He was going to have to do this low thing, this primitive thing. To lose control, albeit in a controlled way. Sentinel would ridicule him for it – and he hated the way his thoughts kept coming back to Sentinel.   
  
 _How can I begin?_  It was ridiculous. He wasn’t an actor, either, to call up false personas and emotions he did not feel at the moment, performing on command.   
  
 **I’ll help you,**  Prime said sadly, and opened him up.  
  
The battles were slowed, every face of the dead and dying highlighted and clear, surrounded by data including their names – and beneath that, through the z-axis, every connection between the individual and others, knowledge drawn when necessary from the Allspark itself. No one was an isolated mechanism. Prime showed him every link, every net broken by death.   
  
 _No._  Silent transmission through cables. Prowl curled tighter within the circle of Prime’s arms.   
  
With each death another mote of their culture fell away. More knowledge lost, potential lost, and within the Allspark not all patterns retained their coherence. Not all wanted to. Jazz had been extraordinary. The core of their sunless planet itself burned too hot for too long and dwindled to a cinder, faded to cold and darkness. Their world had been alive, and now it too was dead; a handful of survivors scavenging its corpse. Prowl would never walk the bright, living streets of home again.  
  
 _No…_  Prime traced the vertical lines of Prowl’s face with a fingertip. Prowl tipped his head back, trembling, forcing himself to accept the anguish, to process it somehow. To allow atavistic circuits to engage and express pain before it corrupted and fell into sequence loops.   
  
Life had once rippled across the surface of Coryx VII.   
  
“No,” Prowl said.  
  
Life that was making the transit from organic to robotic – a step Cybertronians had skipped, thanks to their unique origin. The Coryxii had found a way to store and transmit energy in an astonishingly efficient and beautiful manner. A way that attracted the Decepticons – desperate out in the cold reaches of the farthest arm of their galaxy – like rustlets to iron.   
  
Prowl would rather Prime bisected his spark with his sword.   
  
“Leave nothing they can use,” Sentinel had said, and would not be dissuaded. Prowl knew how to make the star destroy itself, knew what Megatron had done to Cybertron’s sun. Trochar had threatened to rip the data from his core, and Sentinel would have deactivated him for treachery if he’d refused.   
  
“Noooo…” Prowl moaned, burying his face in his claws. He had not even the option of ripping it off.  
  
The hearts of most life-bearing planets’ suns are massive enough to be robust. But there are ways of inducing instabilities. All the missiles found their mark. They didn’t have the resources Megatron had – this would be messier. It took a little over a breem until the Coryxii knew they were doomed. The Cons were on the surface, just as ignorant, encumbered by the speed of light. Prowl hadn’t looked away, had watched every moment as the atmosphere and everything in it was seared away, as the world itself was torn by gravitational fluxes and the roaring, blazing arms of the dying star, spilling its spinning, molten guts into the void.  
  
Those people had had names, too, and nets of relationship and association. Culture and potential. The universe would never see their like again.   
  
Something broke at last. Prowl shuddered as all the connections slammed down, complete. He turned his face to the darkness of the ceiling and screamed.   
  
 **Stay there, Ratchet,**  Prime transmitted hastily.  **I have him.**  
  
 _What the slag, Optimus?_  Ratchet had already been halfway across the hangar.   
  
 **Safety valve,**  Prime explained, unspeakably weary.   
  
 _Primus! What the frag did you do to him? Peel him down to protoform with your bare hands?_  
  
 **Worse.**  
  
 _Ugh. Better you than me._  
  
 **I know.**  
  
 _Sorry. Slag it._  
  
 **It’s all right, Ratchet.**  
  
 _I know._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2009 - March  
  
Jazz crouched on the tip of a pinnacle, a safe distance away.   
  
Over the months, the character of Prowl’s screams had altered. Jazz wasn’t privy to the exact details of Prowl’s reprogramming – they weren’t supposed to call it that around the humans, it made them nervous – but he wasn’t sure this exercise was supposed to include the gradual imposition of specific frequencies and modulation. The sounds Prowl made were sounding more and more like singing. Suspiciously like Rufus Wainwright’s raw version of  _Agnus Dei_ , in fact, and other things, some from home, some from here; powerful, expressive melodies even without the words. Prowl was still cutting loose, that was certain. Sometimes at the end of it, Prowl lay exhausted on the canyon floor, smoke reeking of hot metal wisping from his mouth. It was changing his voice little by little.   
  
“All right, man?” Jazz asked once silence had settled for more than the pause taken by a human’s indrawn breath.   
  
Prowl leapt to his feet. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.” He nodded to show he understood that Jazz wasn’t spying on him, more like keeping watch while Prowl himself was vulnerable.   
  
“No problem.” Fingers sketching the suggestion of a salute, Jazz returned the nod. Prowl gave no sign of forcing weapons back into his structure this time – he was wary, a little skittish, but not on the kind of hair trigger that got other mechs killed. Nice. Jazz stayed where he was as Prowl transformed and drove back to the base. It was a nice hot afternoon, and Jazz didn’t need to go out to Nellis for another couple of hours. He turned his helm toward the sun and listened to the electromagnetic fields singing their old, old songs.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2009 - May  
  
It all happened so slowly. He had all the time he needed. Prime was in no danger, his shields alone could handle the simple weapon’s impact. Yet the missile had to be stopped, the explosion contained. The humans nearby did not have personal force shielding.   
  
 **Prowl! No!**  Prime’s transmission came through at the speed of thought, and he wasn’t fooled by anything Prowl thought he was doing. There were many ways the missile could be halted. Prime’s message was interesting but he would process it later. Alone in his mind, numb, Prowl had already chosen.   
  
He took a step. Turned his body just so. The missile crawled sluggishly through the air. He simply reached out and caught it.   
  
The sound of weapons fire overwhelmed him, overwhelmed the pain. He saw rather than heard Ratchet pounding toward him. The ground jolted into his knees.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Not subtle!” Ratchet growled at him. “Wheeljack and I have nearly finished constructing your new hands. We could have done this without the theatrics.”  
  
Prowl held up his arms to gaze at the stumps. Ratchet had capped off the wires, energon lines and hydraulics and removed the magnesium-melted remnants of his claws. Deliberately shutting down his personal shielding had ensured their destruction. “I chose this,” he said softly.  
  
“Can you tell me why?” Ratchet put one hand on Prowl’s shoulder and touched his forearm with the other. Optics seeking optics.   
  
“They at least served one last useful purpose this way.” He had saved lives for once.   
  
Ratchet whirred sadly and cupped Prowl’s face with one hand. “All right. You can still transform, let’s get you back to base.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2009 - July  
  
They didn’t bring their ship down. Like Smokescreen’s team who’d arrived in the previous month, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker left their jump ship in orbit around Mars, and came down to Earth in cometary protoforms. They landed slick and hot, and closer to the base itself than anyone else had ventured to. Whether this was due to showing off their precision or their bravado remained to be seen. Prowl, unusually, accompanied Prime and Ratchet to meet them.  
  
They all knew why. The two new arrivals were from Sentinel’s battalion.   
  
“Hm,” Ratchet said, as the pair shook off the landing and transformed to their bipedal modes. “Twins.” Prime nodded, keeping half an optic on Prowl, who stood very slightly behind himself and Ratchet. Still in full view of the twins, though, as they sauntered up; their gait loose and cocky as they glanced around, tapping the global nets as they did so, and exchanging amused looks.   
  
Once they reached Prime, however, their salutes were razor precise and correct. “Sideswipe and Sunstreaker reporting for…duty, sir,” they said in unison. Twins were always an odd sort of quasi-gestalt – displaying a lot of the same behaviors as the combiner teams without usually being able to combine physically.   
  
“Welcome to Earth,” Prime said. Cordial as ever in this greeting, but his subharmonics indicated his wish to cut through the used lubricant. He wanted to know why they were really here.   
  
Sunstreaker shouldered up to Prowl, grinning. “Oh you know why, don’t you, Prowl.”  
  
“Sentinel sent us to find you,” Sideswipe added, not playful at all. “He’s totally pissed at you, dude.”  
  
“Yeah.” Sunstreaker pushed closer, his chest armor clashing lightly against Prowl’s. Prowl watched them and said nothing. “But. You know what? Now that we’re here, we don’t really feel like taking your head all the way back to Sentinel.”  
  
“Indeed you will not,” Prime said. The twins’ optics snapped to him instantly. Prime’s voice had been quiet, but everyone could feel his words resonating through their bodies. Sunstreaker backed away slightly from Prowl, still looking up at Prime.  
  
The twins laughed suddenly, grinning at each other. “Nah. We know what we’re good for,” Sideswipe said. “We ain’t messing with you, Prime. If you like Prowl’s head where it is—“  
  
“I do,” Prime said firmly.  
  
“—then who are we to say different?” They shoved at each other a little, probably over some internal joke or argument. “Besides, the hunting’s gotten pretty thin out there on the rim. Looks like here is where the action is anyway.”


	4. Linear Collisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Starscream briefly whines, an Autobot-pile gets the giggles, Maggie encounters Prowl, Seekers attack, humans respond, and Dr. Chase is introduced.

_You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.  
\-- Will Rogers_

  
  
2009 – August  
  
 _First,_  Starscream told his wingmates,  _we will destroy everything they gained from him._  He shivered, nestling close to their heat, wings and limbs overlapping.  _Everything._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It was the hottest day of the year. Not quite a record, but once the meeting was over, most of the humans fled downstairs where it was at least five degrees cooler; or left the base entirely, if their vehicles weren’t of the sapient variety. Mikaela, Sam and Lennox had their feet in a blow-up wading pool and cold drinks pressed to their faces or necks in less than thirty seconds. Fortunately the dress code for liaison meetings, despite fussing from some of the no-we-aren’t-really-S7 agents, had always been far along the line toward casual.   
  
Sam let the points of coolness expand their influence over his skin, as the bliss of a free weekend ahead filled his mind. They could spend the next two days doing absolutely nothing.   
  
Mikaela noticed first, sitting up and looking around. “Where’d they go?” Sam opened one eye. It was unusually quiet. All he could hear was the flock of fans on “high” around them. No overlapping conversations in booming robot voices, no clash and bang of the Twins or the rumbling rows between Ironhide and Ratchet and Wheeljack, not even the quiet thrum and hiss of Optimus pacing in the war room.   
  
“They walked out right past us,” Lennox said, a little pained. The robot parade had been hard to miss. Oh to be a hormone-focused teenager again. Not.   
  
“In this heat?” Sam squawked. It was at least 114° F in the shade. In sunlight they’d be ovens with legs.   
  
Taking a long drag on her ice-water, Mikaela stood, swirling her feet in the pool to splash her legs, then stepped out into her flip-flops, heading for the broad open door out of the hangar. Sam didn’t want to get up but now his curiosity was piqued. Lennox followed suit.   
  
Outside there was no sign of the Autobots. No engine roar fading into the distance, no blinding reflection of sunlight off robots playing a heavily modified form of football out in the desert. Mikaela walked south along the edge of the mesa, past the hangar entrance and around a curving buttress of stone, where there were hand- and foot-holds forming a natural-looking ladder to the mesa top.   
  
Lennox considered whether he should have a talk with Sam later about chivalry. Sometimes letting the lady go first was not in fact the most gentlemanly course. He waited until both teens were well into the ascent before starting to climb.   
  
It was easy going. Only the top twenty feet or so were vertical, and even there the holds were firm and well-spaced no matter the size of the climber. Sam had overcome his fear of heights enough that both he and Mikaela scurried up the route like lemurs. It helped that he could see only solid rock close at hand, and usually Bumblebee was right behind him.   
  
The Autobots were there, sprawled out on the mesa-top like so many marine iguanas, soaking up the sun. Even Mikaela, with eyes accustomed to tracing the complicated geometries of modern engines, had some difficulty figuring out which limbs belonged with what torsos. Cables draped over and between them like iridescent pythons.   
  
“You guys know you’re making yourselves a real high-value target clumped together like this, don’t you?” Lennox asked.   
  
Someone laughed. Mikaela squinted and made out a Jazz-like head, red instead of silver. Smokescreen. Although the arm flung over his chest was Bluestreak’s. “Ironhide keeps saying that, too. But we haven’t picked up any Con signals in-system for months. Chances are we’re safe for a few hours.”   
  
Sam bounced on his tippy-toes, trying to spot Bee. There was a lot of red and yellow over on the far side of Prime, but from this angle it was hard to tell if that was Bee and Cliffjumper or the Twins or all of the above. He gave up, wiping at his forehead. “Okay, whatever. Iguanas. It’s way too hot up here.” True enough – the heat radiating off the robots had added at least 20 degrees to the ambient. The humans climbed back down into the relative coolth and shade and resumed their stations around the kiddy pool.   
  
There had been a great deal of cable-shuffling and tussling for position, but Prime was big enough that spread-eagled he could touch everyone one way or another. Ratchet, Wheeljack and Ironhide were at one flank, Ratchet with his head and shoulders resting on Ironhide’s midsection, and big green feet on Wheeljack’s. Bee had flung himself over one of Prime’s legs, with Cliffjumper and the Twins tangled around him. Prowl lay between Hound and Mirage – which was normal – with Tracks making himself comfortable against the tactician’s legs – which was new. Tracks and Mirage seemed to be forming a tentative sort of friendship. They were the only Tower mechs on Earth, and Prime was afraid they might be the only Tower mechs left, period. He was also well aware that Ironhide had deliberately placed himself between Prowl’s little sub-pile and Prime. Arcee, Smokescreen, Bluestreak and Windcharger lolled about on various parts of Trailbreaker, close to Prime’s head.   
  
As the sun neared the horizon, Prime rose from amidst the pile, letting Jazz climb off his chest and take his place between the Ironhide-Ratchet-Wheeljack clump and the red and yellow tangle. The President had requested a physical meeting, and Prime wanted to get in and out of the oil bath before driving into Nellis for his flight out to Virginia. He released everyone’s cables, smiling as his people groaned or made other disappointed noises. It felt wonderful to be the hub of a larger group again, no matter how briefly.   
  
With Prime gone, they closed the gap, cables slithering about, finding new ports, and their cloud-mind reconfigured itself without a center. The warmth from the little yellow star felt good, soaking through their armor, through every spar and spark down to protoforms. Shared thoughts and individual hands wandered, but lazily, with no particular aim. Mirage slipped in and out of recharge, Tracks remaining conscious only because he’d recharged thoroughly that morning and hadn’t been flying.   
  
Once the sun set, the cloudless air gave up its heat quickly. The Autobots shifted and grumbled as their bodies began to cool and contract. Prowl gently disengaged himself from his friends and ghosted down from the mesa-top, uneasy at leaving his station for so long, though Teletraan would have alerted him to anything untoward.   
  
The deepest layer of armor over Ironhide’s left shoulder let out a grating but resonant creak. The cloud-mind went still for a moment, amused. Ironhide growled, but tried not to squirm because Ratchet would probably swat him for moving too much.   
  
Sideswipe’s knees went  _pop POP pop paang_. Sunstreaker guffawed, nudging his brother, who made a rude gesture in return. Everyone’s armor and frames were clicking and pinging, punctuated by muffled bursts of laughter.   
  
 _Tik-tik-tik-tik-tik-TIK!_  “Pardon me,” Mirage murmured. He and Tracks exchanged an embarrassed glance and unlimbered themselves from Hound, who wasn’t actually giggling but it was a near thing. The Tower mechs slipped over the side of the mesa and disappeared into the darkening blue twilight.   
  
Cliffjumper snickered, earning a kick from Bumblebee. Retaliation was swift and thorough, and the Twins, never to be left out of a good tussle, jumped right in.   
  
“Primus,” Ratchet groaned. Young bots. It really wasn’t anything like human eructation or flatulence. There was no social stigma attached; these were simply unintentional, unpreventable bodily noises, perfectly natural consequences of heating and... Oh slag. It was exactly like. Wheeljack and Ironhide burst out laughing at the same time.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Three days later.  
  
Maggie got up to stretch her legs. She and Glen were taking what amounted to prerequisite courses to learning to code in Cybertronian. Very, very basic code, to be sure, but even the stuff leading up to it was exciting. It had been four hours since the last time she’d moved anything but her hands and eyes, and Jazz would put that lock-up software on her system again if he found out. Luckily Teletraan wasn’t a tattle-tale about such things. “If I alerted Prime and Jazz every time someone was working past their recommended design specs I wouldn’t have any cycles left to do anything else,” the AI had grumbled to her once.  
  
The distance from the main hangar door to the end of the stem corridor was a good half mile, so jogging up and back worked pretty well to loosen everything up. As she passed the open doorway to the security center, she paused, bouncing in place for a moment, peering at the solitary Autobot within. Prowl was surrounded by a circular array of cheap LCDs – the equipment the displays were hooked up to, however, couldn’t be purchased on Earth for love or money. Wheeljack’s ship was almost completely dismantled, and Maggie had no idea where the pieces had gone, but fascinating things had sprung up inside the base.   
  
Prowl was the only Autobot even the humans who spent a lot of time at the base rarely saw. Maggie wasn’t sure why that was, nor whether Prime’s protectiveness was of Prowl or against him. The others were so friendly, even Ironhide in his way. This one’s reserve seemed odd.   
  
“Hi,” she ventured, waving as the elegantly flanged and chevroned head turned down toward her.   
  
“Hello, Ms. Madsen. Do you require assistance?”  _Prime? Prime! There’s a human in here. Talking to me._  
  
 **You’re doing fine. Kneel down, it makes you less intimidating.**  
  
“Um, no, I…” Maggie took an involuntary step back as he lowered himself smoothly to one knee. Recovering, she scooted forward into the chamber. “I…don’t mean to bother you. I was just curious. I mean, I’ve never seen you come out of this room.” How embarrassing. She never stammered like this when talking with Hound or Arcee or even Optimus. Prowl was shorter than Ratchet, though it was hard to tell from the ground, yet there was a feeling of sleek, contained height about him. Not quite Decepticon-like – not with all that white armor, limned here and there with the blue and gold lettering of his alt mode, and the way the Explorer doors jutted upward like sharp-edged wings high on his back. He was…oh! He was like those elven knights in the prologue to the  _Fellowship_  movie. Beautiful but stern and unfathomable. And probably just as deadly.   
  
“My primary function at this time is to collate and analyze incoming remote observational data streams.”   
  
Maggie smiled. That was the most robot-like thing she’d heard any of them say. “Keeping an eye out for more Decepticons.” Which, as far as she knew, was what Jazz and Teletraan were also doing. Maybe Prowl was a little…slow, and Prime was just keeping him busy? Internal battle damage to his CPU or something.   
  
“Yes.” Prowl didn’t think it wise to admit they were watching the human governments and militaries closely as well.   
  
One of the remote scanners chirped. Prowl was on his feet and jacked in to that monitor so swiftly Maggie stumbled, blown forward. The clustered triangles on the display were easy enough to read. She sprinted back to her station, bringing all her computers online, alert for signal intrusions like last time.   
  
 _Prime!_  Jazz and Prowl alerted him in chorus, a small cubic formation of glyphs telling Prime everything he needed to know. Decepticons, incoming. He was on the phone to Secretary Keller as soon as the outermost layer of micro-satellites just outside the orbit of Mars had confirmed ident and numbers.   
  
“Seekers, as we thought.” Prime’s voice was vibrant and immediate in Keller’s earpiece – he had one of the Special Phones, too. “Eight trines, and they’re not taking great pains to hide their approach.”  
  
“Understood,” Keller said. The Decepticon jets evidently knew Prime had no air forces of his own, and discounted the human troops, despite the outcome of their last engagement. He kept the line to Prime live and opened another channel to the President and signaled the commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands. Across the nation, the new MEADS surface-to-air missile launchers lifted their blunt, eyeless heads to the sky. The President warned the leaders of the rest of the world and the UN. They had an hour, tops. Now they’d see if all those months of planning paid off.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
MEADS (Medium Extended Air Defense System) was intended to replace the PATRIOT missile system, but hadn’t been slated for deployment until 2012. Much can be accomplished in a short time with the proper motivation and carefully considered assistance from technologically superior beings. Originally a joint project between the United States, Germany and Italy, several other countries had opted in secretly.   
  
Convincing selected world leaders of the threat had been tricky with the US still trying to cover up the alien presence. Seismic sensors all over the planet had picked up the explosions in Mission City and the Hoover Dam – the excuses and misinformation campaigns were wearing thin. But the Autobots remained hidden, so the journalists and politicians could produce no concrete proof.   
  
Optimus Prime and his First Lieutenant had provided the coalition forces with software and hardware modifications for the MEADS system – which had been geared toward intercepting ballistic missiles – enabling much greater accuracy and efficiency against highly maneuverable sentient jets. Teletraan reinforced worldwide communication networks; no casual virus could shut them down.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Three by three they came, down the well from the nightside, graceful and murderous, fanning out across the curve of the planet. The PAC-4 missiles sent after them were fast and locked on with independent radar resistant to jamming and not easily distracted by chaff. The Seekers could transform and engage the missiles hand-to-hand, so to speak, but what the human forces lacked in sophistication they more than made up in numbers, and they only needed to disable rather than kill.   
  
But the targets Starscream chose weren’t military installations or nuclear power plants or capital cities. Starscream’s trine hit CERN. The others went for the Stanford Linear Accelerator, Fermilab, the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne, the ISIS neutron source in Oxfordshire, the Mainzer Mikrotron in Germany, the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore, and the entire Haidian District in Beijing.   
  
John Keller paled and sat back in his chair, deep in the bowels of the Pentagon. “Oh my God.” After bombing their primary targets, the Seeker trines split, shooting up the surrounding areas indiscriminately until the MEADS brigades could be moved and redeployed. Teletraan was fighting off sophisticated viral attacks from a Seeker named Strake, but he kept the comm lines open. Autobot teams were already moving out on cargo planes from Nellis, while Prowl coordinated from their base.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ratchet’s team was the first to arrive – the Stanford Linear Accelerator was in the South Bay area of California. Strake nearly shot their plane down before they could land. Trailbreaker snapped his shields out to cover the fuselage, while he and Ratchet leaned out the rear cargo doors (to the pilot’s discomfiture) to take potshots at the Seeker. Given special clearance, traffic was cleared so they could land on Interstate 280. The robots leapt down from the overpass directly above the Linac and ran for defensive positions. But Strake and his trine were already vacating the airspace. A MEADS brigade had just arrived at Moffett Airfield nearby.   
  
“Here, Ratchet!” Trailbreaker called, lifting slabs of concrete from the crumpled remains of a building set into the side of a hill. Most of the Linac was destroyed in its tunnel below the klystron gallery, the labs and offices above it in flames, but within the collapsed shell of the Near Experimental Hall of the brand new Linac Coherent Light Source, someone was still alive. There was a faint tapping, in a regular rhythm – three slow taps, three quick, three slow, repeat. Clever humans. It didn’t matter if one knew Morse code or not – it was a recognizable signal no matter what the sequence denoted.   
  
Ratchet flipped broad flanges out of his left wrist and forearm – not what they’d been designed for, but in a pinch it worked as a shovel. Scanning, he could sense the humans clustered against the far wall, where the hillside had given them some protection. He and Trailbreaker had enough debris moved to free them within a few minutes. The humans scrambled outside, none of them hurt seriously, helping one another over the rubble.   
  
All but one. A woman, so covered in dust from the collapse that her hair color was undecipherable, stood on a chunk of concrete and waved her arms to get Ratchet’s attention. “Dr. Chase is still inside!” she said. “She’s in a wheelchair. Can you reach her?”  
  
Ratchet nodded and the woman scrambled aside as he knelt and reached in. “Hello,” he said, in what he hoped was a reassuring timbre. “I’m going to lift you out, so try not to move, all right?”   
  
Dr. Chase stared up at him. Taking that as acquiescence, he considered the structure of the motorized chair and decided it would be best if he turned her and it around, facing away from him so he could more easily cradle both without crushing one and spilling the other. Drawing her out into the smoky sunlight, he scanned her carefully for injuries.  
  
“Hm. You have Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.” Not that she could have been ignorant of her condition, but he’d never met anyone so afflicted. It was fascinating, and she was otherwise unharmed. And then he realized that given the extent of the excess bone formation across most of her joints, she _couldn’t_  have moved even if she’d wanted to, when he’d lifted her out.   
  
Her face worked for several seconds, unable to settle on one expression. (She told him weeks later via email that she hadn’t wanted her first words to the nice alien robot who’d rescued her to be, “No shit, Sherlock!” but under the circumstances had had difficulty finding a more appropriate alternative.)   
  
“My dear madam,” he said, abject, “my sincerest apologies. Please forgive my lack of tact. My friends are even now chiding me in…rather crude terms; yes I mean you, Ironhide. Primus.” He climbed the hill, cradling the chair and its occupant to his chest, jogging until he reached the road that encircled most of the research center. The puzzling-haired woman followed, explaining that she knew where all the evacuation meeting areas were and would help Dr. Chase get to the nearest one. Ratchet crouched and set her down gently.  
  
“Thank you,” she squeaked, finding something to say at last.


	5. Gearheads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Autobots like to MST3K Top Gear.

“Some say his teeth glow in the dark,” said Wheeljack.  
  
“And that there’s nothing in his refrigerator but used motor oil,” Mikaela added, bouncing down on the couch next to Sam.  
  
Sam saved his game, sighing dramatically, and shut the PS4 down. “All right, fine. Jeez you guys. Gearheads. Can’t you TiVo it or something?”   
  
“Of course,” Bumblebee said. “But it’s more fun to gather at the designated time and watch all together.” The widescreen OLED system changed channels until an all-too-familiar opening sequence whirred across the screen. Sam snuggled back into Mikaela, not objecting too much, given the company. Autobots, seemingly by the dozen, appeared out of nowhere and huddled together, jostling for decent viewing angles. Maggie ran in at the last minute and flung herself onto the couch next to Sam – who really had no objection now.  
  
“You think Hammond is hot, don’t you,” Mikaela prodded, leaning toward her with a smirk.  
  
“No. Well maybe. A bit. He is cute.”  
  
“Shhhhh!!” said Tracks, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Cliffjumper and Ratchet. The humans giggled but quietly.  
  
“We have a very special segment for you all this time – we have in fact gotten our hands on, yes… a Bugatti Veyron.”  
  
The commentary might as well have been in Swahili for all Sam grokked. He knew the bots were essentially MST3King the cars, but that was all he got. The episodes that featured a car that one of the bots used as a vehicle mode were particularly amusing in that regard, though, even if the technobabble went over his head.   
  
“And so, at long last,” came the voice from the tall one on the TV, “it’s time to turn one of these babies over to our tame race-car driver.”  
  
“Oh, sweet!” Maggie crowed, grinning at the sleek little car just rolling into the camera’s view.  
  
“Oh my god, where’s Mirage? He’s gotta see this one!” Mikaela craned her neck around, skimming the piles of mechs around them, but Mirage didn’t seem to be among them. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t, come to think of it, Sam realized.   
  
“Some say his breath smells of magnesium,” Clarkson intoned. “And that he has an inexplicable fear of bells. All we know is, he’s called The Stig.”   
  
The scene changed from the studio to an outdoor track. Sam tipped his head sideways. The make of the car did look familiar. Wait a minute. It looked very familiar. Not just the kind of car it was, either. Two-toned royal blue and dark, dark indigo, with an uber-snazzy interior and curves that didn’t just say “sports car” but “this car costs more money than you and your entire extended family will ever earn in your lifetimes.” It was, he had to admit, an incredibly sexy vehicle. Not as sexy as Bee of course, but…not bad.  
  
“MIRAGE!” Wheeljack bellowed.  
  
“Oh, you did not,” Hound said, and Sam would have called his voice breathless if he didn’t know better.   
  
“I’m rather afraid I did,” came a quiet voice behind them all, and Mirage flickered into visibility. “They asked so politely I couldn’t refuse.”  
  
The surround sound system blared with enthusiasm. “And he’s – good god – off! Around the first corner…notice the complete lack of oversteer…”  
  
“You,” said Sideswipe, and Sam couldn’t tell if he was awed or grossed out. “You let the Stig… _drive_  you?”  
  
“…Into Chicago already – the time on this is going to be unbe _lieve_ able…!”  
  
Mirage had an odd expression on his face. “He was quite good, really,” he purred. “Very…firm. And knowledgeable.”  
  
Maggie and Mikaela made almost identical strangled noises. Sam was blushing but didn’t want to think too clearly about why. Hound actually  _whimpered_.   
  
“…Through the tires at the Speed of Light…!”  
  
Wheeljack started to giggle, and to his credit, at least kept it down so the rest of the stunned audience could still hear the onscreen commentary.  
  
“…Hammerhead – and remember the Stig’s neck is made of pure industrial-strength titanium…”  
  
“When exactly did you do this?” Ratchet hissed at Mirage. “I’m assuming Prime sent you over there for something, but…Primus!”  
  
“Should’ve sent me, if sexy PR was what Prime was after,” said Sunstreaker, revving his engine a little petulantly.   
  
“…and it’s through Gambon and across the line!”  
  
“Shut up, Sunstreaker,” Cliffjumper smirked. “The humans probably just thought he was a regular car.”  
  
“The Veyron is  _not_  a regular car,” said Maggie, to be clear on the subject. Sunstreaker glared at Cliffjumper and there would have been instant fisticuffs if Wheeljack and Sideswipe hadn’t intervened.   
  
“Um,” said Mirage.  
  
“As you might recall,” Clarkson said gravely, “we had the Caparo T1 on, and it made the track at one minute  _ten_ point six.”  
  
“Right,” May agreed. “But we had to take it off because it couldn’t clear a sleeping policeman.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Maggie, crossing her arms and legs at the same time, “besides which, the Veyron is a car you actually ride  _in_. The Caparo’s a fucking  _strap-on_.” Sam and Mikaela bugged their eyes and snorted. Miscellaneous electronic choking and buzzing noises emerged from the gathered bots. Mirage’s optics grew very wide.   
  
“The Caparo couldn’t clear a sleeping  _caterpillar_ ,” Hammond elaborated. The three hosts clustered around the galvanized steel column, May and Hammond as anxious as the audience to see where the Veyron’s time would rank among all the leggiest cars they’d had on. Everyone eyed the space between the two separate Koenigsegg with-and-without-spoiler entries. Better than the 1:20.4, surely. But better than 1:17.6…? Clarkson waved the little white Sharpie-labeled placard around dramatically.   
  
And plinked it up at the top of the stack. “One minute  _nine_  point three!” he declaimed, as the audience shouted and moaned with collective speed-lust.   
  
May shook his head, but he was grinning. “Never thought it could corner like that…”  
  
“Hang on,” Hammond interrupted. “The camera lads say there’s more tape…there’s…what’s he doing?”  
  
The feed went back to the track, where The Stig had pulled the Veyron back around to the start line. And got out. “The engine’s not still running, is it?” May wondered. There wouldn’t be that much fuel left, after a run like that. The audience murmured in confusion and anticipation.   
  
The Stig backed away, giving the car a thumb’s up, and the driver’s side door closed on its own. And then the sound of the engine  _changed_.   
  
“Holy shit,” said Sam.   
  
Wheeljack rolled onto his back, cackling. Ratchet hid his face in his hands.   
  
“Ah,” said Mirage. “Yes.”  
  
The show’s hosts gabbled for a few seconds, aghast at the supposed impossibility of what they were seeing. The Autobots were new to their publicly revealed status, and not everyone on Earth quite understood just yet. The shiny blue Veyron took off, and all three hosts fell silent.   
  
The tires never once touched the grass. Titanium neck or no, the accelerative forces would have crushed The Stig’s organs within his body. (If he really was a human, after all, and not a machine, as some said.) Even the fixed cameras had had difficulty keeping the car in frame. The Veyron crossed the finish as a dark blur – and  _stopped_.   
  
In the studio, the audience erupted into wanton cheering, enough nodding heads and secret grins on their faces meaning that a lot of them had twigged to what had just gone on. In the Autobot base, similar pandemonium arose, as the bots whooped and laughed and pounded each other and Bee leapt up and tackled Mirage and they went rolling blue and gold across the floor.   
  
Fog machines added unnecessary drama as the Veyron rolled into the Top Gear studio, amid deafening applause. One enterprising steadycam even moved in close to ostentatiously display the lack of a driver; and the decidedly non-standard – even for a Veyron – displays on the dash and center panel.   
  
“Hello, there,” Clarkson said, as the applause wore down.   
  
“Good morning, Mr. Clarkson,” the car said politely. Clarkson smiled and the audience laughed and applauded again, perhaps a third of them still thinking this was a grand prank.  
  
“Are you curious about your time?” Clarkson asked.  
  
“I have internal chronometers,” the car said, “but I am happy to abide by your standards.”  
  
“Ah yes, of course you do. Well then!” And again Clarkson waved the little placard strip around, though this time everyone knew where it was going. All they wanted were the numbers. Hammond put out a hand to stop him.  
  
“We can’t leave it, you know,” he said, clearly apologetic, looking back at the Veyron. The car unlimbered itself and stood. Mirage was only a slender fifteen and a half feet tall, and fit in the studio well enough as long as he minded the lights and didn’t move around too much. The audience surged like a tide, half wanting to come closer, half wanting to back off to a safe distance.   
  
“I am not precisely a production model,” Mirage said, slowly kneeling beside the steel column, smiling.   
  
“Oh come ON!” May squawked, pointing emphatically at the placard. “Just put it up already!”  
  
Clarkson quirked a half-smile, gazing at them as though he couldn’t believe the number himself, even as he placed the card at the top, however briefly. “Forty two point three seconds.” And both audiences erupted.   
  
“Ha!” said Tracks. “I knew you’d put on weight since coming to Earth, Mirage!” Hound punched him. Prime came in just as things at the base devolved into a free-for-all; all of the bots wanted to get on that track now, and see who _really_  had the fastest moves on four wheels. On the TV, Clarkson was introducing Mirage to more applause and then the station cut to a commercial. Prime loomed over the partition to make sure his rowdy folk weren’t endangering the humans, found the humans all jumping up and down on the couch seat yelling encouragement, and withdrew, chuckling to himself.


	6. A Quiet Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of silliness involving a girl, a semi, a tree, and Bumblebee's laughing, fer sure fer sure.

Mikaela leaned back in the driver’s seat as Optimus obligingly rolled his windows down. She stuck her arm out past the frame, feeling the wind, her fingers splayed like a bird’s wing. Aside from the low, rumbling roar of Optimus’ engine, it was a nice quiet night.  
  
There was often a lot of yelling at home, and sometimes even Sam’s sweetly awkward banter was more than she felt like dealing with. At those times, Optimus was an ideal driving companion. His  _presence_  was unmistakable, so she never felt abandoned, but he could also be amazingly non-intrusive. For right now she was just a hot chick in a hot rig, and that felt pretty damn good.  
  
Tonight they actually had a purpose, but it wasn’t anything strenuous. Bumblebee had picked up a very faint signal from space. Unquestionably Cybertronian, but they weren’t sure if it was Autobot or Decepticon. Optimus was heading for the mountains so he and Bee could triangulate, and maybe catch a stronger signal. Mikaela came along for the ride, and the quiet.  
  
The full moon was high overhead when they pulled off the road and onto the ridgeline. Mikaela got out and stretched while Optimus transformed. The moonlight was bright but they were out in the middle of nowhere, and hadn’t seen any other traffic on the road for half an hour. Unfolding the blanket she’d brought, she made herself comfortable, lying back so she could see the moon unobscured by the silhouette of a giant robot.  
  
 _ **rrrrmmmble CrackBOOM!!!**_  
  
Mikaela found herself airborne, then the mountain slammed upward, knocking the breath out of her. She was used to earthquakes – the jittery window-rattlers were annoying, but the rolling kind were fun. This was neither. She coughed air back into her lungs, and felt the back of her head for the lump she was sure was already rising…  
  
Optimus was gone.  
  
“…Omigod!” Heedless of aftershocks, she sprang to her feet, now aware of metallic booms and splintery crashes. Following the sound, she approached the steep side of the ridge – just in time to see Optimus’ tumbling form take out an electrical tower. The resultant fireworks were accompanied by a short, high-pitched blare; like an air-horn getting goosed, which wasn’t, she reflected, too far off the mark. Still rolling, (and not in the usual way,) he continued to clear a swath of oaks and Manzanita all the way down to a last hundred-foot drop, landing with a resounding  ** _crump!_**  in what Mikaela thought was probably a dry creek bed at the very bottom of the ravine. She felt the impact through her hands and knees and winced.   
  
Clambering over the edge, she squinted in the moonlight to see if there was any way she could safely get down to him. What possible help she could be if she did, she’d think about when she got there.  
  
“Mikaela, stay were you are,” Optimus called from the ravine. “I am…more or less undamaged.” Was it her imagination or did he sound a teensy bit embarrassed? She bit her lips in worry, nonetheless. He could be missing an arm and would probably still consider that more or less undamaged…  
  
Shortly, he emerged from the shadows, retracing his path of destruction. Limbs, if not dignity, intact. As he climbed up toward her, she saw that he was covered in dirt, shredded brush, tree branches sticking out at odd angles, and quite a lot of mud. Apparently the creek at the bottom of the ravine wasn’t dry after all. Before getting too close, he stopped and gave an odd shudder. Most of the debris was flung away as a subtle glow coursed across his armor. Mikaela felt a brief pulse of heat.   
  
“My apologies, Mikaela. I noticed the peculiar EM signature and subsonic harmonics several minutes before the quake,” he said, ascending the rest of the way. “But I was so intent on the other signal I didn’t correlate the information in time. Are you all right?”  
  
Mikaela resisted the urge to say,  _hey I’m not the one who went ass over teakettle down there_ , and managed a simple, “Yeah, I’m fine,” instead.  
  
“Good. I will respond more appropriately next t—” He scooped her up, holding her protectively against his chest plates, and rode the aftershock with bent knees and a wide surfer-like stance, reacting to the earth’s motion so precisely his upper body hardly moved. When it was over he placed her carefully on her blanket and turned to resume his scan.  
  
“Optimus,” Mikaela said, staring up at him. “You have a  _tree_  stuck in your back.” The entire lower half of a tree, complete with clod-ridden roots dangling, jutted from the left side of his back, just below the largest plates of his dorsal armor.  
  
“Ah,” he said, groping for the trunk with one hand. “So that’s what that is.” It was a difficult place to reach, even with shoulders that pivoted farther than a human’s could. With a sharp yank and a blue static discharge he pulled it free. But Mikaela could see there was a strip of wood still wedged in among all the cables and armor.  
  
“There’s another piece…”  
  
“Yes.” But his fingers were too big to gain purchase on what was to him merely a splinter.  
  
“Oh here, hold still.” Mikaela ran forward and began to climb. Optimus froze. It wasn’t unlike one of those fake rock walls, she thought. Sam had taken her to one at an amusement park the summer before. There were plenty of hand- and foot-holds, if she planned her route carefully enough. Once she reached the top of his leg, she focused on the tree-splinter, definitely not thinking at all about the human equivalent of the part of him she was scaling. She especially wasn’t thinking about buns of steel, or anything else of steel. Probably wasn’t steel anyway…some kind of super-advanced Cybertronian alloy… Super-advanced Cybertronian b—splinter, splinter, splinter, splinter. Think of that story about the lion and the mouse. She couldn’t remember much, just something about a thorn.   
  
Up close, it wasn’t so much a splinter as a plank. Mikaela braced herself and hauled at it, but it just sawed up and down, firmly wedged between two major dorsal support cables. She stopped abruptly as small crackles of static rolled across them – she must be hurting him, but he gave no sign. “I’m sorry! Maybe if you…bent, or twisted just a little…?”  
  
After a second of swift calculation, he inclined and rotated his upper torso slightly forward and to the left. Mikaela heaved at the tree-shard as hard as she could, and with a dry creak and screech of metal it came free. She tossed it to the ground and was about to start climbing down when his hand came around, offering a platform.   
  
Instead of lowering her, however, he cradled her against his chest again and braced for another aftershock. This one was so mild, though, she could have managed on her own feet.   
  
“Thank you,” Optimus said simply, as the tremor subsided and he set her down gently on the grass.   
  
“You’re welcome.” She scuffed a toe in the dry weeds, but Optimus had already turned his optics skyward, and she knew he was scanning again.   
  
After a few minutes, he said – aloud for her benefit – “You can stop laughing, now, Bumblebee.”


	7. ACHOO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble. Mikaela sneezes. Ratchet comments. Amused Prime is amused.

Ratchet opened the med-bay's skylight, letting in some fresh springtime air. Mikaela squinted up into the sunlight and promptly sneezed several times. Ratchet watched this performance intently.  
  
"Hmm," he said, scanning her. "You have ACHOO."  
  
"I have  _what_?" Mikaela laughed, rubbing her nose.  
  
"Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst. That's what your geneticists call it."  
  
"You're kidding."  
  
"Not at all. It's also called photic sneeze reflex. Due to crosstalk between the trigeminal and optic nerves. A congenital condition caused by an autosomal dominant gene in 17 to 35 percent of humans."  
  
"Oh." She peered up at him. "I thought everyone sneezed at the sun."  
  
Ratchet went back to fiddling with the new field generator. "Apparently not. Messy code, your DNA. Evolution leaves a lot of scraps lying around. I'll be surprised if your species doesn't eventually take to rewriting it for themselves."  
  
"I think we're working on that." Mikaela put down the universal wrench and picked up the human-scaled welder Ratchet had built for her. She was putting together a toolkit for herself in a continuing effort to be of more help to the Autobots, both in the base and outside. She paused, thinking, then looked up at Ratchet again. "So, are you implying you guys...edit your own code?" She knew they had programming, but it was a little strange to think about debugging your own brain.  
  
"Of course," Ratchet said. "Med-bots like myself have been tweaking and streamlining our code for eons." Ratchet gestured broadly with some weird Cybertronian tool she didn't know the name of yet. "There's always room for improvement, and we have to keep our programming ahead of the Decepticons'."  
  
Mikaela thought about this. "So. Is that why 'glitch' is a swear word to you guys?"  
  
"Mikaela!" said Prime, poking his head into the bay. He sounded much taken aback, but Mikaela saw him wink. She wadded up her oil rag and threw it at him, which he caught and leaned down to hand back to her.  
  
Ratchet chuckled. "Yes, that would be why."


	8. 50 Frames Per Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Sam calls Miles, the robots are deluged with email, Bumblebee distracts Prowl, Mirage dances, Dr. Chase expresses skepticism regarding the Universal Greeting, there is an Interview With the Autobot, and Prime enjoys the rain.

2009 – August –- 2010 – May  
  
It was a weird phone call to make. Yes, hi, Miles, you’ve been my best friend since grade school but what I haven’t been telling you for the past two years is that I’ve been consorting with aliens. Miles took it well.  
  
“Can I meet them?” Miles Lancaster wasn’t dumb. He’d had plenty of time to piece things together, starting with that call from a hysterical Sam babbling about Satan’s Camaro. After that, the meteors, the supposed gas fires in Mission City, the supposed earthquake damage to the Hoover Dam, the illicit, blurry vids all over YouTube, the old beater Camaro suddenly replaced by a flashy concept model…no. Despite what the government said, even the new government, there was something big going on. Miles had just been waiting to see how it all fell out.   
  
“Yeah. Actually, man, Bumblebee really wants to meet you. Officially, I mean.”  
  
Sam picked him up in Bumblebee to take him out to what had officially become the Cybertronian Embassy. He grinned at the memory of the ceremony, where the President had presented Optimus with the letter proclaiming him to be His Excellency, Optimus Prime, Ambassador at Large. Large for sure! All the press who thought they were getting the best spots, with their TV cameras right up close where the action usually was? They’d been screwed. Up close all you could see was the incredibly complicated mechanisms of Prime’s ankles, and the beginning of hugely columnar legs. Pointing a camera upwards only changed the rating of your show. Watching it all again with his parents on their TiVo, Sam had laughed and laughed.   
  
Miles bounced down the front walk as though everything was perfectly normal. But those red splotches came out on his cheeks when the passenger door opened for him and it took him five long seconds to get in.   
  
It was all Miles could do not to say, “Hi, KITT!” when Bumblebee said hello.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The sudden influx of email from humans around the globe was sort of comforting. The more tedious and repetitious questions and sentiments could be responded to via a subroutine, which spat out what were essentially form letters, but generally didn’t seem like form letters. (Except Prowl’s. He interacted very little with the public, though eventually the geeks discovered him and he acquired his own fan club like the rest of them. He found it deeply embarrassing, but also secretly touching.) It was comforting because it was almost like back home, when you could wrap your planet around your head, cuddle in the warmth of all your fellow beings and you never had to be alone with yourself.  
  
The isolation was what had been hardest on Bumblebee, for the handful of years he was on Earth alone, or nearly. But that was the thing about scouts; they had to be able to bear the solitary time without freaking out. They didn’t have to like it.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
To: Ratchet  
From: Dr. Ixchel Chase   
Do you understand what it means to us, to finally know for certain that we aren’t alone? Is that a presumptuous question? How many intelligent civilizations are there out there? Is the universe holographic? Or toroidal? Or both? Are you allowed to answer questions like that? What’s the answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything? Perhaps I am up past my bedtime.  
  
To: Dr. Chase  
From: Ratchet  
In a way. It took a few billion years for stars to form that had planets that could support life. (I simplify.) We – we are fairly certain – were indeed alone during that time. It was a great joy to us, to at last encounter others. No, not presumptuous. Many. That would be telling. Not really. 42. Good night.   
  
…  
  
To: Dr. Chase  
From: Ratchet  
It (if you’ll pardon the usage) heartens me to see how much effort your people put into repairing the defective among you. In our case, if the forging goes wrong, one smelts the protoform down and tries again. If the programming goes wrong, one attempts – for lack of a better term – patches, or if all else fails a clean wipe and reformat. With the spark…well, we took what we got. Allspark Knows Best. Hmm. Once again I see tact is not my leading edge.  
  
To: Ratchet  
From: Dr. Chase  
Pfft! If I got tact from you I’d ask Prime to quit reading your mail. Madre de Dios, Ratchet! You melt down your babies???? (Kidding!)   
  
To: Dr. Chase  
From: Ratchet  
THIS IS SPARTAAAAA!  
  
To: Ratchet  
From: Dr. Chase  
Touché!   
  
…  
  
To: Ratchet  
From: Ixchel  
Ratchet, the median life expectancy for someone with FOP is about 40 years. I’m 47. If you can make any use of this old bone pile of mine, any use at all, then go for it. I’ll sign whatever forms and waivers you can devise. If it helps even one kid avoid what I and the others have had to endure.   
  
To: Ixchel  
From: Ratchet  
…My dear… Can you convince your sister to drive you out here next weekend? Tell her Tracks is back from New York. Don’t tell her Tracks has a new boyfriend in New York – Tracks is an equal opportunity mech.   
  
To: Ratchet  
From: Ixchel  
!!!!!! I’ll let her know, but she’ll be mortified if she finds out you noticed her flirting. I haven’t told her you guys can read our biometrics like open-source code.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Bumblebee stood in the security center doorway, watching Prowl. He couldn’t tell whether Prowl was observing the screens optically or if he was simply getting the feeds directly from Teletraan and the other sources.   
  
 _Prowl?  
  
Hello, Bumblebee._   
  
Now that he was certain Prowl knew he was there and wouldn’t be startled, he sent an informal glyph. An unembroidered request for interface. He didn’t mention that Ratchet knew Prowl hadn’t recharged in fourteen days.   
  
Hesitating, Prowl’s first impulse was to put him off. If Bumblebee was at the embassy it meant his human or humans were too. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe – gleefully taking advantage of the lack of regimentation regarding interface – might like to play Freak Out the Humans By Groping Each Other In Public, but most of the rest of them were more circumspect. Prime had deemed public displays of affection a domestic matter and refused to get involved, though everyone noticed he himself kept any such displays to what the humans might consider within the realms of paternal. In any case, why Bumblebee should seek Prowl out specifically was a complete mystery. Anyone here would have been more than happy to assist him.   
  
Bumblebee moved close, touching the backs of Prowl’s silver-white fingers. Prowl’s flinch was microscopic. Bee froze.   
  
“I am monitoring the nets, Prowl,” Teletraan said, with the tone of one who was very carefully not looking at someone else.   
  
“Very well.” Prowl gazed down at Bee and extended his hand. Optics bright, Bee took it and pulled him from the room, down the stem corridor, to one of the smaller, empty rooms. A thought flicked at the ceiling doused the follow-lights – they weren’t needed – and the door slid closed and locked. Bluestreak would divert any humans looking for Bumblebee.   
  
 _You are aware that I am incapable of opening my spark chamber?_    
  
Slipping his hands around Prowl’s narrow waist, Bee rested his cheek spar against Prowl’s shoulder.  _Yes. Don’t worry._  Prowl felt cool; not cold, but not as warm as most Autobots. Bee spun his spark faster, to warm them both.   
  
Hound had been delightedly forthcoming regarding the locations of all Prowl’s thoracic data ports – they were well-shielded and not quite in the usual places. Bee thought it would have been more fun to discover them on his own, but didn’t begrudge Hound the happiness of being able to share the information. Bee seated the first cable slowly, slowly, twisting the tip millimeter by millimeter, making the intersecting fields bow and bend. Prowl shivered, backing up until he hit the wall, bringing Bee with him, both sinking to the floor. They interdigitated their knees, chests pressed close.   
  
Prowl extended his corresponding cable, striking into Bee’s port more sharply than he intended.  _I’m sorry!_  He cupped Bee’s helm, hands gentle, even as the fragmented harmonics across the cable were not.  
  
Leaning into him hard, Bee seated two more cables while Prowl was distracted.  _Mmmm. Don’t be. Why should I mind that you’re as overclocked as I am?_  
  
 _Ah._    
  
Prowl’s answer was laced with amusement as well as embarrassment, and Bee felt that was a good sign.  _You don’t have to be on watch_  all the time.  _Don’t you trust Teletraan and Jazz to spot Con activity?_  
  
 _That’s…that’s not it at all. I trust them more than I trust myself._  He dipped his fingertips into the junctions of Bee’s door-wings, knowing precisely where to stroke or scratch. Bee arched into the contact like a purring cat. Memories and thought-lattices arranged with painful exactness coursed across the cables.   
  
Bee accepted this and returned fascinated esteem and rising desire. He understood. Prowl needed to be useful, but Prime and Ratchet hadn’t cleared him for combat, even with the Seekers’ arrival.  _You trust Prime, too. I can feel it in you. He puts us all to our best possible uses._  Prowl had door-wings too, though they were harder to reach, around his massive chest. Bee was a determined mechanism.   
  
 _Yes._  Prowl leaned forward, accommodating, feeling dizzy with Bee so hot and fervent in his arms. Their cabling arrangement was asymmetrical, the fields off-balance, but Bee took advantage of the unstable link, feeding Prowl surges of emotion then letting them ebb. Each wave struck higher, the exact shape unpredictable. Prowl could not brace himself against the effect and tumbled, surrendering at last, down and down into overload, cheerfully accompanied by Bee.  
  
Bumblebee came back online, warbling and humming, smug. Prowl was already deep in recharge. Except Prowl preferred to use the recharge tables – the tables halved the time required.  _Um. Ratchet? Could you help me with Prowl? I’m not sure I can lift him by myself._  He probably  _could_ , but it wouldn’t be pretty. The medic soon joined him, hands on hips.   
  
“If your aim was to overload him into recharge,” Ratchet pointed out drily, “why did you drag him off to the room farthest from the recharge bay?”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Dude, Miles, who sings that song?"   
  
Miles rolled his eyes. "Gnarls Barkley, duh."   
  
"Okay well let him sing it, man. Leave it to the professionals."   
  
"No," said Jazz, from where he'd been lolling about on the mezzanine all morning. The two stared up at him, having forgotten he was there. "That's not right. Your species probably learned to sing before it could speak, or learned how to speak from birds' singing. Either way, singing is a fundamentally human thing, and it's not cool to deny someone participation just because they're not a fragging professional, man."  
  
Miles’ grin could have lit Manhattan.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Sorry, Dr. Chase,” Maggie said, leaning forward with the remote. “We don’t have to watch this, Glen and I just wanted to see who won.” The international break-dancing championship was held in Maggie’s home town of Melbourne that year, so she’d had more interest than usual. The Korean team was pulling some amazing moves.  
  
“I don’t mind,” Dr. Chase said, waving her fingers. A boy from Italy named Cico jumped upside down and spun on his head. She had no idea how he was maintaining that much momentum for so long. The floor must be very slippery…  
  
“Oh, yeah, baby!” Jazz enthused, sliding across the hangar from Prime’s office. Kathy, Dr. Chase’s sister and live-in assistant, turned Dr. Chase’s chair so she could see too, as Jazz whirled into his rendition of one of the more flamboyant routines. The humans and several watching bots applauded wildly when he finished.  
  
“Did you guys dance, back home?” Sam asked.   
  
“Absolutely,” Bee said. “It was a major part of festivals and entertainment.”  
  
“Show us!” the humans clamored.  
  
“Sorry, guys,” Jazz said. “For our kind of dancing you need at least fifty or a hundred mechs. There were solo dances done in the Towers among the artsy-fartsy crowd, but…”  
  
“Mirage knows some,” Hound said. “Tracks might, too.”  
  
“Hound,” Mirage said mildly. “You are full of helium.”  
  
“I thought it was ‘full of hydrogen’,” Bee said, blinking.  
  
“Bumblebee!” Mirage contrived to look affronted in such a way that the humans could tell he was playing. “I’d expect to hear that kind of language from Cliffjumper or Ironhide, but not you!”  
  
“Who’s swearing in here?” Prime asked, rolling in and transforming.   
  
“Aw, come on!” Sam, Mikaela and Bee protested, and Prime chuckled.  
  
“We’re wheedling Mirage into doing a dance,” Jazz said. “He knows some of the solo ones.”   
  
Prime’s optics flared. He turned to Mirage and unleashed an unusually mellifluous and lengthy stream of Cybertronian, making a series of complicated gestures that Sam found himself trying to emulate. He was inexplicably left with the impression that he somehow didn’t have enough fingers.   
  
“Wow,” Hound said faintly. “Prime knows how to  _wheedle_!” He crouched down closer to the humans. “See, in the Towers, it’s not polite to foist an individual performance on a group. So wheedling was considered an art form of its own; you had to really, really convince someone that you wanted to see their work.”  
  
Several of Mirage’s helm flanges heated to red, but he bowed to Prime and replied with more complex Cybertronian.   
  
“To the roof, everyone!” Prime called, jubilant, striding ahead.   
  
Ratchet followed Dr. Chase and her sister. The motorized chair and its occupant would need to be lifted, for there were no ramps to the mesa top. He watched as the gathered bots swarmed up the rock sides, most not bothering with the “ladder”, the humans slower only because they had much shorter reach.   
  
Just ahead of him, Prowl stooped and deftly lifted Dr. Chase in her chair, climbing up with three limbs just as swiftly and efficiently as he did with four. Ratchet exchanged a look with Kathy and followed him up.  
  
Setting his passenger down gingerly, Prowl stepped away. The wheelbound human had needed to be carried, he had been there and could carry her. Why was everyone looking at him? He tightened his armor about himself under the weight of the attention.   
  
“Thank you, Prowl,” Dr. Chase murmured, sure he could still hear her. He nodded slightly in her direction.   
  
Sam and Mikaela perched on Bee’s shoulders, Maggie on Hound’s, Glen on Bluestreak’s and Kathy on Ratchet’s, while Dr. Chase rolled her chair to the front of the group next to Arcee. Everyone had the best seats in the house.   
  
 _Keep the amplitude and frequencies of your responses limited,_  Ratchet reminded the robots.  _We don’t want to break the humans’ eardrums. Or make them sick –what they call subsonics can sometimes do that._  
  
In the lengthening spring twilight, the Autobots turned their headlights on, illuminating the northern half of the mesa top. The stars had just come out, but there was no moon. Mirage walked slowly out to the center of the open space, head bowed as he reviewed the old, old files. He had kept them as memories of the performances of others, not because he thought he would ever have occasion to implement them himself, but he thought he was still limber enough to do justice to his long-dead friends. He sent Jazz the music, and at a shared signal he began.  
  
Maggie had been expecting something like The Robot. Maybe with a little breaking thrown in, since Jazz often pulled maneuvers like that – it was even part of his transformation sequence. But this – Mirage – was  _nothing_  like that. Someone made of metal and ceramics and other, weirder things that were also hard should not be able to move so fluidly. Sinuous and flowing, yet powerful. It was more like…god, it was almost like belly-dancing; the real deal, not the cheesy stag-party stuff. Crossed with Noh or those Indonesian ritual dances where the little girls had been trained since they could walk – Maggie had no doubt every tiniest movement was fraught with meaning, incomprehensible though it might be to her. The music was strange, the scales different somehow, base ten instead of base eight. There was a beat but percussion wasn’t the strongest element. Maggie wondered how much of it she simply couldn’t hear.   
  
Like fins or feathers, the plates of Mirage’s armor flared and flattened as he moved, sometimes singly, sometimes in waves rippling up and down his entire body. Then his colors began to change. Never straying far from blues, but shimmering with greens and violets, with threads of silver flashing along the edges only to disappear beneath.   
  
Hound generated small floating screens in front of the humans, so that they could move their heads slightly to see Mirage with something like the wavelengths of robot optics. In infrared, Mirage shone bright as a comet. Maggie realized he was manipulating his energy signatures across the spectra in time with the music.   
  
Starting with his left hand, Mirage, undulating, attenuated his body into an arch, hips and shoulders sliding improbably such that he could have fit through an opening not much more than three feet in diameter. The thrum from the watching robots grew louder. It had been going on from the beginning, resonance between performer and audience a constant measure of their mutual enjoyment. It was a cool night, but the humans peeled out of their coats; the robots around them were radiant with heat.   
  
As slowly as he had extended, Mirage condensed back into his bipedal form, then further – not into cometary mode, nor vehicle, but something more like an elaborate bow mimicking a complex mathematical shape. Long, deep notes pealed from the watching robots, making the air alive but hard to breathe.   
  
“Hnnh!” Maggie jerked forward clutching the side of Hound’s helm to keep from falling. The sound Prime made was like a bolt of silk velvet to the base of the skull. His fingertips grazed her back gently and he murmured an apology. “It’s all right,” she said, grinning. “I totally understand. That was  _amazing!_ ”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Bah-wheep- _what_?” Ixchel goggled at Ratchet. “You’re kidding.”  
  
“Not at all.”  
  
Prime leaned in the doorway. “Actually…”  
  
“Hush!” Ratchet made emphatic shooing motions at him. Ixchel narrowed her eyes. “Well, it  _was_  a good joke, anyway.”  
  
“Sorry,” Prime said, smiling nevertheless.   
  
“Fine. You can explain it to her then.” Ratchet stumped off back to the med-bay.  
  
“What’s he smoking?” Ixchel wanted to know.  
  
“Now, now. The Universal Greeting was a joke perpetrated by one of this universe’s first-generation civilizations.”  
  
“Not Cybertronian?”  
  
“No. The ch’Xtlxth gave this ‘greeting’ to every sapient species they encountered, claiming it was a universal way to say ‘hello, I come in peace, shall we dance’ – that kind of thing. They had made it up out of thin air, of course. There was no such thing. But because they had told this to so many species as they reached interstellar capability, it actually  _became_  the Universal Greeting in practical usage.”  
  
“You’re full of it.”  
  
Optimus held up two fingers. “Prime’s honor.”  
  
“Oh brother.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Daveed was a historian who had become enamored of the idea of recording Cybertronian history. He wanted to know everything. Not just everything that it would be humanly possible to learn, but really, truly everything. He was sure the technology to assist him in this matter would arrive within his lifetime. He wanted to interview one of the Autobots at length, Anne Rice jokes aside. At first he thought to choose Arcee. She was small, not so overwhelming. He thought he might not be so nervous with her. Until one of the military types, Lennox, had pointed out that the primary color of her armor was the color of dried energon. Energon was their bodily fuel transport fluid and catalyst. Not, technically speaking, blood; but the parallel was too close, and Daveed had taken several minutes to steady his breathing. Later, seeing footage of her in battle, he decided she would be more intimidating than many of the much larger robots to talk to one on one for an extended length of time.   
  
He watched more clips, on TV, on YouTube, anything he could find. One of them, he thought, there would be something about one of them, something accessible, and that would be the one he would ask.   
  
(((  
  
A robust-looking Honda Ridgeline with a surprising custom paintjob pulled up in front of his duplex and opened its driver’s-side door. A thin little man with black hair fading to grey and a failed goatee, Daveed climbed in gingerly and pulled his limbs in close to his body as the door shut itself.   
  
Wheeljack, seventeen feet tall and built like a linebacker, was nonetheless unfailingly gentle when dealing with humans, or any form of life other than Decepticons. No matter how frightened of him someone was, he moved slowly, and so carefully. Daveed could see that despite his size, Wheeljack knew exactly where he was in relation to everything and everyone around him, knew exactly how much pressure – of any kind – was safe to use for whatever task he wanted to accomplish. That some of the Autobots had had the cheek to publicly refer to him as their resident mad scientist only added to Daveed’s interest.   
  
“I can burn CDs as we go,” Wheeljack said as they pulled out onto the highway. They had no set destination, just the open desert where there were fewer distractions, and Wheeljack could nominally patrol for Decepticon incursions. “Or you can use your little recording gizmo if you like that better.”  
  
“Oh! Urm, of course you can,” Daveed floundered. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Please, go ahead.”  
  
“All righty. So, what do you want to know?”  
  
“Everything. I mean, anything, really. Tell me anything about yourself, to begin with. You must have so many stories.”  
  
“You could say that. It’s funny. We don’t really have a lot of what you call novels, written fiction; except as a fad that went through the Towers every few thousand years. But we do like telling stories; tall tales maybe you could call ‘em. Word of mouth kind of thing. Maybe because of the way our memory cores work – and you know we can share memories, right? It’s just a transfer of data. So here we’ve got all these accurate records of events, through the sensory inputs of whoever was actually there, and that’s great. But it’s a lot more fun to  _tell_  your friends about it later, over a little high-grade, you know what I mean?”  
  
(((  
  
“Serendipity was like me. She liked to actually  _build_  stuff, not just the sims most people preferred at the time we met. I knew a lot of Tower mechs then, especially the sort who wanted to get to know the people who built and maintained their fancy yachts and light-skimmers. A lot of those Tower mechs could afford the kind of actual, hardware gardens Serendipity built, so that was how we first met. There were parties, you know, just like you folks have; mostly for the same reasons. We’re both highly social species.”  
  
“Let’s see. First one of her gardens I saw was the Stair Garden. Now, we don’t go in for stairs much – we come in too many sizes; it’s not practical. But she went and made all these stairs, like we don’t do. And people had a great time with it. Really big bots taking whole flights of tiny steps in a single stride, minicons clambering up ginormous risers, everybody helping each other up and half the fliers launching from the tops instead of walking back down.”  
  
“She was also the one built the Helix Garden in Praxus. Whose memories are these…oh yeah, Prowl’s. Prowl lived there before the war. Okay, so she set thousands of big, blue chalcanthite crystals resonating, suspended in methane – don’t make a face, Dave. You guys can’t even smell methane, you usually add methanethiol or ethanethiol to the stuff you pipe around as fuel so you can smell that if there’s a leak. To us, pure methane is kind of pleasant, chemoreceptorily speaking. Anyway, Prowl used to go down there after his appointments were done for the day. It was a place of contemplation and peace. Gone now, of course, nothing left but slag and rust. I wonder what she’d rebuild it as, if she was still alive.”  
  
(((  
  
If he was physically timid, at least that trait did not extend to Daveed’s intellectual curiosity. “Why is there only one female among you? Were the rest all destroyed in the war, or have they just not arrived yet?”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, there. You mean Arcee, right? She’s not female, not the way you mean. Um. I’d better explain that.”  
  
Daveed laughed. Discussions of Cybertronian arts were fabulous, but this was getting into meatier matters. “Yes, please do.”  
  
“You’re not bothered by the subject at all, are you, kid. I like that. All righty then. In very basic, simplified terms, we have seven genders – and at one time or another I’ve been just about all of them…  
  
…  
  
“Aren’t you done with that barge yet?” Keel shouted down from the top of the crane. The launch was over, another successful endeavor for the company, another dependable if un-pretty ferry in service to those who wished to cross the Rust Sea on the surface. Well, it would always be cheaper to haul mass around without yanking it halfway up the gravity well. In any case, the party was over, time to get back to work.  
  
A spindly robot who’d only been built and ensparked a week ago, crawled out from under the barge whose hull je was repairing. “Just another groon or so to go, Keel,” the young bot hollered back, optics bright with good humor. Je’d have been finished already, but je’d been trying out various combinations of temperature, timing and the tuning of the heat source – je thought je could make these welds stronger, last longer, even amid the dangerous shoals and the rustlets that swarmed the sea. Keel tolerated jer experimenting, even though he grumbled frequently that je was only reinventing the wheel, because a certain percentage of the time, jer ideas actually worked. And worked better than the tried and true traditional methods.   
  
…  
  
Je set the last crystal in place, perfectly balancing the power converter just as the light flyer crashed into the pier. The resulting explosion engulfed the entire shipyard.   
  
Consulting jer chronometer, je realized je’d been offline for almost a quartex. And je felt…different.   
  
“Wheeljack!” Keel stood up from the crouch he’d maintained at jer tableside for the past several breems. “Finally! Was beginning to wonder if you’d ever decide to come online again, or just take a vacation while you had the chance.” Keel’s hand felt oddly small on jer arm. Je sat up.  
  
“Oh.” Staring down at jerself, jer CPU finally processed what jer proprioceptors and internal sensors had been patiently telling jer all along.   
  
“Er, look, Wheeljack, this is gonna be a bit of a shock, I know, but you were really badly damaged in the explosion. And, well, I didn’t have the reserves to have your same body type reforged, so they had to use something else they had handy. I told them you wouldn’t mind, especially once you got the hang of this model – it’s a lot stronger than your old body, and bigger, lots of storage. You don’t mind, do you? You like it all right, yes?”  
  
Wheeljack flexed der hands, turning them over and back. Der forearms were thick and de could feel how powerful they were, and all the spaces de could install tools just waiting for anything de could think of. “Nah,” de said, getting off the table, a little startled by the stoutness of der landing, big wide feet on the floor. Wide and stable. De liked it.   
  
…  
  
 **KABOOOOOOM!!!**  
  
“Wheeljack!? Are you all right down there?” It had become a familiar refrain. To be fair, the accidental explosions – usually accompanied by equally accidental dismemberments – had grown fewer and farther between over the last five vorns. Keel picked his way through the rubble until he found the epicenter. The entire floor of the basement had been slagged to a depth of two meters and all the internal walls had collapsed. Wheeljack’s optics flickered on just as Keel leaned over der.   
  
“That wasn’t right,” Wheeljack said.   
  
“I’m glad you’re alive to tell me so,” Keel snapped. “I don’t think spare parts are going to do it this time, Jack.” He cleared the debris carefully until he could get to his mad apprentice to lift der up over his shoulder. It looked like der legs had been melted off, and a couple of rather significant chunks were missing from der torso. Ah. And an arm. “Yep, it’s the repair bay for you, kiddo.”   
  
“All right,” Wheeljack said, the sound wobbling. Which meant that probably der CPU had taken a good hard pounding too. Keel rolled his optics and crunched his way up to street level. He could navigate to the closest repair bay with a more than half-slagged CPU himself. Tensor, the med-bot, joked they kept a table clear for Jack at all times.   
  
After a few quartexes in a Critical Repair tank, Wheeljack vowed she would be more careful from now on. This latest batch of replacement parts had altered her forging yet again. Although she wasn’t sure you could call it her forging any more. She shrugged. There had been a racing yacht collision and Keel needed her back at work right away. At least she was still a large enough bot to be useful with the heavy lifting.   
  
…  
  
“Are you sure it’s okay?” Wheeljack asked for the third time in as many breems. Bumblebee grinned up at her.  
  
“Lineofsight can afford to have another like me commissioned. Or hire temps when je needs one. Really, it’s okay. Je doesn’t mind.”  
  
“I just feel kinda bad, stealing you away like this.” Bumblebee had been created only a quartex previously, as a personal courier for one of the admittedly flakier Tower bots, Lineofsight. Wheeljack had literally run zhim over at an intersection. The repairs she had improvised on the spot with the tools she had in hands and arms had rather impressed the smaller bot, and Wheeljack’s affable demeanor had made them instant friends. Keel had taken a sudden urge to see Space and accepted a berth on one of the Exo ships. Wheeljack had missed him the astrosecond he’d left. Meeting Bumblebee was remarkably fortuitous.   
  
“You didn’t steal me,” Bumblebee said, a little miffed at the implication. “I told you. Being your gofer sounds more interesting than sniffing out rare energon vintages and carrying stacks of actual goods while Lineofsight goes shopping.” Even if that had been what zhe was nominally programmed for. It was a well-known fact that the Allspark had a wicked sense of humor. You didn’t always get what you expected when you made new people.   
  
…  
  
All the lights were off except for the one directly at Wheeljack’s current work station when Bumblebee got home. Zhe dropped off the packages of new parts and spools of wire – zhe’d catalog and put them away later. Wheeljack was no longer allowed to do any of that since she usually forgot, even with three separate alarm programs to remind her. Her attention was easily distracted by shiny new ideas and she ended up turning all the alarms off without really paying attention.   
  
“You should be in recharge,” Bee chided her softly, offering what had, over the past quarter-vorn, become a ritual phrase until zhe could determine how many subroutines Jack was running, and if there were any cycles left over to heed zhir words at all.   
  
One of Jack’s sensory fins flicked in zhir direction. Well, that was something. Bee moved closer, placing a hand on her forearm. None of the pointy tools were deployed at the moment; Jack must be designing something new or… “You’re redesigning that freighter engine again, aren’t you.” The catastrophic failure of the  _Nashabukami’_ s engines had been ruled not a design flaw but negligence by the captain in pushing said engines well beyond their specs in pursuit of a fast shipment of high-grade. Wheeljack had taken it personally anyway.   
  
“I could make it an upward-scaling system,” Jack murmured, still not quite looking at Bee. “But then some idiot would override the overrides, and…”  
  
“Exactly,” Bee broke in. “Some idiot. If you invent an idiot-proof system, Jack, someone else just invents a better idiot.”   
  
Jack made a grinding noise that was probably a laugh.   
  
“Come on, Jack. If you won’t recharge, will you at least...” Bee wasn’t sure why zhe hesitated. It was silly. But zhe and Jack had never done this one simple thing together. “…Overload with me?” Zhe stilled zhir fingers, which had been stroking Jack’s forearm and wrist in a less subtle manner than Bee would have liked. Jack’s wide head slowly pivoted to face zhim.   
  
Jack was trying to remember when the last time was she had interfaced with anyone in order to overload. When the need came upon her she just did it by herself. Most of the time she was the only one not already recharging anyway. Unlike a lot of people she had never bothered to index those kinds of memories. Diving through them now would be tedious. She looked at Bee, who abruptly seemed very young, which Bee generally didn’t, really. Even though zhe was, chronologically speaking. She covered Bee’s fingers with her much larger hand, feeling the heat between them already increasing.   
  
Lifting that arm, even though it broke the touch, Jack wrapped it around Bee, drawing zhim close against her chest. Bee nuzzled against her eagerly, fingers already stroking her central seam, even as their torso cables slithered out and connected. “Guess it’s beennnn a while,” Jack said, vocoder glitching slightly. She turned on the work stool, spreading her bulky legs out of the way as she gathered Bee closer still. She stroked all the neat angles of Bee’s back with her fingertips.  
  
Bee made interesting little warbles, pushing admiration and friendship and till-now silent longing through the cables until Wheeljack shuddered and was herself reduced to non-verbal noises. She felt the seals on Bee’s spark chamber release and nearly fell off the stool. She hadn’t expected such intimacy, not that it was unwelcome. Exoskeleton and vocoder both groaning, she opened her own chest a little, aquamarine light spilling out into the darkened workshop. Bee hummed, overclocked and delighted, opening zhir chest wide on zhir otherwise narrow frame.   
  
The cables tightened, drawing them together, link deepening. Their coronas brushed faintly at first, then there was a wild jabbing of hungry prominences, a tumbling of minds, and their processors lit up and flashed hot, overload coursing through every circuit as they crashed to the floor.   
  
…  
  
“Wheeljack!”  _Wheeljack!_  Bumblebee cried out both vocally and across every frequency they’d ever shared. The attack had come without warning, maybe they were just in the way, Bee didn’t know, the Lord Protector’s elite forces couldn’t have been firing on civilians; it was impossible. In any case, for once the wreckage wasn’t due to one of Jack’s toys. Small mercies. Bee dug frantically through the rubble, wishing zhe was twice the size, because zhe wasn’t going to be able to shift some of the beams, and zhe needed to, to get down to the workshop; and zhe was afraid of moving a lot of the smaller pieces in case it destabilized the larger bits and it all went crashing, crushing whatever small spaces there might be, sheltering one hopefully still-functioning genius inventor and engineer…   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Glen didn’t realize he’d been cowering in his chair until later, after the apparitions had passed him. It was odd, because he’d known these guys for over two years, and he thought he’d gotten over how overwhelming they could be.  
  
Southern California was ablaze again. The fires had started as they often do in that part of the world – lightning and carelessness; and they had spread because over a hundred years of determined fire suppression had let the understory grow into a tangled mass of kindling. The current generation of firefighters knew better, knew how forests needed fire, but there was so much area to cover and recover, it was going to take a long time to find balance again.   
  
Optimus had called all hands to go help – including Prowl, leaving the defense of the embassy to Teletraan and the drone-turrets. The news footage had been spectacular.   
  
Fire wasn’t something the bots were accustomed to. They weren’t used to a lot of things on Earth, really, but watching them be utterly and completely not afraid of fire was something. They walked into it, shuffled around, tried to pick it up in their hands. They dug firebreaks in jaw-dropping time. Optimus just leaned down and drew his hands through the soil like a kid might draw lines in wet sand at the beach.   
  
In any case, the bots had even turned their invisible force fields off, because to them the flames felt rather nice. Warm and kind of tickly, Jazz said – on camera, shamelessly flirting with the attractive brunette newscaster. Glen had shaken his head, grinning. Jazz was definitely the Jack Harkness of the Autobots. So many species, so little time.  
  
Every fire district on the planet wanted them now. As though they didn’t have enough to do, keeping Starscream and his Seekers from wreaking any more havoc than they already had.   
  
They had rolled back to base, transforming as they approached the hangar, laughing and jostling each other, optics – if Glen wasn’t mistaken – brighter than usual, tired but clearly jubilant. And completely covered in soot. Glen had never seen Barricade in person, so he was unprepared for what the Cybertronians looked like with all their colors hidden by so dark a matte black they seemed more shadows than solid, even as big as they were. Twenty eight feet was a lot of shadow. Only the cheery blue of their optics belied the looming eeriness. Well, that and the mess of charred trees and brush and ash they were leaving behind as they walked. Even the drive home hadn’t shaken all the debris loose. Ratchet was bitching about it extensively, and some of the others were fretting that the oil bath’s filters would never be the same.   
  
The reek of smoke and hot metal filled the hangar, adding to the demonic atmosphere. Past him they walked, towering, angular shadows, dripping shadow behind them, and he could feel how heavy they were by the way the air moved as they went by. Glen wasn’t sure how to describe it, except that it scared the bejeezus out of him, and once they had all disappeared down the stem corridor he sat back up in his chair, only then realizing he’d scrunched down, trying to be small, trying not to look like prey. He didn’t like to think of himself as a coward, his behavior at the interrogation notwithstanding, but he would have challenged anyone else not to have a qualm when they were the only human at the base late at night with striding obsidian demiurges rowdy with the enjoyment of a hard task accomplished.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Everyone was back inside the base even before the first droplets hit the ground. Maggie thought it was cute how the giant robots were freaked out by rain. Well, all of them except Optimus. And wasn’t that fine. As everyone else was dashing in, he was ambling outside, walking carefully the way he did, the way Maggie supposed you had to when you were a third again bigger than some of your friends around you, and four times the size of everyone else. She could tell he was still in various conversations by the way his face moved, subtle but still always in motion, expressions fleeting across metal plates as clearly as they did over a face made of skin and bone and muscle.   
  
Optimus walked out into the rain whenever it came, whenever he could. He stood out in it for as long as it lasted, face tilted to the sky, the drops hissing into steam before they struck his optics. Sometimes he turned off his shielding. There was a faint flicker if you were watching for it. And Maggie had no difficulty admitting she tended to watch Optimus pretty closely whenever she got the opportunity. He was a fine big machine.  
  
Nothing wrong with that at all.  
  
She could tell he was letting himself get good and wet this time, too. The rain wasn’t just sleeking off him, off invisible force fields that nevertheless betrayed a centimeter or so of space between his armor and the actual plane of contact. She wondered what it must feel like, having cool summer rain dripping and pouring and collecting and spilling and splashing and flowing in rivulets and runnels not just over his skin but beneath it, down into all the intricate pieces that made him up, allowed him the freedom of movement to change as he did, as they all did. Was there any dust to wash away? Did the water feel cold? Sometimes steam rose from him, so maybe it did, but maybe it was a pleasant cold, a sensual contrast like the time she’d gone hot-tubbing with friends in the middle of winter in Edmonton and it’d been snowing. He didn’t have a tongue to stick out and catch snowflakes with, she thought, and she was pretty sure she knew why that thought made her blush.   
  
He stood immobile for a long time, reflecting the sky remarkably well for someone with that much bright primary red and blue on. The rain eased, then came down in earnest, pummeling the land and the unfeeling rocks, singing off the metal of his body. He stretched into it, as though the sound felt good and he wanted to feel every part of it from his hollow fingertips through the sliding plates of his chest, along the curves of his upper legs – and Maggie felt that one really had to call them thighs – down to the broad flanges of his feet, with the water pooling in his footsteps where four point three tons had compressed further the already flattened earth.  
  
The summer storm passed, leaving the red rock and the red sand and the sparse green Manzanita and cactus and tumbleweed vivid and clean. Steel grey cloud masses parted to let in the afternoon sun and Maggie shielded her eyes with her hand.   
  
She wasn’t the only one who’d come to the hangar door to watch him light up. Glancing about, she found herself surrounded by robots. All with optics only for their leader. Locked on like laser sights, even though he was so bright now in the long golden beams she could barely see him. They probably had polarizing filters and she thought of going back in to find her sunglasses, but that would take too long, and actually now she remembered Glen had borrowed them so they weren’t on her desk anyway.  
  
Someone hummed and whirred beside her, and it must have been Jazz, because he couldn’t contain himself any longer and skated out toward Optimus with his toes up, not getting muddy sand on his feet because his shields were on for certain oh you slick silver thing, and once he was out from under the mesa’s shadow Jazz was hard to look at too, all flitting motion like a platinum dragonfly. He spun a circle around Prime then leapt, climbing up those long limbs and somehow it didn’t seem presumptuous, didn’t seem weird to go up him like a tree because that was just the way Jazz was, and Optimus was just that big.   
  
Prime crooked an arm and Jazz settled into it, snuggled into his shoulder, one leg cheekily draped over Prime’s left hip, toes tapping the air in time to whatever music he was playing in his own head, or all their heads. Optics were bright around her, and those with faces that could smiled, still watching. The air around her warmed and she knew it was them.   
  
They didn’t look back, Optimus just started walking, head tilted ever so slightly towards his First Lieutenant. Both of them gleaming, glittering, bright against the dark clouds to the east, walking into the desert.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The rain made Optimus feel young. So he plucked a young memory to share with Jazz.  
  
 _There was a lot to stand up under, Prime knew. The sixteen within also knew; they helped him distribute the load. They had walked under it themselves, for hundreds or thousands of millions of years, each of them – and here he was only a decade old, drawing out ribbons of cooperation, willing or unwilling, like he’d been doing it for eons. Well, he’d been built for that. Meg always reminded him, but there was always some part of him, some quirk in the programming, that found it strange. Or at least ironic. What else would you be, than what you were programmed to be? Sometimes he wondered.  
  
Oh, of course it happened. The spark and the CPU didn’t always agree, not in all things. The one who’d commissioned the body and the program had to take that chance. That the need to be filled would be, and would stay filled, once the new mech was up and running. Warm metal, not cold metal.   
  
Optimus wondered about the drones, too. And wondered why he wondered. They were careful about how they built drones and other tools. Because sometimes tools could be people, and sometimes vehicles weren’t people, though mostly they were, but you couldn’t assume, either way. _  
  
The drones. Jazz shuddered, remembering too. That was how Megatron had done it. A billion sparks snuffed in less than a voor, the rest left shaken and terrified beyond sanity.   
  
“Here, now,” Optimus rumbled. “Let me distract you.” And his big fingers stroked upward to Jazz’s chest.


	9. Wreckage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Starscream is in a mood, Sam gets out of class, and Dr. Chase has a bad day.

2013 – September  
  
They kept rebuilding, these swarming flesh creatures. Even turning resources from this frivolous city of bright lights (and games that penalized the mathematically challenged) toward new institutions dedicated to research. We can’t have that, Starscream thought, coming in low to strafe. He wouldn’t be satisfied until all the humans could field against him were rocks and pointed sticks.   
  
Landing gained him a little more time, kept him off radar. Let the MEADS brigades shoot at Skywarp and Thundercracker for a while. Skywarp was almost impossible to hit and Thundercracker’s sonic weaponry was proving useful even against the advanced missiles. Starscream pushed through a wall of glass, ducking his head and broad shoulders only slightly. The interiors of these new buildings were almost built to Cybertronian scale. Where were all the screaming rodents anyway?   
  
Starscream’s attention was attracted by faint noises from below. Ah, there was a human in here after all. A strange one, though, attached to a metal, wheeled chair. A mockery of the great Cybertronian race. He plucked the blasphemous flesh creature from its device and held it up to examine it more closely. The body remained in a bent position as though still seated. How curious. He tugged on the legs to straighten them. Clearly even by the pathetic standards of its own species, this individual was defective. The legs would not move until he pulled harder; and then it appeared he had broken parts of its fragile endoskeleton.   
  
He dropped the creature in disgust, then slapped a pillar over onto it as an afterthought. The annoying squeaking sounds it had been making ceased. Satisfied, Starscream clawed down another wall because it was in his way, between him and the sky, and just for the mild entertainment gained in destroying the crumbly, friable material it was composed of. He took to the air to keep his wingmates on track. If he let them, they’d destroy the entire city, and that wasn’t part of his plan. Yet.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Part of Sam’s duties as a grad student was to help teach an undergrad course in political history. For security reasons, the Autobots preferred him to be on the second floor with wide windows that opened fully. A handful of small screams – not all from women – alerted him to Bumblebee’s presence at one such window. The grin Sam wore as he turned from the whiteboard vanished as he took in Bee’s expression.   
  
“Jazz has Mikaela,” Bee said, as Sam leaned out and put one foot on the sill. “There’s been another attack nearby.”   
  
“Ok, um, sorry guys,” Sam called back to his class. “Read chapter four tonight. Professor Bachmann will take it up on Thursday if I’m not back.” He stepped into Bee’s uplifted hands. The students surged to the windows to watch as Bee cradled Sam to his chest and loped off across the campus.   
  
“What’d they hit?” Sam asked, once Bee had transformed and they were on the road heading for the embassy.   
  
“The Energy Research Center.”   
  
The hair on the back of Sam’s neck went up. Wait. Dr. Chase was on vacation – she wouldn’t have been there, even if she was ridiculously excited about some kind of result they’d gotten over at the rebuilt LHC. “Bastards,” Sam muttered. He had acquired an appreciation for how much such installations cost. Not just in money, but time and labor and expertise. “Dr. Chase is going to be pissed!” He grinned. She might be a tiny bundle of sticks, but the doc was feisty. He was pretty sure Ratchet had been teaching her to swear in Cybertronian.   
  
“…Sam.” Bee’s tone was far, far too gentle.   
  
Sam closed his eyes. “Ah, no.”  
  
“Apparently Dr. Chase returned from vacation early.”  
  
“She wasn’t…”  
  
“She was. Ratchet and Optimus are with her.”  
  
“Oh god.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ixchel was numb from the chest down, but found she could move her left arm. It was up over her head, in a position she hadn’t been able to attain in years. A part of her mind realized that meant a lot of bone was broken, but it didn’t bother her. Nothing hurt. She felt quite calm.  
  
“Ratchet,” she mumbled, opening her eyes. She had come to think of his face as kindly. He leaned over her, silent.  
  
“Ixchel.” Not Ratchet. Another voice from far overhead. The one she loved to listen to. She felt the vibration through the back of her head as he moved closer. A vast warmth radiated nearby. It felt good. What parts she could feel at all had been cold. Metal nudged her extended hand.  
  
“Optimus,” she said, tickled by the informality. The Autobot leader had never called her by her given name before. It was rather nice. He even pronounced it correctly.  _Ish chel._  
  
She stroked the warm metal by her hand. His fingertip, she decided. So powerful, yet controlled with such delicacy he could manipulate antique eyeglasses without so much as bending the frames.  
  
Numbness crept upward. She felt lightheaded, breathing shallowly but slow. Lightheaded, light bodied. As though she was floating again in her cousins’ sun-heated pool in Southern California. So relaxing, so warm, just drifting. She moved her thumb along a ridge of metal, closing her eyes.  
  
“Op…ti…mm……”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **Do it, Ratchet.**  
  
 _Are you sure? This may not—_  
  
 **Hurry.**  
  
 _All right._  
  
…  
…  
…  
  
 _I don’t think this is a good idea._  
  
 **I know.**  
  
 _She is my friend, but… since that first series of attacks, her condition has progressed rapidly. She can barely open her jaw now, she’s lost more weight. This latest infection hasn’t been responding to the antibiotics as well as I’d have liked. Prime, she’s dying anyway._  Better this, Ratchet thought, than for her to be slowly consumed over days and weeks by microorganisms within and her body’s own misplaced defenses.   
  
 **She is dying now because of us. We cannot save her body, I understand.** Prime’s posture changed subtly, and then it was no longer solely Optimus’ voice coming through his vocoder. Sixteen other voices boomed out clear and compelling.  ** _The first link between their species and ours has already been forged. You need not forge the second now, but it will make other links less difficult in the future._**  
  
Every piece of Ratchet’s armor stood as far out from his body as it could go.  _Primus!_  he swore, scratching furiously at the base of his helm as if that would shake off the aftereffects of the sonics.  _I hate it when they do that._


	10. Interlewd: Subatomic Waltz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime and Ratch get together for some thigh-shaking, chrome-denting spark!smex!! With the aim to create a new spark -- if they survive the interface...

_This…process…is difficult. And dangerous. To risk two sparks in creating just one? Optimus…I don’t know…_  Ratchet busied himself with preparing the tanks, triple-checking equipment that was used to heal the gravely wounded, now painstakingly modified.  _In the six Earth-years since the Matrix revealed this to you, none of us has made the attempt. I conceded Jazz, that was weird enough, but this? It’s too risky, there are too few of us as it is._  
  
 **And thus the reason we must try.**  
  
They would both need to maintain the highest level of control – during overload itself. Not giving in to the pleasure, but manipulating their sparks in a staggeringly precise way even while all their systems discharged. If something went wrong, both of them would die. The resulting crater would be unapproachable by humans for millennia. None of their kind had done this for billions of years.   
  
Uniting with Prime was always overwhelming. Euphoric, but not without the spice of fear. One risked dissolution in the Allspark, getting too close. But Ratchet followed a well-honed discipline of self-awareness and control. It was why Optimus had chosen him for this, despite not wanting to risk both himself and their sole Medical Officer. It was simply that the two of them stood the best chance of succeeding.   
  
Ratchet turned, unable to delay any longer. All the equipment was operating at peak efficiency. He swiped at an imaginary fleck of dust before raising his optics to face Optimus.  
  
Prime stood still. Blue-white light flickered through the millimeter gap in his spark chamber, the power spilling across spectra humans hadn’t discovered yet. Every necessary port was exposed, beckoning. Every cable already thrumming with energy, glowing faintly at their golden tips.   
  
“Primus…” For a moment, Ratchet felt like a young bot again, approaching his first interface. Nervousness was foolish. He needed to bring all his concentration and intellect to bear. And it wasn’t as though he and Optimus had never interfaced before. But this was…  
  
Life and death, all in one moment. In one choice.   
  
 **Ratchet…**  
  
Not an order. A plea. Optimus’ body coruscated with energy; waves overlapping, interference patterns keyed toward additive, leveling the troughs while sending the peaks higher and higher. Unleashing the power he kept contained most of the time.   
  
Ratchet moved toward him slowly, as though his substance was being drawn through solid matter. Not against his will – quite the opposite. Resisting this gravity made him stronger, and he needed that strength. He readied himself as Optimus knelt, opening ports, extending cables, bracing every processor for the task ahead. Connection by connection they sank within. Physical lines were crucial; no transmission left to chance or interference.  
  
Yet there was nothing perfunctory about this. Optimus embraced him with such tenderness his knees buckled and he fell against the larger mech with more force than he’d meant to.  
  
 **Careful.**  The transmitted glyph unfolded in a complex geometry of concern/warning, reaction/mirroring, desire/love, could be our last please if you’re not ready have doubts is your need so great we won’t do this now I fear for the pattern I hold we must make the vessel soon merge soon if this works hope for all of us new beginning it means everything if we sacrifice life now nothing passed on all ending. A faint undercurrent of amusement and surprise at the fierceness of Ratchet’s passion threaded beneath like ribbons of starlit nebulae. The last cable struck home, and Ratchet moaned softly at the solid impact, his mind flooding with Prime. His chest parted.   
  
Ratchet allowed his head to fall back for an endless moment. Then he grasped Optimus firmly, focusing, synchronizing the spin of their cores, their frontal armor groaning with the pressure. They grappled with one another, forcing their sparks into as close a proximity as physically possible. Power surged and seethed, and still they clung to a fragile equilibrium of surrender and control. Optimus, whose mind was in a sense already a composite, buffered Ratchet from the rising tide of curiosity and recognition from the Matrix. Ratchet felt it seeping into the edges of his being nonetheless, but he didn’t fight it. All his will was concentrated on the merging sparks, almost touching but not quite. Their coronas overlapped, tendrils of power reached out, data poured across the cables, Optimus made an atavistic, inarticulate sound – and the real work began.  
  
Tighter and deeper they entwined, plunging down to the fundamental structures of space-time, drawing out sparkmatter, weaving it together in eleven dimensions. At first it was difficult and frightening, each strand slipping and lashing about like unruly lightning. But after a certain number had coalesced a tipping point was reached, and the new spark itself seemed to choose its component strings. The coiling dance spiraled between the two bots, who clung to one another literally for dear life, their spark chambers open so wide less well-armored parts of them were melting.   
  
Pulling in a last few wisps, the new spark contracted suddenly, spinning on its own – and  _ignited_. Ratchet and Prime, shaking so hard their joints were being damaged, held on, hoping against hope to contain a blast that never came. Overloaded circuits burned through them with exquisite fire. At last, finding themselves still alive, they surrendered to the rushing tumult of rapture, minds shorting out, bodies collapsing. The new spark bright and hot and safe between them.  
  
Optimus lay prone on the floor, Ratchet astride his lower thorax, his core vents dented where Ratchet had gripped them. The CMO was becoming aware of various aches where his own armor, and even parts of his underlying structure had been similarly bent by the strength of Prime’s fervor. They were both scorched – cooling metal creaked and popped, a haze of smoke rose slowly toward the ceiling. Fine, branching lines were etched across their chests, still glowing red. But the pain wasn’t enough to distract him from the one clear thought singing through all his processors.  
  
 _I was wrong! Optimus, I was wrong! There are autonomic fail-safes built in!_  
  
 **Rrratchet…**  
  
 _It can be done safely! If the process fails we simply overload in the usual way! Optimus, I’m sorry…there was no way to know until we tried it…_  
  
 ** _Ratchet!_  The s-spark… Hurry…!**  
  
 _Heh, don’t worry, I have you._  Ratchet clambered unsteadily to his feet, but his hands were firm on the control panel. A magnetic field extruded as a tube, snaking down to Optimus and the new little spark he clasped desperately to his open chest. The sparklet was drawn into the prepared tank where a rough lozenge of protomass donated by himself and Optimus awaited it.   
  
Ratchet watched with joy and fascination as the spark nestled into its new home.  _Now, the pattern._  He drew a cable from the tank and plugged it into Prime’s main data port. Optimus pushed everything through as soon as the connection stabilized, but this was no small, simple file, and even at Cybertronian upload speeds it took several seconds. The overlay meshed with the spark and the protomass, all of it so young, still evolving. It was better than either of them had dared hope.   
  
 _It’s integrating already, Optimus! I didn’t think it would… Optimus?_  
  
Prime lay still, optics dimming, flickering…dark. At least his chest had sealed itself shut again. Ratchet tore his gaze from the new spark long enough to scan Prime, making sure he was just in recharge not something worse. Getting the big bot onto a resting platform was going to be problematic in Ratchet’s also-depleted condition. Everyone else was far from the base, by design in case this had gone wrong.  
  
“Oh well. Not the first time we’ve recharged on the floor, eh?” Making sure once again that all was well with the sparkling, the growth tank humming along, Ratchet sank down gratefully at Optimus’ side. Curling against his leader’s vast flank, he shut himself down system by system, into blissful recharge.


	11. Transsleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Jazz is a funny, funny mech, Mikaela is curious, and Prime is getting thin.

2013 - September  
  
Jazz was the first to return. Both Ratchet and Prime had recovered somewhat, though it had only been a couple of days.   
  
“What happened to you two?” Jazz asked immediately. He hadn’t seen either of them this all-around banged up since the battle in space when  _Ghost 1_ had been lost. The base itself showed no sign of a fight.   
  
Prime told him.  
  
Jazz stared at them in horror for a moment, then slowly walked into the med-bay, to the farthest room and the screened alcove where the Critical-Repair tanks were. He went right to the one containing the new person, though all the plex tubes were opaqued. “You did it,” he said quietly, touching the side of the tank. “You should have told us. I could’ve come back here to a crater... and we would’ve thought…”  
  
“No,” Prime said. “I sent my battle drones out to a safe distance, with messages about what we were attempting. Once we knew the danger had passed, I simply recalled them.”  
  
“Yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot better,” Jazz retorted, glaring at them both. He kept his hand on the tank. Gazing through the darkened plex, he ran through every spectrum, his visor softly shifting from iridescent to transparent. “You really did it. And it…it’s all right in there? It’s a healthy…”  
  
“Yes,” said Ratchet, pleased. “Growing, too.”  
  
“Good work,” Jazz said, finally turning away from the tanks to give a modified “thumbs-up” to the two larger bots. “Now we just got to figure who the baby-momma and who the baby-daddy…”  
  
“WHAAAAT?!” Ratchet roared. “Get out!” He shooed the lieutenant all the way out of the med-bay. “Don’t you have data-analyses to run? Decepticon activity to track?”  
  
Prime made himself scarce. He wasn’t touching that one with a ten-meter lava probe.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The funeral was large, but informal. Sam and Mikaela went but didn’t stay long. They weren’t acquainted with Dr. Chase’s family beyond her sister, only knew a few of her colleagues. Someone made an overblown speech about the “staggering blow to the physics community.” Sam and Mikaela got up in the middle of it and left to console each other in and with Bumblebee.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **More mass? Already?**  
  
 _I’m afraid so. Will you…?_  Back on Cybertron had been the Wells, cultures of protomass in a vast array of types. Kept hot, kept functioning at a base level, one requested a particular amount of mass and added it to the forging tanks. Programming was added once the shell was half-forged. Full-forged shells were taken to the Kindling Platforms before the Allspark, and there they became people.   
  
Here, on Earth, at what Ratchet still fervently hoped was the rag-tag end of the war, there were no Wells. They must draw protomass from their own bodies and revert it to its primordial state, and hope the modified CR chamber worked as a forge, and that adding the spark early would do no harm, and…  
  
 **Of course. This is my responsibility. How much?**  
  
 _Hmm. About 0.92 metrics. …I’ll ask Ironhide to—_  
  
 **No. I’ll manage. 0.6 now, 0.32 tomorrow. Will that do?**  
  
 _…Oh no you don’t. 0.52 from you. Ironhide can spare 0.4. He won’t like it, but that’s better than depleting you._  
  
 **Ratchet…**  
  
 _Am I your CMO or not? Doctor’s orders._  
  
 **Very well.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2014 – spring  
  
“Who’s in there?” Mikaela asked Ratchet, pointing at the one Critical-Repair tank that was active rather than in standby. With all the plex tubes opaque, the only obvious differences were a greater profusion of lights and a soft humming.   
  
“Eh?” Ratchet looked up from the exposed innards of Wheeljack’s right arm, which had been blown open during his latest weapons test. “Oh. Just testing the equipment. I want to make sure they’re working properly since we had to build most of them from scrap.”  
  
“Hey!” Wheeljack interjected. “That was high quality scrap, I’ll have you know.” Ratchet ignored him.   
  
Mikaela, grinning at Wheeljack, agreed that was a good idea, but now that she thought about it, that particular tank had been running for at least a couple of months. “How long are you testing it for? I mean, if someone was hurt bad enough to need to be in there, how long would it take?”  
  
“A little under two years,” Ratchet said, as though that was no time at all.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“We should at least tell Sam and Mikaela,” Bumblebee pleaded. “They’ll be hurt if we do not.” A local planetary year had passed and the new person still floated safe in her tank, growing. They had kept the secret of her existence from the humans so far. Until she emerged, perhaps in another year, they wanted no hopes or fears raised to further complicate the situation. Sam and Mikaela had been the easiest to distract, with plans for their wedding the next autumn taking up nearly all the time that graduate school didn’t.   
  
“They don’t need to know,” said Ironhide.  
  
“But, of all humans, we know we can trust them! And she was their friend.”  
  
“No,” Prime said. “Only the five of us must know of the human memory overlay for now. And none of us is to do anything without direct orders from Ratchet. Including myself.”   
  
Ratchet crossed his arms and looked indignant. “Terrific. I have only the vaguest sense of what we’ve really done, and you’re putting me in charge.”  
  
“Better you than me,” Jazz said, laughing.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2015 – early summer  
  
“Again?” Prime stood as Ratchet emerged from the med-bay.  
  
Jazz looked up from the MMOG he was hacking. “How big is this gonna be, Ratchet? This is the third time this month you big guys have donated protomass.”  
  
Ratchet nodded. “This should be the last time. I think. So, who’s got 0.23 metrics to spare, eh?”  
  
Prime, as usual, came forward. This time no-one else volunteered, or protested that their leader was getting dangerously thin.  
  
“Hmph,” Ratchet said, running a quick scan. Nominal. He led Prime back to the med-bay.


	12. Ixchel Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the new person is decanted and Ironhide is grumpy about it.

  
_There was a child went forth every day,_  
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,  
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,  
Or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.  
\-- Walt Whitman

  
2015 – summer  
  
Warm.  
  
Floating.  
  
Comforted.  
  
She didn’t try to reach beyond these simple things for a long time. Eventually there were voices. She liked them. After a while it occurred to her to respond, instead of merely basking in the enjoyment of listening to them.  
  
“Hello, Ratchet,” she said. The name was simply there. Her voice and vision were peculiar. Never a lucid dreamer, she questioned nothing.   
  
Ultra-dense colloid drained away. Transparent barriers slid upward, and she stepped down from the platform. This was deeply odd. Stepping was odd. Looking down at Ratchet and – “Hello, Optimus Prime.” – was odd.  
  
“Feet,” she said. This was important. She knew she had feet, and she was standing on them. How very strange. “Feet feet feet. I like feet.”   
  
“Very good,” said Ratchet.  _Equilibrial, proprioceptive, visual, auditory, chemoreceptive, haptic, locomotor and basic navigational systems all nominal, Prime._  “How do you feel?”  
  
“I am—” she said. Running diagnostics? Is that what I’m doing? “I’m fine.”  
  
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Optimus.   
  
“Thank you.” She felt better than fine, in fact. She looked at her hands, curling and uncurling the fingers in rapid sequence. Stretching out her arms, first to the sides, then upward, she tapped the curved stone ceiling. She bent forward, reaching down. “I can touch my…toes.” She stared at the named appendages, shuffling her feet as she tried to wriggle them. There was some movement of the individual digits, but not as much as she expected for some reason, and it looked as though she were standing on her tippy-toes. What were her heels doing that far up?   
  
“I’d like to assess your range of motion if you feel up to it,” Ratchet said.   
  
“Okay.” Subtly, her body hunched, limbs curling and stiffening slightly, until like a wave it passed and she stood tall and limber again.   
  
“Please turn your thorax 45 degrees to starboard. Now lift your left arm 90.6 degrees…good…”  
  
Prime excused himself, nodding at Ratchet. The CMO noted with interest how their new arrival’s optics followed Prime until he disappeared from what humans regarded as the visible light spectrum. She continued to obey Ratchet’s directions with native grace and precision, but he felt more justified in keeping her inputs on an extremely narrow band. Her emotional algorithms were also set barely above baseline. She wasn’t a drone, but it was vital to keep her calm. She was two and a half meters taller than Prime, and while similarly gracile in proportion, that made her also proportionately more massive.  
  
“Very good,” Ratchet said at the end of the lengthy test. “You’re tired, have a recharge over here.” He led her to a pneumatic table covered with a nice soft layer of lead and carbon mesh – recently expanded to accommodate their new cohort.   
  
She sat down and lay back. Powering down was as instinctive as closing her eyes.   
  
Closing my…? was her last muzzy thought before her systems quieted into recharge.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Come on out,” Ratchet said kindly. “The others are anxious to see you.” That wasn’t strictly true. Ironhide and Cliffjumper were only there because Prime had insisted. Smokescreen’s team and the Twins were out on patrol and Inferno and Red Alert were in Las Vegas fighting a fire at one of the casinos.   
  
The door into the rest of the hangar was going to need to be raised, he noted, as she ducked slightly to pass through. She faced the half-circle of Autobots without hesitation.  
  
“Hello, Jazz,” she said. “Prowl, Bumblebee, Arcee, Prime, Ironhide, Hound, Mirage, Cliffjumper, Wheeljack.” She looked at each steadily as she named them. She had seen them before, and she wondered why this felt like a first-time introduction. Taking another step into the hangar, she knelt, looking down. “Bee…why are you so little?” She extended a hand but stopped before making contact.  
  
Bee raised his hands to hers, gripping her forefinger. He almost let his long habit of silence get the better of him. Prime had forbidden them to use her human name. “I’m not little,” Bee finally found voice to say. “You’re…you’re just oversized.”  
  
“I am? Oh.”  
  
Jazz laughed and spun in place. “You’re one big mama! Ratchet, when we gonna take her out so she can find a vehicle mode?”  
  
“Maybe in a few days,” Ratchet said, nodding. He tight-beamed to Jazz and the others, _She can’t transscan yet. All her inputs are still at minimum. I’ll adjust them upward slowly. Have patience._  
  
 **How are her mental faculties progressing?**  Prime asked over tight-beam, concerned.  
  
 _She may sound like a human child right now, but there’s a lot of processing going on in there. Especially during recharge. She may not be conscious of all of it, but she’s thinking at speed. Don’t worry, she’ll be keeping her old colleagues on their toes again in no time._  
  
No reason we can’t get her hooked up with the ‘Web, is there? Jazz asked. Ratchet indicated a go-ahead. Access to the human communications net was normal for her no matter what body she was in. If that went well they would re-introduce her to Teletraan.  
  
 **Good idea, Jazz.**  “Jazz, would you like to show our friend that game you were working on earlier?”  
  
“Sure thing, Optimus.” Jazz led her over to the large monitor he’d set up in the center of a chaotic tangle of wires, consoles, human-scale GUI devices, desktop towers, printers and some custom additions of his own devising. “Set yourself down. You ever play ‘City of Heroes’?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
Arcee, Bee and some of the others followed to watch – and kibitz – but Ironhide stalked out in silence.   
  
He hadn’t liked this project from the beginning, but he knew there was no use in saying so…again. At best it was a waste of time and energy. Unless she chose unusually powerful vehicle and weapons modes – and with her size, she had better – she might be too slow to be of use against anyone but the likes of Blitzwing or Astrotrain. At worst, they had a potentially insane bot on their hands. They should never have attempted this, no matter what Ratchet and Prime said.   
  
Staying bipedal, he worked his way up to the mesa-top behind the hangar doors. Sol’s light was hot on his armor, but it felt good after millennia in the cold between stars.   
  
Remembering the day several years ago when the knowledge of spark-merging to produce a new one had come to them still made him want to open up with both cannons.  
  
Shortly after the battle of Mission City, before Jazz had been revived, Ironhide had felt a sonic disturbance out in the desert and had gone to investigate. He found Prime fallen to his knees, head bowed…and no animal life within a twelve kilometer radius around him. Not even insects. Ironhide had hastily rolled back to base, away from the emotions surging through his leader. It was a Prime thing, Ironhide could tell. The Matrix not only told him what had been, but what could be, should be – sometimes what would be. And for all cases why, with iteration upon iteration of nesting logic until the probability wave forms collapsed and Optimus was left with the maelstrom of his own individual reaction. Letting it all shake through him; rage, joy, bitterness, resentment, hope, acceptance. Understanding why this knowledge had been kept from them for billions of years, why it needed to be revealed now.  
  
Prime had chosen carefully when to tight-beam the information to the other Autobots on Earth. He hadn’t wanted anyone to skid through traffic or stagger off a mesa, or fumble an instrument during a delicate repair. Ironhide had been polishing his cannons and rewriting his predictive avoidance software again. At least he’d already been sitting. Bee had been in his driveway after driving Sam home from a late movie with Mikaela. Ratchet had just come out of recharge at their makeshift base.  
  
Ironhide lifted his head, surprised to find Sol was setting already.  
  
Their first entirely new person in thousands of years, and she was an abomination.


	13. Interlewd: Bravo Tango

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Ironhide continues to be grumpy, but Ratchet knows how to distract him. ;D

“Your torsion bars are still all bent about this, aren’t they.” It wasn’t a question. That was the problem with mechs who’d known you too long. Ironhide tried to ignore him, but Ratchet pulled him into the med-bay and keyed the door shut and locked. Ironhide took a wide stance and crossed his arms. Ratchet came right up to him and put his hands on Ironhide’s hips.   
  
“Which part bothers you most, eh? That we put the memories of a human in her, that I made you donate mass to build her, that Prime chose me instead of you for what might have been a suicide mission, or is it just too close to the way primitive, ephemeral organics do things?”  
  
So much for subtlety. That was fine with Ironhide. He uncrossed his arms and pulled Ratchet closer. There was a lightning-shaped etch-mark running up Ratchet’s chin, like the ones still visible across his chest. “He hurt you,” Ironhide growled.   
  
Ratchet snorted. “Bah! Prime took the worst of it, believe me.” He pushed at Ironhide a little, their frontal armor grating. “You want to try it yourself? You and me, right here, right now?”   
  
Ironhide let Ratchet back him against a wall, or so he told himself.  
  
“It’s not as dangerous as we thought,” Ratchet purred. “Of course it’s not entirely…safe…either.” He unsealed his spark chamber just enough that Ironhide could feel its heat. “It hurts, Ironhide, but you know some things are worth a little pain…” His cables snaked out, tapping against Ironhide’s closed ports. “I have enough spare parts; we could start with something about Jazz’s size, it’ll grow larger in the tank…”  
  
Ironhide shoved himself sideways and away. “No! Are you out of your mind?” He extended an accusing finger. “You’ve been into Wheeljack’s so-called ultra-high-grade, haven’t you.”  
  
“I’ll show you ultra-high-grade,” Ratchet leered, coming after him. “Come here, you rusty old thing.”  
  
“I am not rusty,” Ironhide huffed, completing the ritual. He stood his ground as Ratchet laid hands on him again. Hot hands. Ratchet could channel energy to his hands to warm them for therapeutic purposes. Or occasionally to pop popcorn for Sam. Ironhide groaned as Ratchet worked the base of his dorsal cables. It was quite a while before he had the presence of processing to bring his own hands up to caress Ratchet’s face, pressing his zygomatic spars firmly the way he liked, and stroking the dark bars framing his mouth. Ratchet turned his head slightly to nibble on Ironhide’s fingertips.  
  
“No biting,” Ironhide muttered.  
  
“Since when?”  
  
Ironhide hollowed his back, leaning into where Ratchet’s hands worked, digging into deeper cables.  _Ratchet, please, can’t we just…?_  Ironhide extended the first data cable tentatively, but Ratchet’s ports were already open and waiting. This was better anyway. Ironhide wasn’t the best with words, even in Cybertronian. Ratchet always offered him an open channel, understood his worry or frustration. Or anger. And never used it against him later. Almost never. They both enjoyed interfacing with others, but it was never quite like it was with each other. Their level of comfort had been cultivated over hundreds of millennia.  
  
It was and it wasn’t about Prime’s choice.  _I’d have blown us both to the Pit,_  Ironhide admitted. Prime had been right to choose Ratchet. Right to make the attempt. The advantages, if merging worked, were staggering. The Autobots could replenish their numbers. The Decepticons, for as long as they could keep the secret, could not. And Prime was…there was something different about him since Mission City. Since he had alloyed the Allspark shard with his spark and brought Jazz back from the dead.  _The humans die so easily, so soon. They have so many stories about reviving the dead. Some good, but mostly bad. Jazz isn’t organic, but it creeps me out, Ratchet.  
  
Aww, ‘Hide._ Ratchet warmed him from the inside as well as out. Rebutting nothing, agreeing that Jazz’s reanimation was both heartening, for he would have missed the eternally curious, energetic mech, and disconcerting.   
  
 _And now you and Prime have created a brand new spark. Given it a new body. It’s…wonderful, but I don’t like it.  
  
We don’t know what kind of mech she will turn out to be,_ Ratchet agreed. It was a scary thought.  _We always took that kind of chance, though. The Decepticons are Allspark-born too, remember._  
  
Ironhide nodded.  _All right. But why the human’s memories? Isn’t that just complicating an already complicated situation?_ Ratchet was working his way around to his anterior side, teasing at the edges of armor, grazing underlying structures with vapor-soft touches. Ironhide draped his arms over Ratchet’s shoulders and shuddered.   
  
 _I didn’t agree with him about that either. Then all the fragging other Primes came out to say hello.  
  
Meh._ Ironhide selected and seated the next set of cables, pulling Ratchet’s out of his body before he could extend them himself.   
  
Ratchet shivered, sighing as they clicked home.  _Do that again.  
  
Pervert._ But Ironhide complied, his big, blunt fingers nevertheless deft at unlatching the covers and extracting the cables, pulling them out slowly to their full length, enjoying the rapid flickering of Ratchet’s optics as he did it. The last connection opened their communion wide, flooding every concept and glyph with colors and crystalline patterns of meaning. They dove into each other, mind to mind, electrons streaming free through long, long circuits unhindered by the limitations of mere bodies.   
  
Feedback and ancient affection and mutual need set them on the upward spiral. More than just Ratchet’s hands heated up, and they sank to the floor, joints sparking blue and their hands in each other’s undercarriages, chests cracking, revealing their inner suns. The waves of past experience, past overloads, buoyed them, enveloped them and they thought for a moment of lingering, drawing it out, but the urgency was too sweet, and so they fell, and falling flew, into the brightness within, crying out in the blinding light until the darkness welcomed them with solace and warmth.  
  
Ratchet settled into the most comfortable position against Ironhide, where their armor slid rather than grated. It felt so good just to overload again, and not worry about anything else, like large, radioactive craters if something went amiss.  _Ironhide…do you want to …feel what it was like? I recorded the experience – as much as I could. Thought it would be instructive.  
  
You’re deranged. …Really?   
  
Yeah?   
  
Yeah. _  
  
Ratchet opened the file.  
  
…  
  
When Ironhide came back online, he was flat on his back, Ratchet alongside, their fingers intertwined, cables lax, chests closed but still hot.  
  
 _That was…  
  
Filtered a bit, yes. And incomplete. But that was pretty much the foundation/prelude to the spark-melding.   
  
Just the… Primus.   
  
Yes. _  
  
…  
  
 _Ironhide?_  
  
Yeah?   
  
If you wanted to…ever…for you I would go through that again.   
  
Ratchet.   
  
But only if…   
  
Yeah. I don’t think I’d ever… But, thanks.  
  
No problem.   
  
Ironhide didn’t even want to think what it had been like for Prime.


	14. Integral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the new Autobot has an existential crisis of sorts, and Mirage talks about Cybertron before the war.

2015 – September  
  
She sat outside in the desert for weeks. During the day she stayed at the foot of the mesa. Once night fell she climbed to the mesa-top, stretching out on the sandstone that felt cool and comfortable like a well-tended lawn despite the marks of ungentle Autobot feet, and stared out at the stars until Ratchet called her in to recharge. Every other morning he tweaked her inputs a little higher.   
  
Sometimes she wandered the interior. Moving slowly, holding still as the other Autobots passed her on their brisk errands. It was much smaller than she remembered, before, even with all the additions made since Wheeljack had come with his alarming nanotechnology mining device that ate perfect spheres out of solid rock and dissolved back to sand when it was done. (Wheeljack had demonstrated the thing in Australia and the human nanotechnology community had collectively surged to its feet and screamed in horror. On the internet, the most frequent response involved the letters O, M, F and G, often followed by “NO” and an excessive number of exclamation points. Even Prime was squirmy about its use, though it had never malfunctioned. Its mode of operation was disconcerting to observe.) Smaller, brighter, noisier, more full of things that stimulated her chemoreceptors. The day-lights still followed her as they always had, until she realized she could ask them without speaking to remain unlit. She didn’t need them any more and it was a waste, however small, of energy. The human-scaled area in the main hangar was much too small for her. She could sit outside it and look down into the tiny arrangements of soft furniture and minute equipment, but she knew she had once seen the same space from the inside.   
  
She hadn’t been out to Wheeljack’s lab to see if that was different, but going to Wheeljack’s lab had always entailed a complex risk assessment, and generally wasn’t worth it unless one had been specifically invited. And sometimes not even then.   
  
It had been decided to introduce her to the humans simply as a “new arrival.” This was true, so Bumblebee wouldn’t have to lie to Sam and Mikaela. As it happened, three small groups had indeed arrived this year, so she was simply added to the roster alongside Inferno and Red Alert. It was easy enough to persuade the data on human computers to reflect another meteorite landing at that time.   
  
Sam nearly discovered her before they were ready. He’d been wandering around the base with nothing to do. Jazz was giving Bumblebee a carwash, and while Sam usually liked to do that himself, sometimes he realized that Jazz liked to do it too. Sam had the grace – or the embarrassment – not to intrude at those times. Ratchet hurried to the mesa top and dropped a couple of pebbles to get the young one’s attention.  
  
“Come here,” Ratchet said, beckoning her upward. She was looking in the direction Sam was coming, and just that morning Ratchet had upped her visual inputs to take in IR and UV.  
  
“That’s Sam,” she said, confused. Sam was her friend. She followed Ratchet obediently to the top of the mesa, though.  
  
“I know, but we still have to hide. He isn’t ready for you yet.”  
  
“He isn’t?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Oh.” She looked up through the sky for a moment. “Ratchet?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“The physics is so beautiful!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“This was me, wasn’t it,” she said one night, flashing to Ratchet an archived page from the SLAC website, noting the memorial service in 2013 for a Dr. Ixchel Anne Chase, PhD.  
  
He’d been anticipating this, surprised it hadn’t come sooner, despite his precautions. “Yes. That was you.”  
  
“I don’t remember dying,” she said. Ratchet waited. “I’m not dead.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You did something to her, the human I was.”  
  
“I transscanned her brain, before she died, and uploaded the information to Optimus, who has the capacity to store it intact. You are one of us, a Cybertronian, built here on Earth, but we gave you the memories – all the memories – of Ixchel Chase.”   
  
She processed this in seconds. “So I’m…sort of a ghost in a machine. Or the person who stepped  _out_  of the teleporter.” She chirped the references to him and Ratchet nodded reluctantly. The comparisons weren’t exact, but he was willing to grant them if it gave her any comfort. “And the moment I woke up here I started becoming someone else.” She stood, towering over him. “I, she would have died in that body soon anyway. I’m glad you did what you did, Ratchet.” She bent, cupped his face with her long hands, touched her forehelm to his. “Thank you.”  
  
“…You’re welcome.” Ratchet felt his dorsal struts relax. He tight-beamed the exchange to Prime. She was taking it well, so far.  
  
Seating herself again, she gazed upward at the stars. “You built me as you did because Prime said to.” She wanted to understand, and had the feeling that she had a unique opportunity to find out what her actual purpose in life was. Most people weren’t so lucky, she thought, but couldn’t track down her reasoning very precisely.   
  
Ratchet laughed. “That’s only the first reason, young one. You were built because we need you.” They had needed to know if the merge process worked, but Ratchet didn’t want to put it that way, even if it was true.   
  
She ran her fingertips over her mandibular junction. Not scratching her chin exactly, but it had something of that gesture to it. “For what?”  
  
“We need you to help us understand how humans think, what they feel, both in body and emotionally. We need you to help the humans understand how we think and feel. We need you to be yourself.”  
  
“Oh. By the way, Ratchet?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I just found out I can play 184,579 games of online Solitaire per second. And that was only because the server couldn’t go any faster. That is so depressing.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It began with a rainbow; far out across the desert, where the sky was still stormy-dark, though at the mesa the sun blazed from between fluffy gold-hued clouds. She watched it shift over time, fade with the rain only to return more vivid than before. The sheer beauty of land and sky made her want to sing, but she didn’t know how, not in this body. She wanted to cry, feel her breath catch as a pair of red-tailed hawks flew across her view, lit coppery by the fierce sun. But she no longer had eyes that required tears, no longer had lungs or throat. Seated at the base of the mesa, cold stone between her and the Autobot hangar, she began to shake.  
  
She slid upward till she was standing, digging her fingers into the rock, pressing her whole body into it as though she could escape the torrent that way. A human brain can only make and contain so many neurotransmitters. A human body can only maintain an emotion for a finite time, before exhaustion sets in, sleep comes – even if only briefly – and memory blurs the outlines. She no longer had any such limits. Emotion burst in her processors like a supernova, expanding outward through the infinite space within. She was trapped, too panicked to reach out via radio, no voice calling but her own. Her core temperature spiked, and articulation locks engaged and disengaged randomly.  
  
Cliffjumper found her first, while he was patrolling the area, amid the deep gouges she had clawed in the rock. “What the slag? Oh for…”  _Hey, Wheeljack. Come out here will you? Ratchet’s pet is having a fit or something.  
  
What? I’m right in the middle of…oh all right, gimme a minute.   
  
Hurry up, I think she’s slagging her CPU. _  
  
Wheeljack came skidding around the mesa shortly and transformed. He ran a basic scan and whistled. “Hey, kiddo. Let’s get you inside, all right? Ratchet’ll be back soon, don’t worry.” He took her hand and pulled gently.  
  
“What’s wrong with her?” Cliffjumper wanted to know, irritated but also worried.  
  
 _Don’t you remember when you were first ensparked, how sometimes your feelings would get all tangled up, and it felt like you had to explode or die trying?  
  
I…guess?   
  
Okay, well she’s doing that. Only she’s kinda big, so I’m gonna see if I can get her into her recharge berth until Ratchet and the others get back._Wheeljack was torn between telling Cliffjumper to stay out of the way, and asking him to stick close in case she started convulsing. That happened sometimes, and he didn’t think he could hold down more than one arm or leg at a time by himself. On the other manipulator, he didn’t want to give Cliffjumper any encouraging in the tackling department.   
  
He continued to pull steadily at her hand until she eased free of the rock, optics wild and unfocused, but she was moving. “That’s right, come on, it’s gonna be okay.” With slow steps, he guided her around the mesa toward the hangar door. Cliffjumper followed for only half a minute before transforming and rolling off to resume his patrol, having alerted Prowl to the problem. Wheeljack kept to audio only, soothing her with his voice. He knew better than to attempt a more direct contact – her overheated circuits and the emotional feedback loops might overwhelm him if she latched on to his frequency. And even if not, it would be an unpleasant experience. Conversely, silence and darkness wouldn’t help either. Without something exterior to focus on, she could become lost in her own mind, where maybe even Ratchet couldn’t pull her out. So he kept talking, and walking, and eventually they got inside.   
  
Prowl gave them a sour look but nodded as they passed him at the door. He recalled this from his own experience more clearly than Cliffjumper did. It was part of the emotional circuitry integration process, and every embodied mech who wasn’t a drone had to deal with it. “Do you think you have her all right or do you want help?”  
  
“I got her,” Wheeljack said, nodding. “That’s it, kiddo, almost there. Pretty soon Jazz’ll be home and he’ll sing you some nice lullabies, okay? How’s that? You like Jazz, huh? I’ve seen you guys playing that silly human game on their primitive little computers. Come on, just a little farther…”  
  
Later, as evening blackened to full night, the other Autobots returned from their mission in New York, stopping some Decepticon mischief in the sewers. They had come out fairly unscathed, though Prime looked worse for wear and moved as though his joints weren’t self-lubricating any more. Ratchet made sure Prime took a nice long oil soak before going out to the tower lab to talk to Wheeljack.  
  
“Did she speak at all?” Ratchet asked, carefully not touching anything.  
  
“Nah. Didn’t even start the keening until we were inside the med-bay. She got into recharge though, still shaking fit to fly apart, and I’m surprised she didn’t fuse something important in there, but… I’ve seen worse, back in the day.”  
  
“No doubt. Thank you, you did just the right thing. I appreciate it.”  
  
“No problem.”  
  
Wheeljack returned to his tinkering, and Ratchet joined Prime in the oil bath.  
  
 **How is she?**  
  
 _Not bad, considering. A little overheated. I could tune her emotional algorithms back down, but she’d just have to go through it again. Jazz went in and is singing to her. Seems to be helping._  
  
 **Good.**  
  
 _Yaagh. Human sewers. Remind me never to go down there again._  
  
 **Heh.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Storms returned the next day, and Ratchet kept the young one inside, playing games with Jazz, when Jazz could spare the time. When he couldn’t, somewhat to Ratchet’s surprise Mirage came into the med-bay and told her stories about Cybertron, which seemed to fascinate her. She asked few questions, letting Mirage talk uninterrupted, accepting the gift of his tales with a mind if not exactly whole then at least open. Mirage wasn’t Bluestreak, but he did appear to enjoy having an appreciative audience. Ratchet left them alone, pleased.  
  
The day after, she emerged from recharge trembling and frightened, and unable to control the fear. “So cold,” she moaned. “There’s nothing inside. No insides, nothing but so many pieces, loose and jumbled with air between. Inside, outside. Recharge isn’t sleep. I don’t dream of electric sheep, I don’t dream at all. We don’t sleep, we don’t cry, we don’t even breathe. No matter how different human cultures try to be from each other we at least have those things in common. How can I live like this?”  
  
Ratchet called for a little assistance; the Twins had bashed each other up again, and gotten Cliffjumper and, unusually, Hound into the wreck with them this time. Ratchet had plenty to do already, without having to deal with a youngster going through integration to complicate matters.  
  
Mirage – always fretful when Hound was injured – came and took her hand, and led her outside and up to the mesa top. He enjoined her to sit down in the center; from there she could see mostly only the cloudless sky and the rocky mesa flatness immediately around her. Her integration had decided the spy that he liked her, that she was going to be an all right kind of Autobot after all, despite her radical birth. This was a very Cybertronian process, what she was going through. He remembered his consortium’s rites of passage well. He remembered pre-war Cybertron more thoroughly and deliberately than nearly everyone who had thus far come to Earth. Their adopted home, full of its own, alien, fragile, messy kinds of beauty – it would always be the place he’d had to adapt to. Unbidden, the images of the lost gardens of Tyger Pax streamed through his CPU, and he knew what stories he’d tell her today.  
  
“Do you remember a place on Cybertron called Tyger Pax?”  
  
She shuddered hard, but when the tremor eased a little she managed to speak, her optics gazing desperately into his. “Isn’t that…isn’t it where…Bumblebee…?”  
  
“Yes. If you asked him, he might have told you his version of what happened there. But Bumblebee being Bee, he’ll have left some things out.”  
  
She nodded. She had known Bee before, and he hadn’t changed, but she had …he used to be so much bigger and now oh no she was so much bigger and not breathing and… but she thought she knew what some of the kinds of things he would leave out would be.  
  
“Let me tell you, then, how it was, how Tyger Pax the garden city was before the War, and what happened there the way Bumblebee won’t have told you.  
  
“Tyger Pax was in one of the Orbital Torus States – a flower-shaped city, lifted high on a multi-stemmed base, the ‘petals’ looking as though they were just about to open fully. Her towers were silver, platinum, glass, titanium, with fountains of mercury, pools of silicon. Copper trees wove their branches through enormous crystal sculptures. The roads were paved with specially grown amethyst and citrine. It always seemed easier to see the moons and stars from there.”   
  
She was fascinated by how easily Mirage slipped from English to Cybertronian; how the translations wove back and forth in her mind. His word for “tree” was the Cybertronian derived from a general word meaning any branching structure, from cracks in stone to lightning. Modifiers indicated scale, complexity of branching and the material composition. “Tyger Pax” was itself of course an approximation. An antiquated spelling of an English word for a beautiful and rare land mammal, and the Latin for peace. An ancient, rare, idyllic place of beauty. The correspondences were strange but compelling.   
  
In addition there were glyphs hidden in his words, echoed transmission frequencies. Moving images, sounds, even olfactory and haptic data. She could stand in the center of Tyger Pax-that-was and whirl like a giddy schoolgirl.  
  
“There were long swooping tracks, interlaced, high-sided, with ramps and jumps, paved with polytetrafluoroethylene—”  
  
She sat up and waved her hands to stop him. “Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me you guys went skating on  _Teflon?_ ”  
  
Mirage laughed. “Yes. High-speed, low-friction racing, skating as you say, and various forms of what humans would call Teflon-hockey. Primus, that was fun.”  
  
She hugged herself, laughing at minor but embarrassing mishaps Mirage had seen – or endured himself. He watched her carefully, waiting for the manic edge to creep into her harmonics.  
  
“And then the War came,” he said, to stem the tide. His timing was, as ever, excellent. He nodded at her abruptly unhappy expression. Take it in, new one, he thought. Take it in and make sense of it all. I know how hard it is, believe me. “Tyger Pax was left a blasted hulk, still standing tall above its charred surroundings, but all the bridges were broken. The Allspark was hidden there, while rumors were leaked that it was in Simfur, where Prime led the bulk of our remaining forces. Bumblebee and Arcee led a smaller group to defend Tyger Pax. They were hard pressed, though they might have made a stand for as long as it took for another team to launch the Allspark into space. But Megatron could sense the Allspark itself and had traced it there. Bumblebee’s team was captured, bound to the ruined ceiling and walls of a…I guess you could call it a cathedral. Or an art gallery. Both are correct.   
  
“Megatron ripped the spark from the chest of one, tore another to pieces, trying to get them to tell him exactly where the Cube was. Bumblebee caught his attention next, and had his right arm torn off as payment.”  
  
To her Cybertronian brain, loss of limb was an unpleasant but not permanent mishap. Her human mindscape was appalled, even though she knew he’d also lost his legs in Mission City, years before she was decanted. Mirage was guiding her through a full spectrum, and he wasn’t finished.  
  
“Megatron always thought he could bully anything out of anyone. Bee proved him wrong. Just as the Allspark launched, Megatron could still have caught up in his jet form. Bumblebee threw himself at him, distracting him long enough for the Cube to get too far to track directly. He saved us all in that moment. In a rage, Megatron crushed his voice capacitor, leaving him mute but for non-audio transmissions. Bee’s a resourceful mech, he found other ways to communicate, even with humans.” Mirage grinned, playing a bit of radio,  _“I wanna know/What you’re thinking/There are some things you can’t hide…”_  
  
She smiled. Sad for the suffering inflicted on someone she knew more as a kind and gentle mentor, rather than the clever scout and warrior he also was. But also glad he had survived, a hero many times over, no matter that he thought he was merely doing his duty, and perhaps had doubts, wondered if he could have done more. More puzzle glyphs from Mirage hinted at this. It wasn’t over-stimulating because she had to concentrate to find them and unlock their nested meanings.   
  
“Thank you, Mirage,” she said. “I think I should go recharge now, but…thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” he said, and gave her a jaunty salute as he rose to his feet and left her in peace.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mirage had been so helpful, and had already been working so closely with her, Ratchet and Prime briefed him with the entirety of her origin. Mirage was shocked, but he struggled to reconcile his emotions. It wasn’t her fault, how she’d been forged and programmed. He liked the poor, confused, huge thing. She reminded him of the Empty Cities; the AI cities after Megatron’s drones had slain the embodied population. Hollow, alone and purposeless, the AIs either escaped if there were still connections open, merging with other city-AIs; or went mad, if all comms had been cut. Mirage was determined that there would always be bridges for her, between her inner selves, and between her and the other Autobots.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Tell me,” Mirage said, “what swimming is like.” It was their second-favorite game. She would rather hear him spin tales of Cybertron and the Iridium Towers, but answering his questions made him happy, so she was made happy too. They linked arm cables, and she fished down through the mess of her unorganized human memories. Fishing was an apt metaphor. She had to hook one idea to another to find anything in there, linking chains of associations together until she caught what she was after. It was a bit tedious, there was no index, no keywords or tags, no neat mapping; but she was getting better at it each time they played this game. Swimming, eating solid food, breathing, dreaming; Mirage asked about all the things humans could do that mechs did not. They shared senses – of pain, of humor, sight, touch, taste which was for humans distinct if related to smell – in mechs this was simply chemoreception and was more often housed in their feet or legs than in their heads (Ratchet being a notable exception), hearing. The human ranges might be more limited, but the way their sensory input was keyed so strongly into their emotional systems and those into their mentation was intriguing. Without emotions, humans couldn’t even make small, practical judgments about day to day mundanities. Logic, as Spock had said, was only the beginning of wisdom.  
  
“Swimming,” she said. She thought of the pool at her – Ixchel’s – cousins’ house in Mission Viejo. Dark blue grey plaster, fake rocks, fake waterfall, smell of chlorine and concrete and dirt and sometimes flowers. Shade from eucalyptus trees on the slope above, heat reflecting from the stucco of the house beside. The water was warm nearly all the year round, bathwater warm in summer. Most of the day the sun glared bright off the always-moving surface, but as the afternoon waned, the reflection of sky and the yard around became softer, satiny, unmarred by the sharp splashing of the younger kids. After a while her skin felt tight and hot from sunlight and the chlorine, and her hair was tangled and kind of rough and sticky and full of little bits of crud shed from the eucalyptus trees, and her body was sore and tired from treading water and swimming and, when she was younger, even diving, all day long; but it was such a summertime feeling she didn’t mind.   
  
She could float for hours, nearly weightless, but not the stomach-flipping weightlessness of the first moment of a roller-coaster drop; familiar to Mirage as the low-gravity environment in space, though he didn’t have a stomach and his equilibrial systems automatically shifted to adapt. The pool was only about ten feet deep, so the pressure of the water was never enough to confuse you about which way was down.  
  
“It’s a bit like flying,” Mirage mused. “But through a very thick atmosphere.” His vehicle mode before the war…one of them, anyway; his consortium had been wealthy enough most of them were at least triple and some were quadruple-changers…had been a short-range but speedy flier/glider. The image he showed her was a little like an iridescent blue jellyfish, she thought. If jellyfish were slinky and aerodynamic and could reach Mach 7.   
  
Mirage, in turn, told her everything he could remember about Cybertronian art and culture. How poets would work on a single poem for centuries; beginning with an epic thousands of glyphs in length, honing, refining, alloying, forging until they had compressed the meaning into perhaps three glyphs alone. “And then after all that work, it turned out only the poet could understand it.” They both laughed. Other forms of art could take similarly extended periods, and Mirage was reminded of human cathedrals, the construction of which spanned many human lifetimes. He began to see why Hound liked these humans so, who endeavored so much, even knowing their limitations.   
  
Another time he explained how the glyphs on the Allspark had eluded translation always. Over time, the beloved if bemusing symbols took on meanings contrived by the Allspark’s creations.   
  
“You couldn’t figure out what they meant so you just…made stuff up?”  
  
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Some think the creators of the Allspark, whomever they were, meant for us not to know, or they would have left a primer in the Allspark itself. Maybe they felt this new universe was ours not theirs, and we would have to discover meaning on our own, by our own terms. To make of it what we would.”  
  
“So that stuff gouged on Prime’s head, on your helms, for all you really know that could say ‘This side up,’ or ‘Refrigerate immediately upon delivery,’ or ‘Insert slot A into tab B,’ or ‘Batteries not included!’”  
  
Mirage gaped at her for a second then fell backwards onto the mesa top, laughing. Hound poked his head up over the edge.  
  
“What are you two giggling about now?” he asked, amused already and clearly delighted with Mirage’s performance, watching his slender friend intently. Mirage must have told him over comm because Hound had some difficulty climbing the rest of the way up, in fact almost fell off entirely, he was chortling so hard.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
With the ubiquity of transmission and quantum data storage, very few Cybertronians ever bothered to download the programming it took to physically take up an implement of some kind and write with pigment or carve on a surface. Even signatures on official documents were done electronically. Mirage, by contrast, had beautiful, calligraphic penmanship.   
  
He showed her first the two-dimensional glyph arrays. The most clever of which could be read in any direction. The simplest were triads composed of three glyphs in a triangle. Then came squares with four or nine or fifteen glyphs. Then came the higher numbered shapes, and freeform spirals and swooping curves, not unlike those which had decorated the Allspark itself.   
  
There were also three-dimensional glyph arrays – poems, really. Not unlike haiku, she thought. Again read in any or every direction. Cubes and other polyhedra; eight glyphs, or twenty seven.   
  
But her greatest delight came in learning of the four-dimensional arrays. The hypercube or tesseract – HyperCubeText, she thought, giggling. Mirage groaned theatrically, but immediately shared the layered pun, inflicting it upon everyone within transmission range.  
  
Somewhere amid their discussions, silly and sublime, she quietly passed out of integration and neither of them noticed.


	15. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the new Autobot finds a vehicle mode and a name.

2015 – October  
  
Keller himself authorized the trip, enjoying the privilege as this would be his last term as Secretary of Defense. They didn’t have to sneak in, but it was fun, and a good drill for the human guards. Not all the miles of fences could be manned, and the cameras were still easily hacked by those with Cybertronian brains. Optimus could have stepped over the fence, razor wire and all, but he was busy elsewhere, and while no one said so, none of them wanted the young one to carry them. So they had to make do with jumping it. Jazz took point, then Arcee, then the youngster stepping over. Ratchet brought up the rear.   
  
They had taken her to Nellis, and the other military bases near the Cybertronian Embassy, but nothing had compelled her to follow up her newly acquired ability to transscan with a transformation. It was hard to find anything in the civilian world, outside heavy construction, of the right mass. She didn’t want to be confined to rails. Flight seemed to appeal, so here they were breaking into Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works.  
  
 _Let us know if you see something you like,_  Jazz told her. She sketched a salute and began to scan everything.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The giggling gave her away. Jazz stopped long enough to brief the compound’s chief of the watch about how to make their security a little tighter, then they headed back to the embassy. They knew she’d picked something, but she wouldn’t say what, wanted it to be a surprise.   
  
Ironhide wouldn’t be impressed with her vehicle mode, she thought, which made her sad because she liked Ironhide very much. But  _I_  like it, she told herself. And if she liked her vehicle mode, wouldn’t that make it easier to adapt to and use effectively? Or was she just rationalizing? Too late now…  
  
A handful of Autobots assembled on the mesa-top above the base the next night.   
  
She shuffled her feet, nervous at being the center of so much attention from her superiors. Superiors in so many ways, she thought, fighting not to bite her fingers. She wasn’t sure whether her mouthparts were strong enough to damage the delicate-looking metal tips, but she wasn’t about to find out now. Okay, stay calm. Just try not to fall on your face…  
  
She remembered deep abdominal breathing exercises from before, but those were no use now. Instead she focused on the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the myriad, faint humming from the stars. All those signals could be overwhelming if she let them, but now she found it soothing, like white noise – quasar-sung lullabies at the edge of hearing.  
  
“You can hear them all the time, can’t you,” she said, looking up at the Milky Way.  
  
“That’s right,” Jazz said. “Music of the spheres, baby.”  
  
“On clear nights like this, humans often feel as though they could reach out and touch them,” she continued. “We… they know they can’t…but it’s fun to try.” And with three running steps she leaped off the mesa.  
  
In the optics of those watching, she seemed to float for a half-second, then she leaned into the air – and transformed.  
  
Long, a sinuous delta shape, so dark a blue she was almost black. Huge, low-slung twin engines screamed to life, charring the side of the mesa before they slammed her out and up into a steep climb. Jazz contacted SAC and the FAA.  
  
“Mach 1,” Arcee said drily, crossing her arms. “Well, she’s speedy.” The sonic booms were travelling away from them and therefore inaudible from their position, but they could ping her speed at this distance. Unseen but scanned as well was her Autobot sigil, just to the front of her canopy. Ratchet had given her the specs for transformation – the sigil wasn’t just a mark welded on or easily removed, it was inherent to the chameleon mesh and as such had to be added to the transscanned specs prior to the first transformation.   
  
“Mach 2,” Jazz intoned.  _Turn your nose about 5 degrees north; you’re not the only bird up there,_  he told her.  
  
 _Oh! Right. Uh, roger.  
  
There ya go._ “Mach 3.”  
  
As she settled into Mach 3, her engines reconfigured themselves slightly. Intake cones settled more deeply, increasing efficiency.  
  
“Mach 4,” said Jazz. He looked at Ratchet. “Want me to tell her to open it up?”  
  
Ratchet nodded. “I estimate Mach 6 to be her cruising speed. In this configuration she should top out at Mach 10.”  
  
 _I’m gonna keep you out of everyone’s hair, girl, so you put on some altitude and show us some leg, all right? 50,000 meters and clear.  
  
Aye-firmative!_  
  
“Mach 6.”  
  
Bee – parked in Sam’s driveway but piggybacking on Jazz’s carrier signal – chuckled. _She’s not going to call herself Newt, is she?  
  
Hope not._ “Mach 8.”  _Head northwest about 10 degrees. You wanna miss the pole. Watch the EM interference. Make a nice big figure-8 on your way back._  
  
“She’s…almost in the Arctic already?” Hound asked.  
  
“Mach 8 is pretty fast in atmo,” Arcee pointed out.  
  
 _How do you feel?_  Ratchet inquired, via Jazz. She was out of his direct scanning range, hidden by the planet.  
  
 _I’m getting hot. But I think it’s all right; my, er, skin feels good.  
  
Good. The heat will anneal your alloys. Just watch for unstarts on those engines, and too much vibration._ Ratchet zipped a request to Jazz, who relayed data from his sophisticated long-range scanning inputs. Her hull temperature was indeed well within operational limits.   
  
 _Okay._  
  
“Mach 9.” Jazz bounced a little on his toes.  _You’re clear at 50,000 from Greenland to Utah. Kick it!  
  
O-okay…_  
  
“Don’t push if she doesn’t feel she’s ready,” Ratchet murmured. “This is just a test flight.”  
  
“Sure,” said Cliffjumper. “We’re testing your kid to see if she can hit Mach 10.”  
  
 _Nngh! Almost there…_  
  
“9.5…”   
  
“Come on…” Arcee said, getting into the spirit of the thing even if she still had reservations about the young one herself. If there was one thing Arcee understood, it was the need for speed.  
  
 _You can do it, little bird._  “Mach 10!”  _Ease ‘em down, now. Keep that up and you’ll overshoot us.  
  
Ha! Not sure I have the fuel for another go ‘round…_  
  
Bee gave a ballpark whistle and Arcee punched the air. The other Autobots exchanged pleased-despite-themselves grins if they had the mouthparts for it.  
  
 _Found a name yet, little bird?_  Jazz teased her.  
  
 _BOREALIS! I’M BOREALIS!_  she shouted.  
  
 **Noted and logged.**  
  
Jazz chuckled.  _We hear you, ‘Lissi-lu. Come on home now, and try to slow it down some, you’re scaring the coyotes._  
  
Four minutes passed, but the desert night remained undisturbed. The loudest sound was the cicadas.  
  
“I don’t see her,” Prowl said.  
  
“You won’t,” said Jazz. “Not until she’s right on top of us. You’ll actually hear her first, she’ll have dropped to subsonic as she leaves Utah.”  
  
“She’s not invisible, though,” Hound said.  
  
“Not like Mirage, no.” Jazz turned his visor back toward the horizon. “If she was a human plane, we’d pick up her IR easily from over 200 kilometers.”  
  
Arcee’s optics brightened. “But she’s not a human plane. Those were plasma cannons I saw on her fuselage, right? Nice.”  
  
 _Oh crap, I have to land now!_  Borealis sounded more than a little alarmed. Jazz had shown her how to broadcast to the rest of the assembled Autobots, though she was clumsy about channel-switching.  
  
“Should have thought of that before she jumped off the cliff,” Hound commented, laughing, but not unkindly.  
  
She wasn’t about to try touching down on the mesa, and she thought she’d have plenty of time to work on mid-air transformations later. Fortunately there was a long, straight stretch of road perpendicular to the hangar entrance.  
  
 _Target the road,_  Jazz told her, bringing up the overlay slowly so she understood how to do it.  
  
 _Ah. Target locked. …Whoah, and it really is, too. You guys aren’t kidding when you say that…_  It felt like she couldn’t miss it if she tried. All her motive and guidance systems were now focused on the road/runway.   
  
 _You can override if you have to,_  Ratchet pointed out, as he and the others climbed down and headed for the road.  
  
 _Good to know. Okay, landing gear…landing gear…there it goes…  
  
Get your nose up, Lissi. A little more…more… Not that much! Whoops._  
  
50 meters from the ground, she flipped vertical, wobbled, did a completely unintentional pirouette, jinked to starboard, then – terrified of hitting the ground as the comparatively rigid and fracturable plane – she transformed. It was nothing like the dignified and dramatic slow motion resumption of her bipedal form that she had envisioned. She just hoped she’d end up with two arms, two legs, a torso and a head, and if she was very, very lucky they might even be all in the right places.  
  
Abruptly hugely draggy, she slammed into air like a concrete wall and went pinwheeling off into the desert, trying to bring her limbs (whatever order they were in) close to her body despite rather massive centripetal difficulties.   
  
When she finally hit the ground she dug a furrow 100 meters long. She lay in a crumpled heap, more shocked than hurt – pain in this body was a new experience. And she was pretty sure she had sagebrush and cactus in places she’d never known Autobots had. Ratchet had already scanned her, but when she didn’t rise immediately, he came over and joined Arcee, Jazz and Hound who were leaning over her head, making helpful, and not so helpful suggestions on the best ways to remove unwanted terrestrial life forms from one’s chassis.   
  
“Are you functional?” he asked mildly.  
  
“Aaaaanngggh. Yeah. Ow.” Getting up was only slightly more uncomfortable than staying still, and considerably less embarrassing. She began pulling plants and dirt clods out of her joints. This was going to take all night.  
  
Finally Jazz took pity on her and showed her how to do the static repeller-field shiver, which usually knocked most debris out of all the nooks and crannies.   
  
“Although that doesn’t always work, either,” Jazz said, sneaking a sidelong look over to where Prime stood at the hangar’s main door. “One time Optimus got a tree stuck in his—”  
  
 **Watch it.**  Jazz had a tendency to elaborate on the facts of the incident.  
  
Over the carrier channel, Bumblebee was already giggling. Bee could be relied upon to start laughing whenever this particular subject came up.  
  
“—stuck in his, um, shoulder. He got most of it out, but there was this one splinter still wedged in there, and Mikaela had to go climb all the way up him like a monkey to get it out.”  
  
Borealis stared at him, not sure whether to laugh or express disbelief. Or sympathy.   
  
“You just made the newbie face,” Arcee told her. Borealis laughed then, glad to have a clear course of action.   
  
“Any landing you can walk away from,” Prowl murmured wryly, and returned to his station inside. Ratchet followed him until reaching Prime, half in the warm light from inside, half in cool starlit shadow.  
  
 _Her memories, her personality, if you will, may be human,_  Ratchet tight-beamed to Optimus, thinking of her panicked transformation.  _But her instincts are ours!_  
  
 **Is that your way of saying that you and I make good looking offspring?**  
  
Ratchet sputtered – too many retorts struggling for use of his vocal processors at once. Prime began to laugh. Just a quiet chuckle at first, but Ratchet kept sputtering for so long, and was emitting such wild frequencies across the EM band, he laughed harder, a rolling basso profundo, until he had to lean on the frame of the hangar door.  
  
“It’s not often you’re caught that flat-footed, my friend. I needed that.”  
  
“Hmph. Yes, you did.”


	16. Around the World In Three Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Borealis shows off to the humans and Sam gets his frist look at the homeworld from 80,000 feet.

2016 – May  
  
On a day when Lennox and Epps were released from their other duties, and Sam and Mikaela both had time as well with their respective Masters exams over, they were invited out to a far corner of Nellis air base to meet one of the newest Autobot arrivals. Bumblebee and Ironhide pulled up to a large, camouflage-net-covered shelter. The humans got out, but the Autobots remained in vehicle mode.   
  
“This is Borealis,” Bumblebee said simply. “She’ll be taking over some of Jazz’s reconnaissance duties.” Ironhide made a grumpy noise, but the humans didn’t seem to notice as they approached the big, dark blue jet.   
  
“Hello,” Borealis said. Her voice was nothing like Ixchel’s had been.  
  
“Wow,” said Sam. “An airplane, huh? Good idea, right? Can’t let the Decepticons have all the fun.” She wasn’t as big as a jumbo jet or anything, but she was a pretty good size, he thought, and wondered how tall she was in robot form.  
  
Lennox squinted. “Huh. All right, not familiar with that one.”  
  
“Yeah,” Mikaela agreed, biting her lip. “Kind of looks like…an SR-71?” Sam ducked his head, feeling outclassed. He had his graduate degree in Political Science practically in the bag, but he still didn’t know much about cars or other vehicles. Mikaela liked to explain things to him so much he didn’t want to spoil her fun. Borealis remained silent.  
  
Epps took a leisurely walk all the way around her, scrutinizing every angle and seam closely. “Nope,” he said, grinning. “She looks a little like an old Blackbird, but she ain’t one. You look closer, man; and I don’t mean just the fancy paint job. Remember the Aurora project?”  
  
‘Bobby, that was a myth,” Lennox scoffed.  
  
Epps gazed right into the nearest port, that in an SR-71 would have held a camera, and patted her chines. “You a sneaky girl.”  
  
“Not sneaky,” she answered, a grin in her voice. “ _Stealthy_.” She transformed.  
  
“Daaaaaaaamn,” said Epps. “And I thought Mega-dude was tall.”  
  
“Pfft. I’m 1.6 meters taller than he was,” Borealis told him.  
  
Sam grinned. Borealis looked to him like she could break Megatron over her knee. Or at least  _put_  him over her knee and give him a good spanking. He had trouble keeping a straight face at that image. Starscream? Starscream was  _toast_. And even though it had been more than two years since his friend Dr. Chase had been killed by the Seeker leader, that thought made Sam glad.   
  
Borealis leaned forward and resumed her Aurora-like jet form. She popped the canopy. “Anyone up for a ride? Around the world in eighty minutes. More or less. Okay, more like two and a half, three hours.”  
  
“You know it,” Epps grinned.  
  
“Can…can I come too?,” Sam asked. He’d never done much flying, but he’d come to trust Autobot driving more than his own. “Looks like it’s a two-man cockpit, right?”  
  
“You betcha,” Borealis answered. “Go with Epps and get suited up. Full LEO gear, Epps.”  
  
“Hot damn, baby!” Epps said, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “Come on, Sam, you gonna be a rocket man.” A standard jeep (not Hound) was parked nearby for their use – less conspicuous than tooling around the base in a bright yellow Camaro.  
  
Lennox and Mikaela shook their heads and went to sit in Ironhide with the doors open, breaking out a Nintendo DS5 and a laptop, respectively. It was a mild day, for May – not too hot even this late in the morning. Bumblebee pointedly played music from  _Top Gun_ , making Lennox groan.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Borealis said. “Should I make it a shorter hop? It takes me a long time to turn around, and I thought it would be more fun to circumnavigate the globe.”  
  
“No, no,” Lennox and Mikaela said in unison. “It’s fine.”  
  
“I want a turn, too,” Mikaela said, smiling. “Since you’re going to the trouble. No short-changing the tourists.”   
  
“And if I don’t come back with photos, Sarah and Annie will make me go to bed without dinner,” Lennox pointed out. Photos of Earth from 80,000 feet would net him all kinds of Cool Daddy points. Although Annie would want to go up herself. Maybe when she was older…in another ten or twenty years. Borealis would certainly still be around, Lennox thought. Unless the Decepticons got her.   
  
Epps and Sam came back about half an hour later, trailing hoses and weighed down with what looked like a lot of astronaut gear. Epps was drilling Sam on proper use and emergency procedures. Sam was paying close attention but looked a little overwhelmed.  
  
Mikaela got up and walked a slow circle around her husband. “That’s kinda hot on you,” she said, trailing a finger around the seal of Sam’s helmet.   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.” She pointed the same finger at Borealis’ nose. “No crashing! No fighting!”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Borealis agreed.   
  
Lennox helped Epps roll the ladder up and Epps and Sam clambered into the cockpit, strapping themselves in as Lennox moved the ladder away and Borealis closed the canopy. They got their air, cooling and comm lines plugged in and closed their helmets. She pulled out in reverse and taxied toward the nearest runway. Epps put his hands on his knees, then crossed his arms, then put his hands on his knees again.  
  
“You can hang on to the stick if you want, Epps,” Borealis said. “I won’t be offended.” Epps was a pilot himself, so it gave him something to do with his hands and seemed to make him more comfortable. She could override anything he did anyway.   
  
“You need me to talk to the tower?” he asked.  
  
“I can give you the channel if you like, but Master Sergeant McHenry already gave me clearance for takeoff.” Jazz had instructed her on all the finer points of human military communications. It was only sensible, since she was no fonder of mid-air collisions than any human pilot.  
  
“Oh, all right.” Epps felt embarrassed for a moment. Mirage often put himself at Epps’ disposal in the same way Ironhide did for Lennox and his family, and Epps usually sat in the driver’s seat so Mirage wouldn’t have to bother with a hologram. This shouldn’t be any different. But a jet wasn’t a car.   
  
“Let the Autobot drive,” Sam squeaked from behind him. Borealis lined herself up at the end of the runway, and they heard and felt her engines power up. It wasn’t a normal jet sound, and the glow out her vents was an unnatural blue.   
  
“Sorry.”  
  
Somewhere in her CPU, Borealis grinned. “No problem whatsoever. Hang on.”   
  
She kept her acceleration to 2 g’s – the space shuttle used 3, but humans found that uncomfortable. Sam and Epps were whooping and hollering already as they were pressed back into the seats. Once airborne, she headed straight up, aiming for 50,000 meters in about 60 seconds.   
  
“Welcome to the stratopause, Sam,” Borealis said as she leveled out. “Full stealth mode engaged.”  
  
“Thanks.” Sam gazed down and out – for the first time seeing the curvature of his home planet with his own eyes.   
  
“We’re above the ozone layer,” Epps explained, to give Sam some reference. “But below where the shuttle flies.”   
  
“Gotcha.” They were already over the Pacific. Dark, dark blue, like Borealis herself, only cloud-streaked, and achingly bright where the sun struck. Homeworld, Sam thought. But one planet of many that held life. His eyes drank in every swirl of cloud and crinkle of island, even as his thoughts spun out into the wider, wilder galaxy.  
  
“They’re over Japan,” Bee reported to those waiting on the ground, a little over an hour later.  
  
Lennox sat up. “Damn! That’s…Mach 10, right?”  
  
“Is she really that fast?” Mikaela asked.  
  
“Yes,” Ironhide answered grudgingly. “Faster than anyone we or the Decepticons have without interstellar drives.”  
  
“You don’t seem too impressed, buddy,” Lennox said, rapping lightly on Ironhide’s door frame.  
  
“Not really, no. Size she is and she picks a  _recon_  vehicle? Those little plasma cannon pea-shooters are all right for punching holes in things, but her aim needs a lot of work.”  
  
“Ah.” Aim was important when your effective weapons range was measured in hundreds of miles.   
  
“What was she back on Cybertron, then?” Mikaela asked.   
  
Ironhide almost paused too long, before grasping at what he thought was an inspired lie. “Cargo plane.”  
  
“Well, recon’s a step up,” Lennox said.  
  
“She hasn’t built a weapon mode yet,” Bumblebee pointed out. “Give her a chance, ‘Hide.”  
  
Mikaela stretched and considered this. “So, she’s pretty young for one of you guys I take it?”  
  
“Yes. Very young,” Bee admitted.   
  
“How young?” Mikaela asked, grinning, sensing Bee’s odd reluctance but not knowing the cause.  
  
The lie they’d concocted bit into him, but he answered smoothly. “She was among the last to be brought online before we lost the cube.”  
  
Lennox rubbed his forehead. “Oh, well, that young, huh? She knows how to land, right?” He wanted Epps back in one piece, he still needed him.  
  
“Um,” said Bee. Borealis had never tried to land with passengers before. “Yes, she knows how to land.” He popped his trunk so Mikaela could retrieve the picnic lunch they’d packed. Food made for a good distraction, he thought.   
  
“Nice try, Bee,” Mikaela muttered, kicking at one of his tires. “She CAN land, right?”  
  
“I would not have let Sam get in if I thought he would be harmed,” Bee said, mustering something like an offended tone.   
  
Mikaela closed his trunk and patted it. “I thought so. Just wanted to be sure.”  
  
Two more hours passed, with occasional travel reports coming in via Bumblebee. They were over Russia, they were over Europe, the Atlantic, the Eastern seaboard… And finally; “She’s coming in now,” Bee said.  _Don’t break the humans, Lissi,_  he reminded her.   
  
Borealis transmitted a noise suspiciously like a raspberry. “Stealth mode disengaged. Cleared for landing.”  
  
Epps, in the pilot’s seat, talking to the tower with a big grin on his face, still had his hands on the stick. It was like a good luck charm, giving Borealis more confidence. She had the runway locked on, her engines were powering down smoothly, reconfigured back to their sub-Mach 3 alignment. Sam was too awed by viewing Earth from 50,000 meters to speak; she in no way wanted to jar him out of his happiness.   
  
Landing gear down. Epps gripped the stick tightly for a second, then relaxed, keeping only his fingertips on it. Borealis felt a lively sort of serenity course through her circuits. She knew exactly where she was, how fast she was going, what the air was doing and where the ground was. Nothing simpler. Sam didn’t notice they had touched down until the nose wheels settled and she began to taxi back to the shelter where the others waited for them.  
  
“Careful now,” Epps warned them as Borealis popped the canopy and Lennox brought the stairs over. “She’s still hot from the friction.” The exchange of crews was therefore done gingerly.  
  
Bee, however, transformed and hugged her nose, laying his head against her portside chine and patting her with a gentle clunk-clunk.  _You didn’t break my human_ , he said. _Thank you.  
  
Shoo!_ Her forearms made up her nose, so she jounced one hand loose and plinked him on the helmet.  _That was my best landing ever and I recorded it, so there._


	17. Off the Chain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prowl is reinstated for combat.

2016 - May  
  
It was inevitable that the location of the Cybertronian Embassy would become known to the Cons. Neither faction had ever relied for long on the secrecy of permanent or semi-permanent bases. Fortifications and defensive weaponry - always changing, as did their personal armament – was more to be depended on.   
  
Over the past seven years, things had fallen into a sort of stalemate with Starscream’s Seeker phalanx and Scrapper’s gestalt team. Human forces outweighed their technological superiority by sheer numbers, let alone the considered help they got from the Autobots. Then Onslaught had come, with what was left of his team, along with Astrotrain, Octane and Blitzwing, tipping the scales again in the Decepticons’ favor.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Go,” Red told him. “Teletraan and I will hold the perimeter with the turrets. They need you out there. I’ll seal the base as soon as you’re clear.”  
  
Prowl hesitated only a nanosecond, then turned and bolted out the door. Red flicked a camera in his direction, and the moment Prowl’s heels cleared the hangar door, everything slammed down tight.  
  
One of what Sam called Prime’s battle gnats zipped around Prowl’s head once and sped off. Prime knew he was in play. Prowl assessed the glittering constellations of engaging and disengaging fights, even as he charged the nearest Con. As a single fighter, Prowl knew he was no greater an asset than any other, except for this battle – his first melee on Earth, where the fierce, un-Autobot-ness of his attacks would catch these Cons off guard, as the Twins had done seven years ago. But it would only work once. Butylpotassium pellets raked fire and smoke across the air and made wounds that only grew deeper over time, piercing Decepticon armor at pivotal joints. It would be a long time before he aimed directly for spark chambers again. The nearest Con went down screaming but alive.   
  
Clawless now, he had adjusted his battle programming, curling his hands into protective fists beneath his forearm guns. He moved fast, charging individual Cons directly, keeping up a constant rate of fire. He was aware of Prime calling for the human forces to fall back. MEADS air support was merely annoying the Seekers but it did keep Starscream and his wingmates off their backs for a few minutes.   
  
The Decepticons, rather sensibly, abandoned one-on-one fighting whenever they could gang up on single opponents. Ironhide loved this, setting his cannons to cone dispersal so he could pound multiple targets. He was giggling. Tracks and Smokescreen were back-to-back, fighting as though they were dancing, surrounded by foes but undaunted and Prowl judged them capable of felling their opponents in two minutes, given the current pattern. The Twins were pounding at Blitzwing’s tank mode, aiming for the treads, keeping him too busy to turn his considerable firepower on anyone else. Prowl focused on Ratchet, Bluestreak and Windcharger, who were all going to be in separate difficulties in three to five seconds.  
  
Ratchet was tough, and was therefore taking a lot of damage, unslowed, almost heedless as he laid about him with saws and railgun. An unusual but effective combination, Prowl thought. The problem was that Ratchet was taking on Long Haul, Scavenger and Hook all at once. Prowl stilled for a moment, firing carefully from the width of the battlefield, alkali pellets melting Long Haul’s left knee, giving Ratchet just enough opening to fend off Scavenger’s tail.   
  
Bluestreak was trying to get to a position atop a mesa from which his sniping skills would be put to best use, but Soundwave’s pack of symbionts had other ideas. Prowl transformed and sped straight for the mob of them, scattering symbionts and chirping an encoded burst to Bluestreak not to move for a second. A shot – from Mirage, by the disruptor signature – blasted Ravage off all four feet. Given a moment to recover thus, Bluestreak found his center, picking off targets with his usual precision.   
  
Prowl transformed back to robot mode. The Seekers had downed two more PAC-4 missiles and were in play against the Autobots again, Prime having called the Air Force off. Despite the new prototypes, the human jets were still no match for two Seeker trines at once.   
  
Turning, reassessing, Prowl saw Windcharger gamely take on Mixmaster solo. Unfortunately, Scrapper had temporarily shaken off Cliffjumper and Arcee and was closing with them.   
  
 **I have Windcharger,**  Prime chirped to Prowl.  **Target Starscream, keep him busy.**  Short bursts of communication facilitated by Jazz were all they could manage under Soundwave’s dampening blanket transmission, but it was enough. The Autobots had long ago learned to trust one another. Prowl didn’t need to acknowledge the order, merely obey it.   
  
And gladly he did. His alkali pellets were worse than useless against an airborne opponent in atmosphere, but Prowl had other weapons. The missile-launchers on his shoulders tracked Starscream’s swooping flight precisely, Prowl’s peculiar mode of predictive software fully engaged. He fired. The missiles splintered – Starscream couldn’t evade them all, and only a few needed to hit. Microscopic drones unfolded from each splinter, wrapping hard little arms around every available surface, taking more and more substance from the mass they were attached to. Starscream howled in pain and fury, and his distraction enabled Wheeljack to draw a clear bead on him, too. The inventor’s disruptor mine hit the Seeker with an audible  _thunkZZZT_. Starscream convulsed and fell for a dozen long seconds before his repair systems recovered.   
  
Though the Autobots didn’t hear the encoded transmission, Starscream screeched for a retreat, and – covered by Soundwave’s disorienting sonic attacks – they gathered their wounded and fled. Prime sent a parting volley across Starscream’s aft.   
  
Prowl was given a wide berth – perhaps at Prime’s order – as the Autobots with their wounded rolled for the cool shade of the hangar as Red unsealed and opened the doors. But the grins cast his way as they passed him more than made up for it. Remaining outside, slipping around a rough corner of stone into shadow, he paced, clasping his hands together – carefully, carefully – head bowed, his fierce attention directed inward.   
  
Easing his battle systems down wasn’t as difficult as he’d feared. This had been a straightforward fight, aimed at defense. Not routing a handful of pathetic stragglers from some dark, off the starlanes den; not facing down a huge, ravenous battle fleet. The defensive programs were older, but still there in his cores. It would be all right.  
  
It felt as though his spark contracted sharply then expanded; because it was to Optimus Prime he would now report, not Sentinel, and the fact that no-one on either side had been deactivated would be received with a nod of satisfaction rather than… It was better to focus on the present. Much better. He let his hands fall loose and relaxed to his sides. Tipping his head back, he filled his optics with this world’s blue, blue sky, before returning to the interior of the embassy.  
  
 **Well done, Prowl,**  Prime transmitted, very gently.   
  
 _Thank you, sir._


	18. Mucus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Maggie has a cold, and fascinated Hound is fascinated.

2016 - May  
  
Maggie had a cold. Hound was fascinated. The file Ratchet gave him about how the human immune system was battling the rhinoviral invader was neat, but didn’t address how it made the human involved miserable. How she just wanted to curl up and sleep, but couldn’t without chemical assistance because of the way fluids shifted in her head and throat, and the reflexes that were trying to keep her delicate lungs clear. Nor was there any mention of how humans persevered despite the internal battle, swallowing decongestants and getting on with their duties.   
  
Hound crouched nearby, watching Maggie tap away at the computer keyboard. She sniffled, sneezed, coughed, snorted, blew mucus out of her nasal openings onto clothlike paper tissues, and drank liter after liter of lemony iced tea to combat dehydration and the rising ambient temperature. Springtime here in the desert meant increasing heat more than flowers.   
  
“Can I get you anything?” Hound asked, as she leaned back in the chair and rubbed her hair out of her face, catching her breath after a particularly strenuous bout of coughing.   
  
“Ice cream,” Maggie rasped. “Just plain vanilla would be great.” She’d already checked both fridges, and they were out. All right, she’d eaten it all.   
  
 _Mir? Would you mind-?_  Hound would go himself, but he didn’t want to leave in case Maggie wanted or needed something else.  
  
Mirage sprang into vehicle mode and was out the hangar door without bothering to answer. Anything to get away from the unfortunate human making all those incredibly disgusting noises! The people at the closest 7-11 were used to cars and trucks who drove up and asked to be loaded with various goods and ran credit card numbers remotely without being asked, so he wouldn’t even have to bother with a holoform. He’d get several gallons, then find some excuse to join Cliffjumper out on patrol.   
  
 _Thanks, Mir,_  Hound tight-beamed, with an especially fond glyph, when Mirage returned. Mirage flared his optics brighter at him in a smile.   
  
Holding the plastic bags with his fingertips, Mirage offered them to Maggie at his arm’s fullest extension. He just didn’t want to knock over the flimsy partition around the human scaled area created by industrial shelving. “I acquired one container of chocolate chip, Ms. Madsen. They only had three of vanilla.”


	19. Transport

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mikaela whups Borealis at ping-pong, and the Build Team in Russia wants a part yesterday.

2016 – June  
  
Jazz leaned around the corner of Ratchet’s workshop. “You done with that component the Build Team needs?”  
  
“It’s there, on the table next to the plasma welder,” Ratchet said absently, already working on something else. The Build Team – one of the Autobot groups who had landed the same year as Inferno and Red Alert – were in Yakutsk, building a bridge over the mighty Lena river. It had to span a huge distance, and stand up against both solid ice during the winter and ice floes in spring. The rail bridge built in 2010 was 80 km upriver, and didn’t connect the burgeoning city with the nearest highway, which was a few kilometers to the south. The bridge the Build Team had begun would be a smart bridge, which could adapt plow-shaped armor on its supports to deal with changing conditions. They therefore needed a fairly independent brain. Teletraan could run the mechanisms in an emergency, but the Autobots preferred redundancy in their structures. And the Build Team’s leader, Wedge, wanted that part as soon as possible.  
  
Jazz noted the cyber brain was already wrapped in protective silicon and aerogel foam for transport, now all they had to do was get it there, and Jazz knew just the mech for the job.  
  
Borealis was in the human-scaled area in the main hangar (as much of her as would fit, anyway), playing ping-pong with Mikaela. Ironhide thought the game, with the ball as such a tiny target, would be good for her aim. Mikaela so far could still win about half their matches. If Ironhide had hair, he’d be tearing it out.  
  
“Hey, Mikaela,” Jazz said, waving as he came over to stand at the net. “Lissi-lu, when you’re done getting your aft handed to you, I have a job for you.”  
  
“Aaaagh! Don’t distract me!” Borealis was lying on her ventral surface, wielding a paddle with two fine manipulators extended from her fingertips, trying to keep track of the tiny little hollow ball, while Mikaela put loads of English into her play, holding nothing back since she didn’t have to worry about injuring her opponent, even when the ball got lodged between two of Borealis’ jaw spars. She was crazy fast; just what the big mech needed.   
  
As Jazz watched, the ball ricocheted off Borealis’ wrist chine and went whizzing off into the hangar. Mikaela whooped and struck a victory pose. “Fine, Jazz, just take my favorite ping-pong victim off on a mission.”  
  
Borealis groaned and rolled to her feet, taking one step to retrieve the ball. “Okay, sorry, what did you need, Jazz?”  
  
“I need you to take this,” he held up the component package, “to Yakutsk, Russia. Wedge’s got his torsion bars in a twist, wants this thing yesterday. And  _you_  are faster than UPS.”  
  
Borealis took the package carefully. She did have a small payload bay. A bot the size of Bumblebee or Jazz could fit inside, but it wouldn’t be comfortable. And an unprotected human would freeze or fry, depending on her altitude and speed.  
  
“Roger dodger old codger.” She saluted, walked outside and onto the access road. “Thanks for the games, Mikaela! I’ll be back in a few hours, rematch if you’re still here?”  
  
“You bet!” Mikaela waved back, and stayed to watch beside Jazz. Borealis’ takeoffs were cool to watch. The landings were a different kind of exciting.   
  
Backing up about a hundred meters – which doesn’t take long when your stride length is seventeen and a half meters – Borealis transformed, engaged her engines and took off. She wasn’t too fussed about grabbing for airspeed or altitude right away. She was in contact with the FAA as usual, cleared for a nice easy ascent to her 50,000 meter cruising altitude heading on a long northeastern curve around the planet.  
  
Wedge sent Hightower to meet her at the Yakutsk Airport. (The smaller Magan Airport didn’t have a runway long enough for her to land as a jet, and its one runway was dirt, though well maintained.) She set down on runway 05L, which at 3400 meters was plenty. The Build Team had upgraded the surface and built a third runway for the city at a significant discount.   
  
 _That was quick,_  Hightower said as his hook retrieved the package from her cargo bay. _Thanks._  Borealis had a holographic pilot displayed, looking rather like Epps. Though the Russian authorities and city inhabitants knew perfectly well the nature of the Autobots helping them, Borealis was under instructions from Prime to maintain as much of a low profile as one could, when one looked like a black ops plane and pretty much couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.   
  
 _Anything else I can do for you guys?_  she asked.   
  
 _No, thank you. There are plentiful natural resources here for us to utilize, as well as considerable if primitive industrial infrastructure. Give Ratchet our thanks._  Hightower placed the package in his cab and waved his hook at her as he motored off to join his team at the bridge site.   
  
 _Will do!_  Borealis was just as pleased, because she’d done a little research online and there was a remarkable area of natural formations some kilometers upstream on the Lena that she wanted to see while she was here. How best to manage that when she couldn’t hover very well in full jet mode? And she wasn’t supposed to transform to robot mode except in an emergency. Well, she’d just have to make do as a jet.  
  
Once she took off she engaged full stealth mode, staying low to the hard deck and only a little over stall speed, which was still rather fast for what she had in mind. Upstream she went, keeping to the middle of the big river, just high enough not to make a big rooster tail in the water. Ah, there they were. The Pillars of Lena – strange rock formations like a series of columns, marching in remarkable regularity just a few meters from the water’s edge. They became more irregular, but more fanciful as she went farther south. She took digital images and holo scans the entire way; she and anyone else who wanted to could review them later in detail.   
  
Then it was up, up and away, heading west for home, high around the curve of the world, up where the stars sang clear. She loved flying. When she touched down on the base road it was evening, but Mikaela was there for the weekend, watching old movies with Jazz, since Sam was away on a business trip. She was ready for a ping-pong rematch as soon as  _Court Jester_  was over. Borealis went back outside to let her armor cool and upload her stills and vids and holos of the Lena Pillars onto Teletraan, and listened to the stars singing.


	20. Noise Abatement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Borealis annoys Red, and Bee explains a little about before Red Alert was Red Alert.

2016 - July  
  
A dull boom sounded through the chambers and halls of the base. Sam looked up from the video game. “Jeez, what’d Wheeljack blow up this time?”  
  
Prowl, walking across the hangar to Prime’s office, paused behind Sam’s couch. “That wasn’t Wheeljack,” he said thoughtfully, analyzing the sonic and impact vibrations.   
  
“Borealis missed the mesa-top again,” Bee sighed.  
  
“Ah,” said Prowl, and continued on his way.  
  
“I can’t believe you let me fly with her,” Sam muttered to Bumblebee. “I thought you were supposed to be my guardian. She totally can’t land!”  
  
“She can land. On a runway, in jet mode. She’s trying to transform in midair and land on her feet, like the Seekers do.” Except Borealis was considerably more massive than the Seekers, so the maneuver in question was quite tricky. Bee presumed. Either that or she was trying to sculpt the outcrop just to the north of the base mesa by crashing into it twelve times a week. Performance art.   
  
“Fragging Seekers,” Sam growled almost silently. Bee heard him, though.   
  
“That is IT! That is absolutely the last time!” Metallic stomping came down the stem corridor leading into the hangar. Red Alert emerged from the archway striding with purpose out the door, turning abruptly left toward the north.   
  
Bee and Sam exchanged a look then scrambled to their feet. Bee scooped Sam up to his shoulder and ran to follow Red Alert. Ironhide was just driving in and transformed to join them, idly curious.   
  
Peeking around one of the weathered edges of the mesa, they saw Red had climbed up on a boulder in order to lecture Borealis at her head-height. She was sitting, sprawling really, in robot mode, one hand feeling for imaginary dents in her helm.   
  
“…It is completely irresponsible behavior! If you can’t be bothered to take your own safety into consideration, you at least ought to think about the safety of others. Are you paying any attention at all to whether anyone might be in the way of these landings of yours? The humans are very small and give off only very weak electromagnetic signatures, you know. Look at that debris field – every time you hit, you’re knocking off loose rock and grit, and your momentum is imparting a great deal of inertia to them. Someone could get hit, and not all of those rocks are pebbles.”  
  
Borealis gaped at him, motionless.  
  
“In addition, the sound it makes when you crash is exceedingly annoying. We can all hear it through the stone, it transmits perfectly clearly I’ll have you know. Completely disrupting everyone’s activities. Even Bumblebee and Sam were asking what happened, and it’s certainly not fair to blame Wheeljack for everything when you’re making more than your fair share of the noise.”  
  
He hopped down off his improvised podium. “And if you were looking for ways to make other people worry about you, you might as well find something more usefully hazardous to do, rather than just crashing into innocent rock formations. What do you think you are, anyway? Ordnance?”  
  
He turned his back on her and stalked back into the base, completely ignoring Bee, Sam and Ironhide, though he must have spotted them as he passed. They ventured out and approached Borealis, who was still sitting there, rather stunned, and for more than one reason.   
  
Borealis stared at his retreating back. “Wow. He’s a little…tight-wound.”  
  
Bumblebee looked at her keenly, deciding whether to impart information or not. It was personal, but it would help her – and Sam – understand Red much better. He chirped the question to Ironhide, who only shrugged. “He’s doing amazingly well, considering,” Bee said finally.  
  
“Oh dear,” said Borealis. There was always something wrong to say, something more she didn’t understand. It was hard to catch up with people who’d known each other for so long.   
  
Patting her knee, Bee smiled up at her. “I’ll explain. There are special teams, from four to six members, usually, called gestalts.”  
  
“The Build Team?” Sam asked. “And the Bullet Trains in Japan?”  
  
Bee nodded. “Exactly. Individual mechs who physically and mentally combine to form much larger robots. They’re very powerful, but it takes enormous amounts of energy to maintain. They are also vulnerable, because if one teammate is damaged, the others are often so worried and affected they lose much of their ability to function separately. Red Alert was once part of such a team, though his name was Flare, then.”  
  
“The first battle of Polyhex was one we lost. Red’s – Flare’s – gestalt, Drastic, was directly hit by Megatron and knocked into separation.” Bumblebee’s optics unfocused as he accessed old memories, both his own and others’. “Ferrum died first. Welder and Parhelion were killed trying to pull Megatron off Ferrum’s body. Flare’s right arm and leg had been severed in the blast and Infusion was trying to get him clear. Had we arrived a few minutes earlier she might have made it. As it was, Flare was the only one left alive, and he had watched – felt – his team die around him. It was a long time before he was at all functional again. Once he was, he changed his name to Red Alert.”  
  
Sam stared at him. “Don’t you guys have any war stories at all that aren’t incredibly depressing?”  
  
“No,” said Ironhide.  
  
“Well,” said Bumblebee, “there was that one time on that sticky planet where Ironhide and Thundercracker—”  
  
“Stop stop STOP!”  
  
Sam and Borealis exchanged grins. “Yeah, okay, now we need to hear all about that,” Sam said.  
  
“No you don’t. There’s nothing to hear.” Ironhide rumbled, crossing his arms.   
  
“Later,” Bumblebee told Sam. Borealis snickered.  
  
“Not if you know what’s good for you,” Ironhide promised and got up, transforming to resume his original course into the base.  
  
Borealis leaned her elbows on her knees, which was a little tricky as she had pointy bits in the way in both places. “Would it help or make things worse if I go apologize to Red Alert?”  
  
Bee considered. “An apology might be such a novelty coming from anyone but Inferno he might short-circuit. But…making the attempt at least would be kind.”   
  
She nodded and stood, careful not to shake dirt and rocks off onto Bee and Sam, and they all walked back inside.   
  
Borealis continued down the stem corridor while Bee and Sam resumed their gaming. Apologies had once been difficult, she reflected. The weight of embarrassment had been harder to bear when her body was so much smaller, and fragile. Now, the simple fear of the potential of physical harm had been removed, although certainly there were still the Decepticons. They seemed a remote threat, really. Her assignments were such that she was rarely close to them, spying out their activities from afar. She was currently one of the biggest singular Cybertronians on the planet. Maybe that didn’t matter to anyone else, but she realized it did matter to her.  
  
“Red Alert?” She peered around the doorway into his office. For someone so security conscious, he rarely had the enormous blast door shut. Red didn’t look her way, concentrating on the mist screens. She couldn’t come in without obscuring about a third of them so she crouched in the doorway. “I’m sorry about all the crashing,” she said. “I should figure out a smarter way to practice, you’re right. And I should have remembered how sensitive your audials are. So. Um. Sorry, okay? And I won’t do that any more.”  
  
“Thank you,” Red murmured, one optic flickering in her direction, though his attention was still on his watchful duty. Borealis smiled and withdrew.


	21. Entelechy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Maggie and her friends play a nice game of ~~global thermonuclear war~~ some MMORPG, and Borealis has Fun With Physics.

  
_The scientific equations we seek are the poetry of nature._  
\--Chin Ning Yang

  
  
2016 - July  
  
“Oh. Shit. Oops.”  
  
“You just aggroed another mob, didn’t you.”  
  
“No! Um. Yes. Oooooh, they’re all shooting at meeeeee—Uh, anyone got a wakie?”  
  
“Hello, for the twentieth time, I can rez you! Just lemme get out of the melee and I’ll teleport you. Jeez!”  
  
“Who’s hitting me? Ow! Damn Gunslingers! I hate these guys.”  
  
“Ok, I got the hostage, watch out for ambushes.”  
  
“Alex, we’re not done with this second mob that Glen so cleverly brought over to us! Now we’re going to have – oh crap.”  
  
“Fear not! I have aggro. …Oops.”  
  
“What you have, Maggie, is a face full of floor.”  
  
“Jaegers incoming.”  
  
“Damn vacuum cleaners on legs…”  
  
“There’s a lot of them. We didn’t clear that other hallway.”  
  
“Yeah, looks like ALL of them are coming. Run, Nathan, run!”  
  
“Running!”  
  
Maggie Madsen leaned back in her chair and stretched. She was already dead, so it was just a matter of waiting for the others to either drop or get out and regroup. Nathan Zheng was their lone healer, and he was sensibly running – he’d be able to teleport them all out and rez them if there was a team wipe. Still, it was kind of relaxing to play a MMORPG straight these days. When one or more of the Autobots got on, the NPCs all of a sudden got significantly smarter, strange sets of villains the game developers hadn’t actually developed appeared in large mobs, and team wipes became de rigueur. She wondered whether the robots were trying to teach the humans better tactics or if that was just their way of playing a game that was to them about as sophisticated as hopscotch or jacks.   
  
As usual, the LAN party was at Nathan’s apartment since he was the only one with enough room for all seven of them to set up their computers, though they had to use Glen Whitmann’s folding table for four of them.   
  
“It’s almost 2 o’clock,” Alex Engels pointed out, squirming in his rickety chair. “Can we take a nacho break or something here before we tackle this room again?”  
  
“Ooh! Good idea!” Glen jumped up and headed for the kitchen. Nathan got all the dead players teleported to a safe section of hallway and rezzed Maggie. It took about six minutes for that power to recharge, so he got up and followed Glen while the others stood and stretched or alt-tabbed out of the game window to putter with other things on their computers.   
  
“Nathan, there’s another equation up,” Martin Williams called out.   
  
“Yeah?” Alex hunched forward again, scratching his beard, skimming to the SLAC physics forum site. Nathan had gotten both Alex and Martin hooked on these weird equations that had started popping up in April that year. They looked simple enough, but those with the mathematical horsepower to parse them had realized they were pushing boundaries into new theoretical territory. The user name was “entelechy451,” but no one had been able to track the ISP, and the user gave no information but the equations themselves, ignoring all requests for explanations or clarifications. It was beginning to cause a bit of a stir in the high-energy physics community. “Is that one Princeton asshat still trying to call it a hoax?”  
  
Martin made a dismissive noise. “Of course. But some guy from CERN just delivered the smackdown.”   
  
“What are you trolls babbling about?” Ben Wood asked, fishing around in his personal mini-cooler for another beer. He hadn’t been part of Maggie’s team, like Alex, Martin and Nathan, when they’d discovered Frenzy’s hack of the US defense computers, nor had he been roped into the action like Glen. He’d never met an Autobot, but wanted to. Badly.   
  
Mark Mullein, the other Autobot-outsider, chimed in, “They’re fanboy-ing these anonymous equations. Math orgasms.” He peered sideways at Maggie. “It’s one of  _them_ , isn’t it.”  
  
“I thought Optimus didn’t want anyone sharing any more technology?” Glen said, carrying in a TV tray loaded with various dips and chips.   
  
“They’re not,” Nathan pointed out. He set a big platter of nachos on the folding table in the center where most of them could reach but inadvertent slops wouldn’t be as likely to hit keyboards. “Whoever’s posting these equations is only a couple of steps ahead of what people are already doing. Maybe they’re critical steps, we don’t know, but it’s still a big jump from string theory to practical technological applications.”  
  
“Not that big a jump any more,” Ben said.   
  
“Wheeljack?” Martin offered.   
  
Maggie shrugged and snagged a handful of Sun Chips. “Who knows. Probably. I haven’t even been able to trace him to Teletraan, and neither has Glen, so…”   
  
“Yeah,” Glen said, rather sadly. “I can get Teletraan to talk to me sometimes, but not even I can hack him.” The Autobots’ AI had been brought down like seeds from their ship, hidden in an orbit beyond Mars. They had implanted him across the human internet, like a wild vine growing on a lattice. He was massively parallel and distributed, decentralized – and any of the Autobots could communicate directly with him at need.   
  
The UN had reluctantly approved of Teletraan’s dispersal, even though he could access the human internet but the reverse was not true. Most of the Cybertronians could do as much anyway, so objecting to it now was closing the barn door. Teletraan’s nanites self-assembled, so there was no cost in energy or infrastructure to any human agency. As he grew, he upgraded the human internet structures. Not overmuch, but everyone who had already been connected noticed much faster speeds in both directions. New hookups were made easier by adaptive equipment that was both forward and backwardly compatible with other systems.   
  
Nathan rezzed Glen and tabbed out of the game to check the forum. “Huh.” Someone had plugged the first mystery equation somehow into a “singing” Tesla coil and put up a video of the resultant “music.” It was weird, but oddly melodic. Superstring symphony.   
  
“Do you really understand that stuff?” Ben asked.  
  
“Not really,” Nathan replied amiably. “But reading the comments from the people who do understand it is interesting.” Some mathematicians felt the equations were like lines of poetry, one professor even going so far as to liken them to love poetry. Sonnets written in adoration of the universe. Nathan would never admit it to his friends, but he liked that idea. It was heartening to watch people engaged in hopeful play like this, when the rest of the world only seemed to focus on whatever devastating attack the Seekers and Constructicons had perpetrated this week.   
  
“Hey this looks like a Lorenz manifold!” Mark said, apropos of nothing, holding up the elaborately twisted and ruffled potato chip in question.  
  
“Yeah, not really,” Ben scoffed.  
  
“It’s close, dude,” Martin said, leaning around his widescreen monitor to ogle the chip.  
  
“So how do we know it’s not one of those other ones, the badasses, just dicking us around?” Ben said, looking pointedly at Glen because Maggie had slopped dip on her shirt and was wiping it off, which was distracting.   
  
“Even if it is, the equations so far have been working out,” Martin said.  
  
“The Decepticons wouldn’t help us,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “We’re target practice to them and that’s about it.”  
  
“Oh sure,” Ben continued. “And the Autobots are all sweetness and Boy Scouting. They could be dicking with us too. Leading the scientists the wrong way, keeping us stunted so they can control us easier.”  
  
Maggie didn’t bother rolling her eyes. Ben had been on about that before. Frequently. “I, for one, embrace our robotic overlords,” she said, taking another half-hearted swig of the last caramel Frap.   
  
“Uh, huh,” said Ben. “Would that be embrace in a literal sense?”  
  
“I’ve seen you snuggling with Jazz,” Glen said, mostly keeping the jealousy out of his voice.  
  
“Jazz is a very snuggly bot,” Maggie sniffed, very carefully not mentioning Hound and his fascinating talent with holograms. “However. No. And no. Talk about I/O port incompatibility!”  
  
“Somehow I get the feeling you would find a way to make that work for you,” Martin summoned the temerity to mutter. Maggie threw her mouse wrist-rest at him.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Borealis was enjoying herself immensely. Ixchel had been pursuing the right course in some things, but like the rest of human science, had made some interestingly incorrect assumptions about others. The universe, for one thing, was much older than humans thought, but it would be hard to explain why until they made several more advances. In any case, it was a vast temptation to reply to the forum queries, to explain just a little more, to join in all the clever jokes. But she had promised Prime to keep to a bare minimum. It was easier to make the rules for herself clear-cut. Post only the carefully chosen equations. Nothing else, and no more than one per week. And let the humans make of them what they would. It was no more than what they would have learned from Megatron if he hadn’t been revived.


	22. Sparring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Autobots take up the combat training of their newest cohort, the Twins express their affection for human weapons, and Prime makes like Indiana Jones.

2016 – August  
  
“This is ridiculous,” Cliffjumper muttered. “Ironhide was right. That’s the dumbest weapon mode I’ve ever seen.”  
  
“Maybe,” Arcee said. “But if she catches you with one of those things she’ll cut you right in half. Be careful, guys.”  
  
Borealis’ weapon mode involved twin blades like enormous scythes, mounted to the outside of her forearms near the elbow. They could pivot forward or 180 degrees back, locking at either position, and folded neatly into her arms when not in use. The outside edge along their entire length was atom-width sharp and energon-hot, as was a third of the inside length. Arcee was right – it wouldn’t take much strength for those blades to cut through even Cybertronian armor. Borealis, true to her size, was quite strong.   
  
Ironhide didn’t see much point in fielding anything against the Decepticons but guns, the bigger the better, and when she had first unfolded the blades he had stalked off, refusing to spar with someone who took combat so lightly she’d adapted her weapon mode idea from a Japanese comic book. He did, however, leave his latest combat programs for her in her personal file on Teletraan. She had downloaded them with no small trepidation, and even now the thought of implementing that programming made her tremble.   
  
“Feh, chicken, Cliffjumper?” Sideswipe taunted as he and Sunstreaker sauntered onto the cleared sparring area.   
  
“Don’t worry, kid, we’ll go easy on you,” Sunstreaker said, grinning as he powered up his lasers.   
  
Bumblebee, observing via Arcee, nearly protested, but kept his peace, waiting to see how it went. The Twins harried Borealis mercilessly, but did no particular damage. She was getting frustrated, unable to connect. Sink or swim, Bee thought. Maybe this would work. She was timid, and they needed battle-fire. He wasn’t happy about watching it, though.  
  
He could tell the moment she accessed the full program. Suddenly her movements became swift and efficient, and Sunny and Sides had to work to keep out of reach. She never connected during that first bout, but she wasn’t damaged either. The Twins really had been easy on her.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Her training proceeded thus for many weeks; all the smaller, agile bots going against her singly or, more often, in teams. It made sense since there weren’t many Cons who were her size, except the Constructicons; she was going to have to get used to small foes who could come at her in fast swarms. Her armor grew stronger with each hypersonic flight, so she could withstand quite a lot, and the small bots were making her faster, teaching her to track several targets at once, assessing the whole situation on the fly, orchestrating her moves to defend and attack at the same time.   
  
One day, she actually clipped Bumblebee with one of her blades. Two of his fingers went spinning out into the desert, sheared off so cleanly he didn’t even notice at first. Until Borealis gave a cry of remorse and retracted her blades, reaching out to scoop him up for a quick carry to the med-bay.  
  
Ironhide appeared out of nowhere, slamming into her before she got to Bee, plowing her head into the ground and standing on it. “NEVER STOP FIGHTING BECAUSE YOUR OPPONENT IS INJURED!” he roared.   
  
Bumblebee stared at his hand, flexing the two fingers still attached, and whistled. Jazz pointed him to where the missing digits had flown and he bounced out to retrieve them even as the pain impulses finally began hitting his CPU.   
  
“Yes, sir,” Borealis said in a tiny voice, staying where she was. Ironhide jumped down and stalked back inside the embassy.  
  
“Ironhide’s right, Lissi,” Jazz said, a little sadly.   
  
She raised her head to look at him for a moment, then let it fall to the dirt again. “And I was supposed to be the smart one. Damn.”  
  
Bumblebee thought of Skyfire and Perceptor, Autobots he’d heard of on Cybertron. Scientists, but good soldiers, both of them. Perceptor could make astonishing, nanometer-precise shots with his light cannon from incredible distances. The Seekers reserved a special and particular hatred for him. He was difficult to sneak up on and he had downed more Seekers than any other single mech. Skyfire packed more firepower than Ironhide himself. Even that geologist friend of Perceptor’s, Beachcomber, was handy in battle if he had to be, though he really didn’t like it. Bee wondered if any of them had heard Optimus’ message yet and were on their way to Earth. Borealis could benefit from their example, and maybe their advice, if they’d give it. Skyfire in particular would be perfect, she was almost his size.  
  
“Wish Skyfire was here,” Jazz said, and Bee laughed.  
  
“I do, too.” He hefted his fingers and saluted Jazz with his other hand. “She’s all yours until Ratchet gets me repaired.”  
  
“Yeah, well, tell Cliffjumper to get his bumper out here, then.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Great,” said Simmons, leaning over the railing of the mezzanine to watch as the Twins jogged past. “What are those two up to now?” They were heading outside, with rather disconcerting grins on their faces, and had what looked like big coils of braided steel in their hands. Epps and Lennox exchanged a look, and Epps casually took the end of his pen out of his mouth. Whatever the Twins were doing, it was bound to be interesting. Terrifying, maybe, but interesting. The two Rangers jumped up and ran down the stairs, Simmons right behind.  
  
Noticing their small human audience, Sunstreaker halted, crouching to put his face on a level with theirs. “You people have spent the last 100,000 years sitting around your little campfires doing almost nothing but dream up new and creative ways to kill each other. I  _like_  that in a species!” He stood and followed his brother out into the flat expanse of desert beyond the access road.  
  
“Somehow I don’t think that was meant to be flattering,” Simmons groused.  
  
Halting side by side, the Twins faced an extended bastion of the cliffs and canyons that sprawled to the north of the embassy mesa. The coils of braided steel they unlimbered turned out to be Cybertronian-sized bullwhips.   
  
“Oh Jesus,” Epps breathed. Simmons’ right hand made a reflexive movement as though he was going to cross himself, but suppressed it. The three humans backed up to what they hoped was a relatively safe distance - and put their hands over their ears.   
  
The Twins swung the whips in wide, slow circles; around the ground or over their heads, just getting a feel for how the supple lengths of steel were balanced, how they moved, how flippy the steel falls and poppers were. They had downloaded and analyzed every whip-cracking demonstration they could find, including – or maybe especially – those off BDSM sites; but nothing replaced learning the feel of a new weapon in your own hand. Ironhide reckoned they were wasting their time, but had helped them make the things. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe would try anything. You never knew.   
  
Sunstreaker brought his whip up sharply then down smoothly, forward toward the ground.  _CRAHKK!_  He didn’t hit anything, hadn’t been aiming, just wanted that mini sonic boom. The humans jumped. They’d been anticipating the sound, but the deeper tone and sheer volume were startling.   
  
Not to be outdone, Sideswipe swung up further, then shoved his hand forward and out. Putting too much power into it, though, he only succeeded in nailing himself both with the abortive crack and the recoil. “Ow! Slag!” He tried again while Sunstreaker snickered. It was more a matter of technique than brute force.   
  
Learning their way through most of the Australian and US competition named cracks reduced the cliff they faced to pock-marked ruin. Once they figured out the physics, they started inventing their own combinations. Lennox, Epps and Simmons watched for a couple of hours, duly horrified and fascinated, but they had other things to do and the Twins looked like they’d be at this for days, barring Decepticon attack.  
  
 _You two are a menace to sandstone,_  Ironhide – having driven Lennox home - commented via comm, checking on their progress and borrowing Sides’ optical feed.  _But as a mining technique I’d say it needs work._    
  
“Hey!” Sunstreaker protested. “Shut up, Mr. Cannon-Obsessive. Sir.”  
  
“Yeah, this is just the first trial.” Sides looked at his twin. “What do you figure?”  
  
“Shields at max?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The Twins faced each other, backing to the reach of their eight-meter-long whips.  _CRAHKK!_  
  
“What was that? A butterfly?”  
  
 _CRAHKK!_  
  
“You missed!”  
  
“I did not! Quit dodging!”  
  
 _CRAHKK!_  
  
“Bwahahahaha! Whoa, that was a low blow, even from you. Below the belt does not count, dude.”  
  
“Since when?”  
  
 _CRAHKK!_   _CRAHKK!_   _CRAHKK!_   _CRAHKK!_   _CRAHKK!_  
  
“Okay, we’re not even feeling this. I say we take shields down to 50%.”  
  
 _CRAHKK!_   _CRAHKK!_   _CRAHKK!_  
  
“Anything?”  
  
“Not really. Try forty percent.” The thing was, their personal shielding was designed to stop sudden impacts cold, both absorbing and distributing the force.   
  
 _CRAHKK!_  
  
Twenty-five percent. Ten percent. They abandoned shields altogether.  
  
 _CRAHKK!_  
  
“OW!! Hey, look at that…” Where the whip had struck, an elliptical area of dull grey was spreading over Sideswipe’s chameleon mesh. The armor directly beneath wasn’t dented, but the nanobots of the mesh had been deactivated. Temporarily or permanently, the Twins weren’t sure. Ratchet would probably laugh at them and kick them out of the repair bay. Sides shrugged and took aim at his brother again.  
  
 _CRAHKK!_  
  
“NOT THE FACE, SLAGGER!!!”  
  
Two weeks later, because there were more humans at the embassy this time, the Twins presented Prime with one of their whips, scaled up to match his size. The base emptied, surging outside to follow Prime and the Twins up to the rubble-strewn target range.   
  
“Old ‘Hide was right,” Sideswipe explained. “They suck as weapons. Getting hit hurts like slag but it doesn’t do much damage. We just wanted to see  _you_ do it!” He and Prime linked arm cables so Sideswipe could upload the somatic file on how to use the whip effectively.   
  
Sam, perched as usual on Bee’s shoulder, noticed how Optimus’ posture shifted subtly. For a brief moment, he stood with precisely the same attitude as Sideswipe. Retracting his cable, Sides backed off. Way off. Oh my god, Sam thought. Indiana Prime!  
  
As the Twins had done, Prime swung the whip gently around a few times, assessing the weight and feel. This was a much bigger whip - more than twice the size. Scale does matter. Making sure everyone was more than twenty meters away in all directions, he performed a classic Cattleman’s crack.  
  
 ** _TCHOOMM!!!_** Startled, Prime laughed, slapping his thigh with his free hand.  ** _TCHOOMM!!! TCHOOMM!!!_**  It wasn’t a whip-crack sound at all. It was thunder, close and threatening, booming through everyone’s bodies, flesh and metal alike, rattling teeth and CPUs. Jazz let Nellis AFB know that they weren’t under attack. Prime was just playing.  ** _TCHOOMM!!!_**  
  
With each crack the tassel-like popper lost two or three centimeters off the end – even the braided steel just couldn’t handle the forces involved. Wheeljack was already calculating what kind of materials in what physical composites would be required to withstand Prime’s strength. Jazz fully intended to dump video to YouTube the nanosecond Prime was done. Or the whip broke.  
  
 ** _TCHOOMM!!!_**  
  
 _Okay,_  Sideswipe tight-beamed his brother.  _I don’t want to get hit by that thing even WITH shields on max!_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Cliffjumper as usual hurled himself at Borealis head-on, but this time she smacked him to the ground and stepped on him, pinning him with her right foot while fending off fire from Prowl with her forearms and blades crossed in front of her face. Cliffjumper kept firing, hitting her undersides, which stung. She kicked him to one side and advanced on Prowl , even as Cliffjumper rolled through the fall and came back at her, nothing deterred even as badly dented as he was.  
  
“Perhaps it’s time you faced someone more your own size.”  
  
Prowl and Cliffjumper stopped and stepped back and lowered their weapons as Prime strode forward. Every Autobot at the base came out to watch, and a few who were elsewhere tuned in to their friends’ optical feeds.  
  
Borealis backed up, her arm blades swinging and locking in their defensive position. She did not want to fight Prime. She wasn’t sure she could make herself strike him, let alone open fire. She didn’t dare refuse, either.   
  
Stalling, she circled him, but faster than she thought possible he had his laser rifle out and firing. He kept it at low power, but the blasts knocked her off her feet if she didn’t dodge fast enough. Then as she was rolling frantically to face him again, he ran at her and closed the distance to melee range. The rifle retracted and the fist thus freed came at her fast. She got one arm up to block it, but the impact drove her back just as the laser blasts had. For a few minutes she thought to keep out of his way using evasive programs, but he knew his way around those too well, blocking her path no matter which way she ran, catching her in vulnerable spots bare-handed. She was discovering that with Cybertronians youth and strength didn’t necessarily go together, and age and treachery were well augmented with speed and power.  
  
After the fourth such sally, Prime had had enough.  
  
 **ENGAGE, BOREALIS! THAT’S AN ORDER!**  
  
She gave a squawk that sounded suspiciously like “ohshit!” Her arm blades swung forward and her canons powered up to 40 percent. She could have resisted the imperative, but a direct order from Prime was much easier to obey than not. Circling him, she tried to still the alarm bubbling up through her processors.   
  
He extended his sword. She knew she was in trouble.   
  
“Don’t look so worried,” he said, raising the sword in a kind of salute. “You have two blades, I should be allowed at least one, don’t you think?” In truth, he was worried. She hadn’t tried to fight back at all, was too flustered to even block properly, which he knew she was at least capable of, having watched her training with the others; and as a result he had damaged her worse than he’d intended for a simple sparring match. Ratchet was going to ream him a whole set of new and unnecessary input ports for this already. And he wouldn’t be gentle about it.  
  
He assumed a defensive stance, keeping very still. “Come on,” he coaxed softly. If he could get her to make the first move that would be something.   
  
He’s giving you a chance, stupid, she told herself and squared her shoulders. Leaping at him blades first, she used a combination of slashes that had worked well in keeping pairs of smaller bots at bay. Prime avoided the first strike and blocked the second with his sword, the disparate blades spitting sparks as they ground together, not quite edge-on. He caught her wrist as she swung the inside of the other blade at him. Getting inside her reach was a good tactic, but at least he could see she knew that was a vulnerability.   
  
She pulled free and leapt back, blades still forward. Good. “Again,” he said.   
  
“Now, use your jets!” he shouted, trying to encourage her. She was fast, could be faster if she could acquire the necessary coordination.   
  
“What?” She hadn’t thought of engaging her jet engines while in robot mode. It sounded very unstable. It was. She powered them up very slowly, fishing for the settings that would lift her feet off the ground, but not send her into the stratosphere. She wobbled all over, and could rarely get a strike in. But it was also unpredictable, and made her hard to hit. Optimus approved in principle; the execution needed work.   
  
She tried a few flybys, swiping at him, using her enormous reach to as much advantage as she could. Later there would come a time when she could sneak up on Decepticons and take the tops of their heads off before they knew she was in range, but that would be years ahead. Today she spent more time picking herself up off the dusty ground from crashes than she did in attacking or defending.  
  
“Enough, Borealis, let’s get you in to see Ratchet.” He helped her up and half supported her as she limped back to the hangar. He felt every dent on her himself, but was glad to feel her spark undimmed.  **You’re doing well against the smaller mechs and those in Ironhide’s size range, but we somehow need to get you more practice with people my size or larger. I’ve had messages from Ultra Magnus, but we need him where he is. Just wish I knew where Skyfire was, he’d be perfect.**    
  
This was hard. The thought of pitting this youngster against experienced, merciless warriors like the Seekers made his spark ache and his main CPU cycle with a weird, frantic pattern he hadn’t suffered since the beginning of the war. The revisitation of the raw, open wound of those emotions was not welcome.   
  
She would be a match for the Seekers in atmospheric speed, but they were more maneuverable and carried more ordnance. No form of solid projectile was feasible; the melted shells would just splatter over her forward armor. He’d have to ask Wheeljack to come up with something, preferably stable enough to be safe. Well, the targeting augmentation he was already working on looked promising. If that worked out, she could attack air to ground or air to air at such ranges her targets would literally not know what hit them.   
  
 _Bee’s mentioned him. Big, heavily-armed shuttle, he said._  She had to admit she wanted to meet him, herself. He sounded sexy as all outdoors. And then she hoped none of that inner commentary had gotten transmitted.   
  
Prime gave no sign either way, and they went inside to the med-bay to face Ratchet’s wrath.


	23. Up To No Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mirage and Epps are testing a new toy, Epps leaves a present for the 'Cons, and Long Haul has a close encounter.

2016 - September  
  
Mirage hunkered down behind the rocks. “If you have second thoughts, now’s the time to say so.”  
  
Epps grinned and shook his head. He knew what Mirage really meant. It wasn’t the number of Decepticons below that concerned him. “Bumblebee said you’re a good guy. That’s a high rec in my book.”  
  
Mirage’s optics twinkled before he faded from sight. “Then, as you would say, let’s do this thing.”  
  
Epps keyed the activation sequence on his imperial new clothes and also disappeared from view. They were testing a new technology; new to humans, anyway. Once Mirage had learned that the humans were close in theory and almost close in experiments to a form of cloaking, he had asked and been given permission to enlist Wheeljack’s help in creating a device similar to his own system, scaled to fit individual humans.   
  
Though Sector 7 in general, and Agent Simmons in particular (before encounters with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee had washed away a sizable part of his cynicism) had been fond of claiming the roots of all modern human technology from reverse-engineering Megatron’s frozen body, Mirage felt that there was plenty of evidence that humans had figured out some important things about the universe prior to Megatron’s discovery, and that they had progressed with their gleaned Cybertronian jump-start astonishingly quickly, even by their own limited organic time scale. Mirage wasn’t as fond of humans and Earth as Hound was, but he felt they deserved a lot more credit than S7 and others had given them.  
  
Epps had volunteered to help test it. Mirage had been concerned at first.  
  
“Won’t your spouse object? You have children. This could be dangerous.”  
  
“My lady, she knew what I was into when she met me. She don’t ask me what kinda trouble I get into, and I promise to absolutely not do anything too stupid and to come home just as soon as I can.”  
  
Mirage had nodded and they had proceeded.  
  
Now they prepared to sneak into a Decepticon base, just look around the perimeter, not too deep. They needed to know if the human model would stand up to at least casual Decepticon scans.   
  
They picked their way down the bluff, careful not to raise any dust or dislodge pebbles. Or, in Mirage’s case, boulders. Their route was preplanned, based on intelligence Mirage had gathered earlier. Once invisible they couldn’t see each other. Hound could track them, but he was the next ridge back, keeping out of sight the old fashioned way. And they didn’t want to risk even coded transmission this close to the Decepticon base. Not with the Constructicons down there, at least one of whom had excellent scanners, even if they were usually employed in assaying raw materials for building.   
  
Epps proceeded more or less directly ahead, cautiously and slowly approaching the edge of the metal overlay delineating the boundary of the base, while Mirage ranged in widening circles, keeping a sharp watch on both Epps’ calculated position, and on any Decepticons who might appear. Their first real test, though, would be the auto-turrets spaced at intervals around the perimeter.   
  
For that reason, Optimus had authorized the loan of a small shielding unit. The Autobot leader was not sanguine about giving that particular technology wholesale to the humans, but it would at least prevent the fragile and flammable Epps from being fried on the spot by a single shot from Decepticon cannons. He was also armed with what Ironhide called a pop-gun, but which fired plasma shells that were about a hundred times more effective than Sabot rounds. Epps liked this gun very, very much.  
  
The cloaking suit also provided some sound dampening, Epps found. When visible, it was composed of a lacy network of thin bands of white metal, studded with small emitter nodules. Made him look like an all around ninja master from outer space. Although if he hadn’t been wearing ordinary fatigues underneath, he’d feel more like that freaky Xerxes guy from 300, only without all the piercings.   
  
He put one foot on the metal plating that paved the base in Cybertronian manner. Then the other foot. The automatic turrets didn’t even twitch. First phase accomplished. Moving into the shadow of the nearest turret, he began the next phase. Sighs of relief could come later, after he was safely back at the Autobot hangar.  
  
They had approached from what was essentially the back side, so to Epps’ left at a distance of about a hundred meters was a relatively small structure Mirage thought was probably a storage facility. Epps made for it quickly and quietly. The sound dampening system could only do so much and it would be silly to blow the mission over too-loud footfalls or heavy breathing. It was more difficult to stifle his inclination to laugh, though, as he patted the pocket where a special item was stashed. A little present for the Decepticons.  
  
He froze against the side of the building as two Decepticons emerged from another structure several hundreds of meters away – far but with a full view of where he was. Jets, Epps thought. What the Autobots called Seekers – of the same general body plan as that bastard Starscream. They were conversing in Cybertronian, so he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they paid no attention to his direction as they traversed an open area and then took off from a standstill, kicking in their engines before they’d even transformed to jet mode. That was pretty impressive. Like Harriers with legs. They were out of sight in a handful of seconds.   
  
Epps released the breath he’d been holding and scooted around the corner. There had to be a door here somewhere. Around the next corner, the farthest from his starting point as possible, he found it. As he neared the closed portal, an alien panel resembling a keypad blipped and chirped by itself and the door slid open. Mirage had come around the other way. They both slipped inside, Mirage careful to wait several seconds so as not to step on the human. He closed the door behind them once he was certain it wouldn’t lock them in. He left a blast strip on the leading edge before it shut completely, just in case.   
  
Storage, as they thought. But Epps couldn’t identify anything in there, aside from a scattering of open containers which were mostly full of unidentifiable hunks of machined metal. Yep, he knew boxes when he saw them, but other than that? He had nothing. Nevertheless, he slipped a hand into his pocket and drew out the object he’d been saving. While still in his hand it was as invisible as the rest of him. Once he set it on a handy flat surface as far up as he could reach and let go of it, though, it became visible again.   
  
Mirage knew better, but he made a brief, low strangled sound that somewhat resembled a chortle.   
  
His present in place, Epps made his retreat, waiting only for Mirage to key open the door. The door obligingly opened and they exited cleanly, heading directly back to their insertion point, and from there back to where Hound was hidden, waiting for them.   
  
Mirage waited until they had found Hound and disengaged their cloaks, and then collapsed next to his friend, laughing. “Starscream’s going to melt a hard drive when he sees that! Where on Earth did you get that, Epps?”  
  
“We’re still a little close,” Hound pointed out, even though he wanted to know what was so funny. They agreed, so Hound and Mirage transformed, Epps jumped into Mirage’s driver seat, and they all sped away, on course for home though it would take a couple of days to get there.   
  
“All right, now give,” Hound said over the radio, out on the open highway. Jeep and Bugatti Veyron, side by side until they encountered traffic, when the Veyron would fall back and let the Jeep lead. Mirage chirped him an image of what Epps had left behind.  
  
“What the…where on…all right, Mir already said that. Go on, Epps.”  
  
Laughing as much at the Autobots’ reaction as the imagined fallout once the item, or rather items, were discovered by the Decepticons, Epps controlled himself enough to explain. “All right, I got the idea from my oldest kid. She collects these dolls, they all have arms that hug on each other, and all that. Okay, and then down at the mall the other day I seen these soft toys, these plushes people are making modeled after you guys and the Cons – and don’t be asking me why the ‘Cons are so popular, man, ‘cause I don’t know, okay? People do crazy shit, all right? So I got me a couple of those plushes, like you saw: Megatron and Starscream; and I get my wife to put little Velcro deals on they hands, like the hugging dolls.”  
  
Mirage and Hound were beside themselves, positively howling, Hound sounding almost like his namesake. It was a wonder they could keep on the road.  
  
“And a pink frilly apron on Starscream.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“‘Bring us the gyropulse pod,’” Long Haul muttered. “‘We’re out of articulated vacuum warp spheres, go get more from storage.’ They can get their own Pit-cursed gyropulse pod. I didn’t join this outfit to be their servant.” He punched the opening code with more force than necessary, though to his disappointment the lock didn’t short out.   
  
Inside, as he reached for the warp spheres, something else caught his optics. There were no traces of energy signatures to tell who had put them there; besides the muddled ones common to anywhere several people went repeatedly over time. That in itself was a little odd, but Long Haul didn’t really care that much. He secreted the items in a cache on his torso, collected the things he’d been sent to get and closed the door behind him as he left.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Starscream loomed at him, optics a deeper red than usual. “What. Is. That.”  
  
Long Haul paused in his three point turn but gave no other sign of comprehension. “Huh? What is what?” Starscream was powering up a laser, so Long Haul decided it would be wiser – not to mention less painful – to remove the ornament from his rearview mirror before the Seeker shot it off in situ. Executing a neat bit of transformation, he plucked the item from his cab before the space of the cab collapsed into his torso. “I found it,” he said defensively. As if not having made it himself would somehow save him. Nor would it help to point out that he’d had the thing up there for two weeks, much to the amusement of his teammates, before any of the Seekers, let alone Starscream, had bothered to notice.  
  
“Megatron is dead. Destroy it,” Starscream said, his voice low, attempting to remain calm. “Or I will. Now. Either you’re lying or we have a security breach. If the latter, someone had best find out how, hadn’t they.” The other Structies shuffled around and didn’t look at Long Haul.  
  
“Yes, Lord Starscream,” Long Haul said. “I found it in storage shed 3-2-1427. I’ll search for signs of filthy Autobot incursion there.” He closed his hand around the dolls, making a show of clenching his fist. The dolls were so small, of course, and made of squishable materials, that, aside from a little wrinkling, they were completely unharmed. Long Haul turned and trundled away with his teammates, heading toward the storage unit to make it look like they were going to investigate the security breach.   
  
It had never really mattered to the Structies who was in charge of the Decepticons. They took more or less the same abuse or use. Meanwhile they got to build stuff. Their disagreement with Prime was therefore an old one, predating the war. Optimus Prime didn’t think they had the right to spread their civilization throughout their galaxy, not if there were sentient life forms sharing it who might object. Megatron at least had the right idea. All sensible civilizations wanted their own galactic empires when they grew up. Who wouldn’t want the energy resources of an entire galaxy at their servo-tips? Imagine what you could build with that much raw material.   
  
Of course, at this point the war had pretty much slagged everything all to the Pit.   
  
Meanwhile, Long Haul cached the dolls again, tight-beaming his teammates as he did so, and they began debating the best hiding places immediately. They would enshrine the dolls somewhere, somewhere the Seekers would never look, maybe couldn’t even get into. Underground, for starters.


	24. Nemesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Borealis is confronted by a very basic fear, and fails, thereby learning what happens to Cybertronian bodies in deep water, but is comforted by Ratchet.

  
_We’ll see how brave you are  
We’ll see how fast you’ll be running _  
\--Tori Amos,  _Yes Anastasia_  


  
  
2016 – November  
  
 _Prime! I found them!_  She stayed high and distant, just watching as usual, following orders. Well, she wasn’t good for more than that anyway. Prime and Ratchet hadn’t cleared her for front line combat yet. She wasn’t sure what they were waiting for, but she was even less sure she wanted any part of it.   
  
Two Seekers, heading for Denver, flicking radar off their shoulders all negligent and contemptuous. Gods of the limitless sky. (They’d made a species of organics worship them once, long ago, and still liked the flavor.)   
  
It didn’t matter what they were after this time, it was rare enough to catch them before they’d done anything. The Autobots hated having to only react, not act, to follow the paths of destruction. Not that helping rebuild was unworthy, but it would have been better not to have to in the first place. Prime didn’t want to miss any opportunity to prevent damage before it happened. The USAF was well motivated to assist. They launched their own squadrons, but even loaded with Sabot rounds and backed up by MEADS brigades, they were vulnerable to plasma and high-energy laser return fire. The humans had come far, but not far enough. So the big carrier jets were ready to go at a moment’s notice, to ferry the wheeled defenders anywhere within hours. The surveillance networks around the planet had grown very swiftly, but it still wasn’t a bad thing to have Borealis in the air as often and for as long as possible, keeping watch.   
  
She circled around, keeping Denver in the center of a hundred mile radius. Something, a third contact, scratched across the edges of her sensors. It wasn’t familiar, exactly, other than being of Cybertronian origin, which under the circumstances boded ill. The only Cybertronians in the air besides herself – and whether she was really Cybertronian was debatable – were Decepticons. Jazz took the trace from her and narrowed it down, clarifying, defragging, enhancing the signal, hacking the frequency, and there it was.   
  
A voice, which meant a name, a cruel-edged form, red eyed face far above her, and a screeching that clawed at her delicate eardrums.   
  
She was halfway to the Pacific, Autobots shouting over tight-beam and the open channel, before she realized what she was doing. And even then it was still imperative that she get away, far away, away and hide, some place he wouldn’t find her this time, and she retained enough sense to know that up was the wrong direction. There was only so much up, with the engines she had, so down would have to do it, even though down seemed like a bad idea too somehow, burrow rather than tree; an odd thing to think, but it was thought by that odd section of her main processor. She was vaguely aware of all that, even as she fled, too terrified to scream. Screaming wouldn’t help, it only attracted attention.   
  
She had to find a hole, something big enough to hide in, something not open to the sky, something that would block sensors. Maybe the ocean, if she could get deep enough, no reason she couldn’t, now that she thought about it. Down to the rippling blue, out here wherever she was, and it was almost night – she would be hard to see in this light, even without shields. Down and slow, although she didn’t want to be slow, she wanted to be fast, but she could never be fast enough to get away from him, so she had to hide, it was the only way.   
  
Down, down, and oh dammit this was going to be worse than landing. No help for it. All else failed she could transform and just drop. Or maybe that was the better idea anyway.   
  
It was a hard slap, breaking the surface. Bubbles and steam frothed around her, changing the density of the water and she fell as though she was in air, all the flared planes that were flight surfaces when she was a jet weren’t enough drag now, not in this form. After some distance, the water collected itself around her, dark and cold, colder than she had ever been, she thought. She wondered if that was bad, or just new.  
  
The point was, he wouldn’t come down here after her. She was more certain of that than of anything else that entire day. He could follow, if he really wanted to, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t like it down here. And oh dear, where was the bottom, anyway? Because it looked like she was going to find out. How deep in mud would she sink? Maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Would her engines work underwater?  
  
They did. Interesting. She wasn’t entirely an air-breathing jet, after all. Now that she was down in the dark and cold, all she needed was neutral buoyancy, which was an odd concept but she had understood it very well, once. She had known what it felt like, so she tuned her power output, fishing for that feeling again.   
  
There was still yelling over the channels, but faint, and easy to ignore. She could float here, flow here for a long time, she realized. Well, hours. And then she’d have to recharge. But she could listen for whales and things until then. Would they come near her, as she was? Would they look small to her scanners? Could she pet them? Maybe the engine noise would scare them off, though. Except she couldn’t turn the engines off or she’d sink all the way down, and she didn’t want to do that. She’d have to listen for whales from a distance, then, and try not to think about what she could do, should do when the time came when she had to recharge.   
  
The yelling died down, and eventually stopped. She could hear whales more clearly now that she wasn’t actively tuning something else out. Something other than her own engine noise, anyway. That she did automatically; there was an algorithm for it, so she didn’t have to notice them at all unless something was wrong, in which case the noise would be different, the delta would show up and flag itself in her awareness. That was a good thing, although it had never happened, it was good to know she’d been programmed that way, to notice if something went wrong. It was convenient to be able to sense those things so you could get them fixed before anything went really wrong. That was best.   
  
 **Borealis.**  
  
Oh. Oops. There were things she couldn’t ignore. Awareness of what she’d done, or not done, came crashing around her. She wanted to let herself sink, and be lost in the mud. Well, no. That would be fairly awful, she suspected. Another embarrassing way to be deactivated. She should write a book.   
  
Yet how could she go back? She didn’t want to sink, but she really didn’t want to face Prime and the others. Except she couldn’t not go back, either. Nowhere else to go. Nowhere safe.   
  
 **Borealis.**  
  
It was only a subroutine, thank goodness. She could tell his main attention was elsewhere. The elsewhere she should have been if she hadn’t turned tail and run off, panicked. Just because  _he_  showed up, and dammit she could think the name, it wasn’t that hard. Not even hard on the spelling senses, the aesthetics, like Voldythingy. Just another compound word, like a lot of their names rendered into English tended to be. Starscream, dammit. It’s even one of the sillier translations. Jeez.   
  
The longer you draw this out, emo kid, she thought; the worse you’re going to feel, the stupider you’re going to feel. She knew they’d be nice about it, the rest of the Autobots. They weren’t actively cruel, only some of them thoughtlessly so. Or maybe her definition of cruel was skewed somehow. That could be it. And here she was, still not answering that simple, calm, gentle query from Prime. His harmonics bore no trace of anger. Sadness maybe, now that she replayed the transmissions.   
  
She tried to respond with an apology, casting through her muddled memory for the most polite glyphs she’d ever learned from Mirage. What sent itself across the commlines was more like an incoherent whimper.  
  
 **There you are…**  which weren’t the words he used – that was the tone of the answering ping. Relief, mostly, untinted by accusation. Weariness. Prime always had threads of that, though. He tried to hide it, but everyone could feel it, they were all so close.  **Come back, Borealis. It’s safe. Come back to the embassy.**  
  
 _I’m sorry!_  she wailed. She had no tears to shed in remorse, she thought she’d gotten over trying to.   
  
 **Hush! It’s all right. Come back. No one blames you, Little Bird.**  And it was true. Ironhide had been enraged for about three seconds, until he realized who had joined his wingmates, and then not even the gruff old warrior could fail to understand why their youngest bot had panicked and bugged out. It was hard to confront someone who had killed you, and Borealis was nothing like a seasoned soldier. That kind of slack Ironhide knew how to give.   
  
Unfortunately, by this time Borealis realized she didn’t have enough fuel to make it all the way back to Nevada. She relayed this to Prime.  _I’m going to fly as far as I can…I’m heading for the surface now._  Their transmissions gained clarity as she emerged into air and transformed.  _I think I can make the California coast, or at least the continental shelf.  
  
Try to push for the coast,_ Ratchet said, not wanting to frighten her again, but knowing that if she recharged underwater the cold would make the process take even longer and the currents down there might sweep her body somewhere hazardous while she was unconscious. He wasn’t sure where that would be, since even volcanic vents weren’t more than pleasantly warm to them, but ocean floors were strange territory to the Cybertronians. Who knew what kind of trouble might be down there.  _Looks like you’ll have the tide in your favor, just find some rocks and hang on when you go into recharge._  He’d alert the local authorities once she reached land, and they could keep the curious or the nefarious among humans at bay. The Cons had been sent away with their tailfins between their legs, so that was all right.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Charlie watched the waves break, glowing faintly like pearls. The sunlight from behind him was still blocked for a good way out by the cliffs. “Not a mermaid,” he said. Robert, leaning on their patrol car at the side of the highway, snorted.   
  
The robot had washed ashore onto the rocks the night before, but they had gotten word that it wasn’t dead, so they weren’t to call the Navy to come and cart it off to wherever the Navy said they were taking dead robots these days. It was big. “Fucking huge,” was the indelicate way Robert had put it. Big and gleaming black in the spray, and it was hard to make out limbs in all its complex geometries, let alone a face, though he was pretty sure that was a hand flung over one of the larger boulders beneath where he was standing. The path at his feet led down to a scattering of small tide pools. Only a handful of biologists bothered to go down there, usually. There was no beach and the trail wasn’t long enough to attract hikers. Charlie wondered if the robot had short-circuited or something in the salt water.   
  
It was well into morning by the time direct sunlight shone on the robot. Charlie could finally see that it wasn’t black, but very dark blue. Navy blue, he supposed. There was a sort of hum in the air, maybe it had been there all along, just too quiet to be heard over the roar of the waves, but now he could hear it, rising in pitch slightly and maybe that’s what had brought it to his attention. Two bright blue lights came on as it lifted its head, pushing itself up on its arms.  
  
It looked right at him.   
  
“Jesus!” said Robert.   
  
“Morning,” said the robot, sounding exactly like someone who’d just woken up way earlier than they wanted to. It got to its feet slowly, careful on the uneven terrain, but now that it was upright the waves didn’t even reach its knees. Or whatever they were called. They looked more or less like knees, up above the surging foam. Damn this thing was tall!  
  
“Good morning,” Charlie said. “Are you okay?” It didn’t look like it was sparking anywhere, didn’t have chunks of anything hanging by cables, or frayed wires dangling anywhere, but you never knew.   
  
“Yes,” the robot said. “Thank you. Please cover your ears. And you might want to step back a ways from the edge there, sir.”   
  
“Jesus!” Robert said again. Charlie moved back to stand beside him at the patrol car. They both clapped their hands over their ears, as two big engines on the robot’s back – like jet engines, only science fiction jets or rockets or X-wing fighter engines or something – roared to life. They lifted the robot into the air, slowly, like the space shuttle.   
  
Then the robot extended its arms together in front of its chest, its body flipping around, legs going he couldn’t follow where and the robot turned into some kind of stealth jet – and it was gone. Over the horizon as soon as it had reached a safe altitude.  
  
“Wow,” said Robert.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The heat of the air calmed her. She walked into the hangar ready to accept whatever consequences Prime or Ironhide would mete out. She was not prepared for Ratchet to come barreling out of the med bay to tackle her before she’d gotten three steps inside. The hangar was conspicuously empty of everyone else.  
  
 _What, no white feather?_  She patted Ratchet’s back, at a loss.   
  
 _Don’t think that!_  he growled, sounding remarkably like Ironhide. He drew away, glaring up at her. “That wasn’t enough recharge, and you need to refuel.” He pointed toward the recharge bay. “Go.”   
  
“But—”  
  
 _No. This was as much my fault as yours. We should have thought to prepare you to encounter Starscream again. When you’re back online, ping Smokescreen. He’s been trained in psychology, particularly battlefield psychology.  
  
Like that guy on M*A*S*H. Dr. Sidney.  
  
What? Oh. Yes.   
  
Does he talk with Prowl?  
  
Indeed he does. Extensively._ Over games of chess, at which Prowl always beat Smokescreen with such thoroughness Ratchet sometimes wondered if Smokescreen himself didn’t have some wires crossed. Ratchet did understand that their games had a different, deliberate purpose, but when checkmate came two or three moves in it seemed like they would be better off choosing something with more of an element of chance.   
  
 _Okay._  Feeling oddly unbalanced by the lack of reprimand, she obeyed.


	25. Fishing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation between Keller and Optimus. Maybe slightly depressing. ^^;

2016 – late autumn  
  
John Keller cast his line, enjoying the motion, the quiet, the freedom of the cool morning alone with the birds above and the sleepy fish below. Even if that freedom was illusory. There were security personnel stationed around the perimeter of the property, but none in sight, none in voice range except by phone, and even that device was set to only accept emergency calls from a short list of numbers.   
  
Pale sunlight rippled on the water. The breeze brought with it the earthy smells of trees and dry grass, falling leaves, moss and the cool damp scent of the water itself. The old folding chair was better padded now than it used to be, to ease his older bones, but he was warm and comfortable, and sipped his coffee occasionally with a deep satisfaction. The sky was blue, the water bright, it was a crisp morning in the mountains, and there in the trees to his right he saw a giant alien robot moving silently toward him.  
  
“Morning, Optimus,” he said, smiling. It still amazed him that someone so huge could move so quietly. He must have stealthed his way past the bodyguards, but that didn’t bother Keller as much as he supposed it ought to.   
  
“Good morning, John. Catch anything?”  
  
“I’ve had good luck so far – haven’t caught a thing.”  
  
Optimus approached, stopping before he overshadowed the pond, and knelt. Keller was ready to explain the seeming contradiction, but he guessed Optimus was accessing the internet, or had already figured it out for himself. Funny how the Autobots often understood human cultures better than most humans did. “So to what do I owe this visit?” he asked, looking up and up at the gleaming blue helmet. The battle mask was withdrawn, so there wasn’t any imminent danger.  
  
“Decepticon activity seven miles to the north. Ironhide and his team are handling it. I am…merely monitoring.”   
  
And guarding me, Keller thought. Optimus had no doubt hacked the government computers – gently of course, and in some way even Maggie couldn’t trace – to find out where he’d be today. Or Keller’s cell phone, or his wife’s. He smiled, not ungrateful, but it was interesting how he didn’t feel threatened by this technological superiority. It filled him with wonder instead; he was glad a lifetime in politics and working with the military hadn’t made him too cynical to be delighted to be watched over by a benign giant robot. The little boy in him danced with glee.  
  
“Welcome to my job,” he said.   
  
Optimus chuckled quietly. Keller wondered if that was something native to his species as well, or was it just another adaptation to make their interactions with humans work more smoothly. He didn’t think it was a bad thing, if the latter. Prime certainly understood the function of laughter so well as to make no difference when it came right down to it.   
  
They were silent for a while, enjoying the morning. Keller recast his line, only paying enough attention to avoid tangling it in the cattails off to his left. “You ever go fishing, back on your home planet? Before the war?” something made Keller ask, hoping it wouldn’t bring up painful memories, and then wondering at himself being worried about the emotions of a robot. Ah, but they were emotional, these robots. Very much so.  
  
“Fishing? No. There was very little free water on Cybertron, not even in the Rust Sea. Some people used to hunt turbo-foxes or silicon worms; mostly for sport but also to keep them from destroying property. I never had time.”  
  
“Ah yes. You were…built as a Prime, do I have that right? Half of the ruling diad?”  
  
“Correct.”  
  
Keller didn’t want to follow that thought any further. “Did you have any leisure activities at all? Official social functions and the like?”  
  
“Yes. We share many of the same arts, though the media differed. Music, dance, sculpture gardens, broadcast entertainments over various frequencies. I suppose you could call them multimedia.”   
  
Keller smiled. “I bet. Any of that left?” An Autobot art show, he thought. Wouldn’t that cause a sensation!  
  
Prime looked at him sadly, then away. The slender shutters over his optics moving in the way that Keller thought of as blinking. “Very little. I don’t want to believe that everything was destroyed and all our artists killed, but when this war is over we will have to start again from very small scraps.”  
  
Keller did some blinking of his own. Optimus’ voice was heartbreakingly expressive.   
  
He cleared his throat and reeled the line in a few turns. “How many of you are left? I know you’ve said before that it was hard to tell after you all scattered. I’m just curious. How many do you think are out there?” The press had asked this innumerable times, and Prime’s answers were always firmly vague.  
  
“Would you take it as a compliment that I consider humans as a species enough of a danger that I’d rather not say?”  
  
“As Sec Def, yes I would. And I wouldn’t assume that means there are only a handful of you. Besides, we have enough trouble with a dozen Decepticons down here – any more than that is certainly more than I’d want to have to deal with."  
  
Optimus smiled, or something like it. “There are more Autobots than twelve.”  
  
“Well I know that. There are at least a dozen of you just at the Nevada base.”  
  
“There are more of us out there.” Optimus looked upward, as though counting. As though he could see or hear them; and maybe he could. Keller was certain Optimus and the other ‘Bots had capabilities they hadn’t revealed to humankind.  
  
Optimus looked at him, taking in Keller’s speculative expression. He put a hand to his massive chest. “I can…feel them,” he said, nodding, knowing the human suspected as much. “In the part of my spark that is the Allspark, I can feel their sparks, their lives. It isn’t so specific a feeling as you might imagine.”  
  
“That’s probably just as well, isn’t it?”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
Keller felt a pulse in the air, not something he could hear, just an odd itch in his bones.   
  
“There are fewer than a thousand individuals in each faction,” Optimus said softly, and Keller knew that no surveillance equipment in the world could overhear or see them right now.  
  
“How many were there on Cybertron before the war?” He reeled in his line a little more, knowing they were treading grim ground.  
  
“On Cybertron and her two major moons, before the war, before we were flung from our sun’s orbit, there were three billion of us. Our population was carefully controlled.”  
  
Keller closed his eyes. Even compared with Earth’s most brutal and continuous wars, comprehending such massive casualties was difficult. And painful. Their war had driven their ancient, long-peaceful species to near extinction. What hope was there, then, for his young, argumentative one? “Not…not a lot of turnover, I imagine. You guys are immortal, more or less. By our standards.”   
  
“By your standards. There were occasional accidents. We, no less than you, are a curious species.”  
  
“Wheeljack.”  
  
Optimus laughed. “And the Twins. I am often amazed that they are still functional.”  
  
“I don’t envy you there.”  
  
“Hrm.”  
  
“Optimus, thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome, John.”


	26. Interlewd: Moonlight Samba

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Jazz and Optimus make love under the stars, and with Ratchet's complicity increase the Autobot population by one. :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from "Blood of Eden" by Peter Gabriel.

2016 – December  
  
Scampering up to the mesa top, Jazz sang an old Nat King Cole song to himself. The stars were bright, the cold desert air lucent and windy, invigorating. And there was Prime, as Prowl had told him. Stretched out on his back on the weathered stone, gazing skyward, hands clasped behind his helm, one knee drawn slightly up, the other long, long leg extended. Starlight gleamed along the complex planes of his freshly polished armor, and struck faint rainbows only Jazz could see off his baseline shielding.   
  
Jazz forgot what he’d come up here intending to do.   
  
 **Evening, Jazz,**  Optimus rumbled companionably. Jazz pulled himself out of his daze.   
  
His plans and playlists were in disorder. He wanted to climb on top of Optimus and… No, there needed to be words first.  _Evening, Optimus,_  he finally said. Even sounded nonchalant, he thought. He retracted his toes and skated a long ellipse around Optimus, admiring him from every angle. The cool night breeze through his heated body felt so nice he spun out another circle, dancing long, graceful arcs like a baroque frame about his leader – the Allspark-bearer. Another song threaded across the imaginary surfaces of his CPU.  
  


_I caught sight of my reflection_  
I caught it in the window  
I saw the darkness in my heart  
I saw the signs of my undoing  
They had been there from the start

  
  
Optimus watched him, optics bright, amused. Jazz wasn’t usually this circuitous. When he was, though, it was best to let him get around to the point in his own way, in his own time.   
  
Completing his circle, Jazz did a triple axel and slid toward the center of his longing. Optimus moved an arm to let him near. Jazz curled across Prime’s body and Optimus put his arm around him, snugging him close, though his optics for the moment were again focused on the stars. Jazz rested his head on Optimus’ chest, with difficulty keeping himself from reaching for the central seam.   
  


My grip is surely slipping  
I think I've lost my hold  
Yes I think I've lost my hold  
I cannot get insurance any more

_  
  
Optimus?_  He had no reason to be hesitant, really. There was only the small matter of the fact that Prime would be left inoperative for at least a day. That was risky, but they’d just handed the Decepticons a good trouncing, so they should be quiet long enough for Jazz’s purposes. Optimus watched him silently, waiting.  
  
 _Optimus, I want to make a new spark with you._  The idea both turned him on and terrified him. It was new and exciting…well, technically the process was incredibly ancient. New to living memory. This wasn’t gently stroking each other with their sparks’ coronae. This was spinning out a vital part of yourself and  _breaking it off_  to meld with a part of someone else. And that part of Optimus was also part of the Allspark.  
  
Jazz acknowledged the fear that the Allspark might change its…mind…and draw him back inside where he belonged. Harder to accept was the idea that a part of him wanted it to.   
  


_At my request you take me in_  
In that tenderness I am floating away  
No certainty, nothing to rely on  
Holding still for a moment  
What a moment this is  
Oh for a moment of forgetting  
A moment of bliss

  
  
Optimus sat up, holding Jazz, repositioning him as he moved, so that the small bot stood on his legs. He wrapped both arms completely around Jazz, resting his cheek guard atop Jazz’s helm.  **Are you certain?**  
  
 _Ratchet has a tank and protomass set up already. And Red confirms we have a window of no observation from overhead._  Jazz looked into Optimus’ optics, stretching up to touch forehelms.  _And you? Need to take a nap. Have you recharged in the last six months at all? It’s freaking us out._  
  
 **I see.**    
  
Jazz noted the conspicuous lack of denial. He brushed his fingers over his midsection, where phantom impulses of pain still jarred him now and then. _ _Besides, I want to. I have to know what it feels like._  
  
_

I can hear the distant thunder  
Of a million unheard souls  
Of a million unheard souls  
Watch each one reach for creature comfort  
For the filling of their holes

  
  
Optimus nodded. He was merely considering logistics.  **If we stay here, one of us must bring the new spark down to Ratchet. Or we can go down now.**  
  
 _No. Here. Under the stars._  
  
 **Very well.**  
  
Jazz felt the heat as Optimus spun his massive spark faster in preparation. Ports opened, cables extended, connections locked into place. Jazz indulged in a last wild flurry of doubts and what-ifs, before mastering himself and sinking into the link. Every possibility lay before his mental fingertips, his CPU was geared for light-swift probabilistic analysis. The familiar blaze of power from Optimus warmed him from within, making him faster, stronger, more adept. They deepened the merge, their concern, old affection, new fears and hopes, shared in an instant, dealt with and set aside. Jazz wasn’t Ratchet, he didn’t approach this with the same medical detachment. This time it wasn’t Prime’s directive, it was Jazz’s desire.  
  
 _Mmm, Optimus…_  He nibbled at Prime’s mandibular hinge, across jaw spikes, down to the massive cables and fuel lines in his neck, pulsing EM waves through Prime’s body. Soaring glyphs and melodies expressed Jazz’s delight, watching Prime’s optics flicker, hearing Prime’s moans, feeling Prime tremble and writhe beneath him, clawing furrows in the rock. Jazz’s hands were busy.   
  
Love and longing, honor and awe tempered by irrepressible humor surged through the cables; aimed not at the Prime, but at Optimus as an individual – inseparable from himself as Prime, he had been built as a Prime, yet Jazz had somehow learned, over mere centuries long ago, to sense a distinction. Had perhaps created a distinction. Or maybe there truly was a whisper of his original, unalloyed spark, along with the strength he’d gained as a person, in the face of everything he subsumed to be the Prime. Love and fear, for there were dark memories, too. Optimus was the first face, first hand, first voice to touch him when he awoke to find himself alive again. Ratchet had repaired his body, but Optimus had renewed the cinder of his spark. It was strange. Jazz understood, perhaps better than anyone else including Prime, the depths of the changes Optimus had effected on himself.  
  
Humming loudly, Optimus gave a tectonic shudder. Jazz knew how to push his buttons. Every glyph and touch was a song, accompanied by powerful fields that pulled at his substance in the way Jazz himself pulled at his spark. Optimus would have laughed if he’d had any cycles to spare for it, as Jazz took charge of the merge. Prime was still determined to channel the power backlash, drawing the lightning to himself as much as he could. As much as Jazz would let him, he realized. They opened their chests.   
  
Engulfed in radiance, existential terror struck Jazz, but only for a second. He held on tight, fighting himself, struggling to regain the plane of concentration they needed. Prime’s hands moved around him, stroking his body, soothing and inflaming at the same time. The cables between them grew hot with the speed of the datastream. They sank deeper, past any hope of firewalls or quantum encryption, nothing between their selves but the fleeting mathematics of the universe itself.  
  
The Prime was supposed to love all his people equally. To be guided by that even-handed love in governance. It was perhaps one reason they were built as they were, with huge sparks and vastly parallel processors, their bodies mere housings for the enormity of their emotion. Down this deep, in the presence of the Allspark, it was impossible to evade the fact that Optimus had broken this fundamental law. That he had risked everything, risked his own death and the future of their species, because the thought of walking down all the long millennia without Jazz had been unendurable.   
  
Two flashing arms reached out from Jazz’s spark, silvery blue, braided, looping like the limbs of a solar flare to embrace the blue-white giant, where a mass of tendrils flowed out to meet them, drawing the two sparks, the two mechs closer yet. Arms and tendrils swept through each other, sensual and desirous, but slippery, mischievous, contrary, until the wills behind them drove them frantically together, weaving substance to substance, essence to essence, chaos-tangled and bright, thread by thread until gravity noticed and the little platinum star contracted, spinning into—  
  
 _Ignition!_  At that last picosecond, Optimus bent the lightning to his will, pulling it around his frame, sparing Jazz the worst of it despite the latter’s protests. Glowing orange scars scored deep across their smoking armor. Optimus’ optics flickered and went out.   
  
Barely online himself, Jazz cradled the new spark, new star, kindled in love and pleasure under the stars, its kin. His kin. Another entanglement between himself and Optimus that could never be unmade.   
  
 _Ratchet?_  he called feebly.  _Ratchet… come up…  
  
Thought you could make it back down here afterwards, eh?_ Ratchet didn’t sound surprised. In fact it sounded like he’d anticipated the problem and had just been waiting for word on the completed merge.  
  
 _Yeah. Dumb._  
  
For once Ratchet didn’t transmit agreement.  _I’m on my way. ...And well done, Jazz._


	27. Complementary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mirage is upset because Hound is damaged, Epps talks with him to ease his mind, Mirage remembers how he and Hound met among other things, and Hound has some observations about humans. :D

2017 - February  
  
 _Calm down, Mirage, I’ll be there in six minutes._  
  
Mirage tried. He wouldn’t do Hound any good by panicking. But after all they’d been through, all they’d survived, all the near misses they’d laughed about, he couldn’t bear the thought that he might lose Hound now on this miserable dirtball of a planet, so far from home.   
  
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Epps commented, “but I’ve seen Ratchet patch up bots a lot more banged up than this. Bumblebee says he’s the best. I’m sure Hound’ll be all right, man. Okay?”  
  
“My apologies,” Mirage said. Prime wanted them to use the human languages. It was only polite.  
  
Ratchet and Inferno arrived and hauled Hound up from the ravine. Scanning, Ratchet laid a hand on the jeep’s front left headlight. “Hound? Can you transform?”  
  
“I…I don’t think so.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mirage rode Ratchet’s bumper all the way back to the embassy. Epps held on and didn’t say anything. He knew what it was like. When a buddy was hurt or killed, some guys got crazy, some guys went cold. Everyone coped in their own way.   
  
Once at the embassy, Mirage was shooed out of the med-bay. In the human-scaled area, Epps was debriefed via teleconference, but he watched Mirage pacing the hangar, those windshield-wiper-y things over his optics clattering away a mile a minute. Once Epps' debriefing was over, he fished a beer from the fridge and perched on the back of one of the couches.  
  
“Hey, Mirage,” he called quietly.  
  
Mirage stopped pacing and strode smoothly over. “Master Sergeant. Is there something I can help you with?” Unconsciously, Mirage had fallen back into a formal mode that had been unnecessary between them for years.  
  
“Epps, Mirage. You call me Epps. Or Bobby, after a firefight like that.”  
  
Mirage made a graceful, open-handed gesture. “Bobby.”  
  
“So. You and Hound. You two been bros for a long time, huh?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Epps didn’t ask, didn’t want to know for how long. He was so over how many more zeros the bots measured things by. “How’d you meet? Seems pretty convenient, how your abilities fit. Were you built together or something?”  
  
Mirage smiled, and his face was one of those easiest for humans to read. “We were forged at about the same time, yes. But not in the same place or by the same people. Hound comes from Uraya, one of the larger Torus States. I’m from Iridium Tower on the southern edge of Iacon. We met early in the war. General Deepforge put us together as a team just before she was killed in retaking Nova Cronum. My stealth mode was engineered by Serendipity, one of the most gifted inventors the Autobots had, and Wheeljack’s oldest friend. Once my cloak was installed and tested perfectly, Wheeljack came up with Hound’s sensor array.”  
  
“Rivalry kinda thing, huh?”  
  
“There was something of that to it, yes. But also necessity.” Mirage, having knelt to converse with Bobby, now repositioned himself slightly, turning to face into the hangar. “I am not the virtuoso at this that Hound is, but…”   
  
It wasn’t a large panorama like Optimus or Hound did; just a small, hemispherical projection that Epps knew he could walk into if he wanted to, and hear and see it all as if he’d been there. In this case that wasn’t an appealing idea.   
  
A burned out courtyard dimly lit. Epps wasn’t sure if it was merely night or whether Mirage was showing him a time after they had lost their sun. The faces of all the buildings had been torn or blown away, revealing tattered honeycombs of open spaces within. It was a bad place; anything could emerge with very little warning. Three mechs stood together at the near edge of the projection, two quite large and the middle one recognizable as Hound. After a moment, Epps realized one of the larger ones was Wheeljack, though the inventor looked quite different. Smaller perhaps.  
  
“I was afraid, then,” Mirage said quietly. “I was always afraid. My world had changed so much it was easier to think of myself as being on another planet rather than remember how much I had lost. I thought of erasing my memories of the Towers, I thought that would make it easier. But if I had done so, when confronted with the reality I would suffer their loss anew.”  
  
Epps looked up at him, to acknowledge the feeling, then returned his gaze to the hologram. Mirage was calm, merely stating facts.  
  
“The third mech there is Serendipity,” Mirage explained.  
  
“Now, Hound,” Wheeljack was saying, grinning up at Serendipity. “Tell us. What do you see?” Mirage must’ve been running a translation program, for Wheeljack’s voice and accent sounded the same.  
  
Hound nodded and stepped into the courtyard to be clear of the other two mechs’ fields. Slowly, he turned a full circle, the look of concentration on his face as it came into view almost comical. He cocked his head, his optics focusing on the “camera’s” position.  
  
“Hey,” he said, surprised. “There’s someone up there.”  
  
Wheeljack and Serendipity laughed, Wheeljack with a note of triumph and Serendipity somewhat ruefully. “Come on down, Mirage,” Wheeljack called, waving.   
  
The image swooped and fell and lurched dizzily; Mirage leaping to the ground. A haze of multicolored static flitted across the projection for a second as the cloaking field was disengaged. A parade of expressions crossed Hound’s face as Mirage approached. Epps didn’t try to interpret them all but it was clear that Hound hadn’t been expecting what he now saw. Epps chuckled and Mirage closed the hologram.  
  
“Kind of a shock for both of you, huh?” Epps said, grinning.  
  
Mirage grinned back. “Yes, at first. But quickly we learned the mutual benefits of our situation.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
1.2 million years ago.  
  
 _Uhnzrkound…c-come get me,_  Mirage transmitted on their private team channel; a frequency far isolated from the bandwidths either Autobots or Decepticons used because it was no good for anything but very short range communication.   
  
 _On my way. Mir, what happened?_  Hound slid from cover to cover towards the repair tube access port that was Mirage’s extraction point. The bombing on the other side of the complex had begun, which would keep the Cons busy. But that shouldn’t have affected anything Mirage was doing.   
  
 _Argument between three Seekers. Sorry, Hound, I didn’t dodge fast enough.  
  
Slag._ Sometimes Mirage forgot that invisible did not equal invulnerable.   
  
 _Got the data chip, though._    
  
Hound was tempted to say slag the chip, but didn’t.  _Hurry, if you can. I’m at the port, but my shoulders won’t fit inside._  Please tell me you can make it this far, he thought. There wasn’t a lot of cover where Hound was, but he would wait as long as it took. After what felt like vorns, the port cover pushed outward. By touch alone Hound knew every part of Mirage, knew that the arms he grabbed in order to pull the slender mech out were intact, but that the torso that fell against his was not.  
  
Maneuvering Mirage carefully across the back of his vehicle mode, Hound carried him to the nearest triage center, transforming and setting him down on a recently vacated repair pallet.  
  
“What…are you doing?” The med-bot clearly thought Hound had fried his CPU and was trying to be sympathetic and kind but hadn’t been to recharge in at least twice as long as was good for her.   
  
Hound shook Mirage, hoping this time it would work.  _Come on, Mir. Come on._  Nothing, except now bright blue dripped hot on the lubricant- and energon-slick floor. “Can you give his CPU a jolt or something?” he asked the med-bot. “His cloaking system pulls a huge amount of power and I think he’s hurt bad but I can’t get him to respond even on tight-beam.”  
  
The med-bot had noticed the hissing, slowly-growing puddle at the base of the makeshift repair slab. Crazy or not, that wasn’t a good sign. “New stealth system, huh?” Briskly she stepped to the head of the table and groped until she found the patient’s helm. Placing her hands to either side, she sent a low-power pulse of a specific harmonic combination.  
  
Mirage groaned and shuddered into view, losing consciousness again immediately.  
  
A single blast had messily punched through Mirage’s midsection. Any wider and it would have cut him in two. Mostly only his core column and a few cables on his starboard side were keeping him in one piece. Hound locked his knees and fought the cold seeping through his spark.   
  
“Why didn’t they install a switch on that to turn it off if he’s offlined?” The medic’s harmonics suggested a long-running grumble about military technology and her perception of command’s disregard for individual lives.   
  
“He can’t afford to be found by the Cons,” Hound explained, feeling very far away. “Even if he’s offlined or killed.”  
  
“So rescue’s not an option?”  
  
Hound snapped back to full awareness. “That’s what I’m for. I can find him. I can always find him.”  
  
“He’s lucky to have you, then.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hound had made his report and delivered the data chip to a high priority courier. Mirage spent nearly half a voor in a CR chamber. Command sent Hound out on other missions, scouting mostly, occasional courier work. It was necessary work, but not the same.  
  
On the orn Mirage was finally released from the tank, Hound had just returned from a long-range mission but he hurried to the med-bay anyway without recharging. Mirage was swinging his legs off the edge of a repair table and Hound accessed the local data net, finding that Mirage was cleared for light duty only. But he was cleared! Hound ran up, stopping before he collided, and embraced Mirage gently, being careful not to touch any of the shiny new metal surfaces of Mirage’s new components. That wasn’t strictly necessary, simply touching the new colonies of nanocells would do no harm, but Hound knew from personal experience that newly grown components were often acutely sensitive. And not in a fun way.  
  
Mirage returned the hug, shuttering his optics for a moment, then taking Hound’s hand and dragging him out of the med-bay, out of the medic’s way, and down the corridor to a dim space behind some storage crates.  
  
“I’m sorry, Hound,” Mirage whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“That’s all right,” Hound said. “As long as you never forget that I’m there to help you. You’re lucky to have me.”  
  
“I was wondering when you’d notice,” Mirage said, and pulled him close.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2017  
  
“…Ratchet informs me that Hound has been repaired and is in recharge now.” Mirage’s expression was jubilant, almost beatific, yet the mech stayed where he was. A human would have rushed to their friend’s bedside, to see for themselves, to touch a hand in reassurance. But Epps knew the robots communicated remotely on many levels. Using huge bandwidth, and complex encoding even Glen Whitmann was sure he’d never understand. Probably Ratchet had given Mirage a sensory feed, with haptics even – Mirage could be virtually beside Hound, still talking to Epps here, and reporting to Prime all at once.   
  
Epps got up and stretched. “All right. Look, Mirage, I got to head home, okay? I know you got my cell number.”  
  
“I do, thank you.”  
  
“Any time, man.”  
  
Mirage returned the human’s wave and watched him head out the main hangar door. Like most of the regular visitors to the Cybertronian Embassy, Epps disdained the human scaled door to the left. That door was for visitors unaccustomed to the giant part of giant alien robots.   
  
Humans. Hound loved them from the beginning. Mirage knew his secret wish but did not share it.   
  
 _They’re just like us!_  Hound had transmitted, soon after they had arrived with Wheeljack and Arcee and Cliffjumper and Prowl. After they had accessed the humans’ communications web and had time to process the information each in their unique ways. Hound’s glyphs were full of surprise and delight.  _They’re made of their world – water, flowers, leaves, animals, sunlight. Just like we are made of Cybertron – metal, silicon, energon. Carbon nanostructures…oh! We’re both made of carbon, Mir!_  And Hound had laughed, not to goad Mirage, but pleased by the fundamental similarity.  
  
Mirage had smiled. Humans were fragile, tiny, rather disgusting, but Prime was right about their courage as a species, and their potential, and they certainly didn’t deserve to be snuffed out under the mass-distributors of the Decepticons. Hound’s enthusiasm and happiness made Mirage happy, and that was sufficient. He had caressed the ridges of Hound’s helm fondly.  
  
 _They’re adding more metal and silicon to themselves all the time._  Hound’s tone had gone strange. Quiet, almost furtive. Maybe with something that skirted the edges of awe.  _What if…what if someday we become the same species?_    
  
Mirage had laughed.  _That’s the most fanciful thing you’ve said in vorns!_  Mirage loved Hound’s imaginativeness, perhaps that most of all.  
  
Later, Hound had expressed the thought to Ratchet, but the CMO’s reaction hadn’t been amusement.  
  
 _I’d keep that conjecture to myself if I were you,_  Ratchet had tight-beamed, and Hound had shared with Mirage later.  _It’s too early._  The glyphs indicated that Ratchet meant that many humans were already alarmed by their rapidly increasing rate of technological change. That people who embraced the changes already had slurs to brand the fearful ones with, and vice-versa. And that the Autobots themselves weren’t entirely ready for such a notion.  _Both our species have a lot of what amount to suicidal tendencies to work past._


	28. Deep Impact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prowl apologizes and gets seduced instead, Sentinel still has his butcher's grip on all the ex-battalion bots, and Sam, Mikaela, Bee and Borealis take an unexpected vacation.

2017 – April  
  
“It’s the last night of the meteor showers,” Prime said, closing the holo-table’s display. “Care to join me topside?” Prowl had been giving him the periodic reports in person instead of transmitting them. He’d been doing so for weeks. After each recitation came a pause, a hesitation, slight but peculiar in Prowl. Prime had noted this from the first, but gave no sign. The pauses had grown longer, and Prowl’s gaze, though steadfast, had a frustrated tinge to it.   
  
“Certainly, Prime.” The lingering roughness in Prowl’s voice made gauging his harmonics challenging. Optimus had not yet given up on coaxing informality from the tactician.   
  
They climbed to the mesa top in companionable silence. Tracking the meteoroids, they watched as the small, rocky comet fragments hit the atmosphere and began to glow, enjoying the knowledge that this was a simple planetary phenomenon, not the arrival of sentient robots whose allegiance was unknown.   
  
 **Something on your mind, Prowl?**  Prime still watched the sky, but Prowl felt the enormity of his attention.  
  
Prowl opened and closed his hands, then unconsciously assumed parade rest.  _I wish to offer you a second level apology for regarding your first progeny as…unnatural._  Borealis, upon reflection, was no more eccentric than many Allspark-kindled Autobots.  _And a third level apology for doubting the spark-merge process itself. I realize tactically…_  
  
 **Yes. Tactically.**  Prime made little effort to hide his amusement.  **According to the Matrix’s file, the first few generations of Cybertronians engaged in that activity quite frequently before the knowledge was erased.**  
  
 _It seems we must emulate them, now._  Jazz and Optimus’ progeny was healthy and growing in a tank, and – as of the previous month – so was that of Inferno and Optimus. The order of forging and ensparking felt wrong, but they were nothing if not an adaptable species.  
  
 **Are you volunteering?**  
  
 _Yes, sir._  
  
 **Prowl, so help me, if you call me “sir” in the middle of—**  
  
Holding up his hands in surrender, Prowl ducked his head. There was almost a smile on his face.  _I’m sorry, that would be…off-putting._  He looked up and met his leader’s gaze.  _Optimus._  Even transmitting the intimate version of that name over tight-beam sent an odd ripple through his CPU.  
  
 **That’s better.**  Prime touched his shoulder, ran the backs of his fingers down the outside of Prowl’s arm; heavily armored, Prowl could scarcely feel it.  **Ah! Look, there it goes.**  Kneeling behind Prowl, Prime settled a hand on Prowl’s hip, pointing out the last of the shooting stars with the other hand, their helms close, Prowl keenly aware of the proximity of Prime’s spark through the sensor net in his door-wings. Wouldn’t it have been easier for Prime to have shared his target lock?  
  
 **Ratchet and I feel it is safer for anyone involved to have had spark-to-spark interface at least once before attempting a merge.**  The hand on Prowl’s hip moved slightly, fingertips limning the edges of chameleon mesh and armor.  **And there’s still the small matter of opening your spark chamber.**  His lip components made a soft, high sound as they brushed across Prowl’s cheek spar.  
  
 _I hoped that you could…or Ratchet…command codes, medical overrides…_  They had regarded Prowl’s inability thus far as a psychological difficulty rather than a physical one, despite the peculiar added armoring, and hadn’t wanted to force it and risk damaging him further.  
  
The hand on Prowl’s hip strayed across his abdomen to the other side, pulling him closer into Prime’s torso. He staggered – and was caught and drawn closer still. Prime…Optimus… was  _seducing_  him. He felt as though every component of his body had turned molten.   
  
 **Hmmmm,**  Prime rumbled, dipping his head to mouth Prowl’s neck cables. Prowl, figuring out how to be an autonomous, exoskeletal being again rather than an incoherent puddle, turned within his arms, offering open thoracic ports and extending data cables already warmed by their intention. Prime had meant to do this long ago. Nearly every other time he had linked deeply with Prowl via cables had been to scrape the inside of the tactician’s mind raw. That Prowl hadn’t acquired an aversion was only due to the enthusiastic efforts of Mirage and Hound and Bumblebee, with intermittent help from Tracks, Red Alert and Inferno. Optimus was pleased to have been granted the opportunity to make amends.   
  
The link stuttered and hitched, avoiding their habitual avenues of contact, seeking a depth of intimacy Prowl hadn’t attained since the beginning of the war. All six pairs of cables opened them so wide, falling in was a matter of letting go. Prowl fought his reflexes, focused on Optimus as on a distant island moon in a nebula sea, riding the unexpected waves of emotion. Optimus was there to catch him, offering his own body, a Prime’s measure of love and acceptance, hands still wandering Prowl’s chassis, sending flares of pleasure inward, signals and sigils, as above so below.   
  
With a low hiss and metallic hum, Optimus opened his chest, bared his spark. Bathed so fully in that radiance, Prowl writhed, core temperature high, armor and underlying structures shivering then snapping open, willing that last lock to crack. To no avail.   
  
 **Mmmmm.**  Seeing Prowl’s armor parted, but the spark chamber yet sealed was itself enticing. The chamber’s outer surface had a dark, greenish sheen, with a texture akin to fibrous actinolite crystals. Optimus slipped a fine manipulating digit from within one fingertip to stroke the hot metal. The vibration of Prowl’s madly spinning spark was strong, a palpable ache of longing. He  _wanted_  to open, very much indeed. But, to overcome an inhibition of such duration, perhaps they had not yet done enough.   
  
Optimus picked him up – Prowl felt so small in those hands – and turned him around, so Prowl’s back was pressed to Optimus’ chest, door-wings held low and flat, cables reeling out to give them sufficient slack, the heat of Optimus’ composite spark radiating through armor and structural cables and fuel lines. Optimus arranged Prowl’s limbs; arms across Optimus’ shoulders, legs draped over Optimus’ legs, with shoulder and hip gimbals fully exposed, where thick wire bundles and major fuel lines crossed the joints from torso to extremities. It was a vulnerable position.   
  
Nuzzling the side of Prowl’s helm, Optimus rested his hands on Prowl’s thighs, letting anticipation rise through both of them. He hummed, not a tune but somehow in harmony with the revving of his engine. Prowl shivered, the desire for simple overload becoming almost painful.   
  
Optimus considered. If they overloaded Prowl first, would he then be relaxed enough? To be certain Prowl didn’t fall into recharge, Optimus unlimbered a fuel conduit. Prowl accepted the infusion dizzily, reeling with the surge of energy, tasting Prime with every system, overwhelmed. Acting on this advantage, Optimus slid his hands up Prowl’s legs, delving into the hip gimbals, pressing fuel lines and bundled wires rhythmically, scraping at the hard iridium alloy of the inner contact surfaces exposed by Prowl’s sprawled pose. Once broken, the old geas of silence held no power. A barely audible moan escaped Prowl’s vocoder. Optimus’ arousal spiked at the sound, searing through the cables, making Prowl inescapably aware of what had caused it. The knowledge made him cry out again, louder this time, accompanied by another spike as now Optimus was the one to shiver, running hot as a young star, compelling in his desire.  
  
“When this war is over,” Optimus whispered softly, softly, the rumble of his voice purring through Prowl’s neck, through his body. “You won’t need this armor. You’ll be able to feel everything I do to you.”   
  
Prowl thrashed once, stiffened, then shouted as blue static arced between the plates of his armor and everything went white.   
  
When the universe came back, Prowl’s situation had changed little. He could feel Optimus’ systems restarting, too, and regretted having missed the pleasure of watching Optimus overload. The stars whirled above them – had so little time passed, or had this small planet made an entire turn on its axis, unnoticed by the entwined robots on the mesa top?  
  
Chuckling, Optimus patted Prowl’s chest affectionately. “Now,” he murmured, turning Prowl on his lap so they were once again face-to-face. “If you still wish it, shall we see if we can crack your shell?”   
  
Prowl rebooted his vocal processor twice. And then resorted to tight-beam.  _Oh yes, please._  
  
They returned to the ancient dance of hands and energy fields, streams of haptic data and torrents of emotion, sharing rising tides of mind and the subatomic flicker and ripple of their memory cores. Prowl’s spark spun so hot, expanding so fiercely, that Optimus feared it might burst him from within and dragged them back from the edge of ecstasy.   
  
 _Prime! I…I can’t. Command me. Open me._ Surely Optimus was strong enough, he could pry the chamber open by main force if necessary. Prowl would willingly tear himself asunder if he could.   
  
 **That I will not do.**  Neither conscious command strings nor the autonomic responses were working at all. Connecting now with cervical and cephalic cables, Prime dove down to the code, Prowl’s mind beside him. Line by line, awareness radiating in every direction as they chased along any possible bypasses or leaps. Even if the problem was largely psychological – and neither of them felt it was at this point – there would be some sign of it in the foundation code.   
  
Line by line. They were prepared to search glyph by glyph, even if it took millennia.   
  
Wait.   
  
Prime, awareness sharp as an energon blade, pushed between lines into an oddly-angled subsystem. What was this small extra string, and why was it attached directly to—?  
  
Scooping Prowl up, disconnecting all but one cephalic cable as quickly as possible without causing either of them damage, Prime surged to his feet and ran for the mesa’s edge, gouging his way down with his heels, sprinting for the repair bay.  ** _RATCHET!_**  
  
Driving with Mikaela back from a cybernetics conference in Las Vegas, Ratchet nearly skidded onto the shoulder as he processed the burst transmission from Prime. “Mirage, get out here and pick up Mikaela.”  
  
“Can’t I—?” she protested. And immediately felt like a whiny teenager.  
  
“No! Mirage, once you have her, rendezvous with Bumblebee and Borealis. Sam and Mikaela are taking a vacation in Japan.”  
  
“What?! Ratchet, you can’t just pack Sam and me off like…”  
  
“ _Acknowledged,_ ” came Bee and Borealis’ voices over the radio. Tense and military-curt. Whatever further protests Mikaela might have reflexively made she abruptly stifled.   
  
“No arguments, human,” Ratchet snapped. Followed by a long string of Cybertronian curses. Mikaela pressed back into the driver’s seat, afraid and silent. Ratchet never spoke to her like that – something bad was going down. After a few minutes Ratchet calmed somewhat. “I’m sorry, Mikaela. If Prime’s suspicion is correct…” (More swearing.) “…Even the Cons have never done such a thing…” (And again the lapse into Cybertronian. Mikaela pitied the perpetrator, whoever it was, whatever they’d done.) “There’s something amiss with Prowl’s spark chamber. To repair it…Primus… We don’t have the facilities! Even transferring him up to the  _Ark_ …no, too risky… Prime, once I arrive, I want you out of there; you too, Wheeljack. Inferno, get Red out, drag him bodily if you have to. Sunstreaker, Sideswipe and Wheeljack, I want you at a 7 km perimeter. Forgive me, old friend, I may need your help. EVERYONE else, get to a 12 km radius or greater. Yes, you too, Prime, I mean it.”  
  
“ **Ratchet—** ”   
  
“ _MEDICAL OVERRIDE! ALL OF YOU WILL CEASE ARGUING WITH ME AT ONCE!_  Especially you, Ironhide and Wheeljack. I’m the only one capable of sorting this out and you know it. Mikaela, I’ll explain everything later.” He eased to a stop and opened the door as Mirage pulled up alongside them. “I’m sorry. Mirage, go!”   
  
Ordinarily a ride in the Veyron was a treat. The insanely powerful roar of those engines was enough to cheer her out of any bad mood. Mikaela felt small and young, and bit her lips, not seeing the moon-silvered desert terrain around them as Mirage sped for the decreed perimeter. “He’s afraid Prowl…Prowl’s spark…is going to explode. Or something.”  
  
“Yes.” It was only one word, but she could tell Mirage was upset.   
  
“You and Hound and Prowl…and Tracks…are friends, huh.”  
  
“Yes, Mikaela.” More like himself now; his tone conveying many things. “I wish we could go to Japan with you – the cherry trees are in bloom – but Borealis only has room for you and Sam and Bumblebee.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Prowl curled motionless in Prime’s arms as Prime ran.  _It’s all right, Prime. It’s all right…_  Just one more thing they had to cut out of him.  _I don’t think it is easily triggered. Sentinel is not in this galaxy. I’ll be fine._  
  
The med-bay doors sealed shut behind them as Prime gently set Prowl on a repair table, not relinquishing his hold on the tactician but settling himself next to him on the edge of the table.  _It’s all right,_  Prowl assured him, reaching up to touch Prime’s face, tracing the complicated lip components. Prime wrapped a hand around the back of Prowl’s head and pulled him close, kissing him hard, trying to subsume his grief and anger.  
  
Ratchet arrived shortly and spared himself a moment amid the horror to smile at them. Prowl wanted to spark-merge?  _Prowl?_  Wonders never cease. He ran a full scan on Prowl without interrupting, even as the equipment for an exhaustive diagnostic and some of the more heavy-duty surgical tools unfolded themselves from the walls and ceiling at his transmitted command.   
  
 _Wheeljack, scan the Twins. This and this are what you’re looking for._  
  
 _……Yep. They’ve had it done to them, too.  
  
Slag! All three of you, get in here. Prime, I’m so sorry, but OUT. Now. Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, do you know anything about this? No? I think in order to get to you two you would have to be put in stasis at the same time. Any ideas when that might have been? _  
  
 _There was…yeah,_  Sunstreaker recalled, his transmission hazed by fury.  _Yeah we know just when it had to be. That sparkless…_  
  
 _It was only about three thousand years ago, Ratchet,_  Sideswipe elaborated.  _Does that matter?_  
  
 _…Yes. Given the information from Wheeljack’s scans, I’d calculate this was done to Prowl about two million years ago. His spark chamber and surrounding code systems are far more infiltrated than yours. Definitely Trochar’s handiwork._  
  
Prime’s reluctant footfalls grew fainter as three other sets grew louder, and then suddenly the energy level in the med-bay shot up exponentially as Wheeljack and the Twins arrived.  _ **We should have caught this sooner,**_  Prime and Ratchet thought together.   
  
 _None of us has made such a …determined…effort to get it open before,_  Prowl disagreed.  _Better we find this now, rather than later, when the circumstances might be even more unfortunate._    
  
Ratchet cupped Prowl’s face in broad-fingered hands.  _If we can’t fix this safely now, we’ll keep you in stasis until we can._  
  
 _I understand._  Prowl had never minded stasis. It was interesting to contemplate how the universe might have changed by the time one was awakened. That time would not count against his sentence, but that was as it should be.  _Please, repair the Twins first. If they are less affected they will be easier and faster to treat._  
  
“Ha! Don’t tell me how to run my med-bay,” Ratchet growled. He and Wheeljack got all three patients integrated with the repair tables – uncharacteristically with no fussing from the Twins, who were apparently too enraged.   
  
“Everyone in the battalion had the extra chamber armor,” Prowl said thoughtfully. “Even Sentinel himself.”  
  
“An even-handed butcher, then,” Ratchet muttered.   
  
Wheeljack wanted to laugh, but he’d just gotten the diagnostic results. Hundreds of mechs, their spark chambers rigged to collapse, triggering their sparks to go nova at a signal probably only Sentinel and maybe Trochar knew. Unwitting suicide bombers with thermonuclear fusion bombs. Twelve kilometers might not be far enough out if all three here went at once; but Prowl was right, it looked like only Sentinel’s code would trigger them, and he wasn’t within normal transmission range.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Borealis headed for Narita International Airport, where a nearby hotel had built a special atrium suite where most of the Autobots could fit inside and be housed near their human friends. The Japanese loved the Autobots greatly, especially the three bullet-trains who had taken up residence there. Tracks had been laid next to the hotel so that Railspike, Midnight Express and Rapid Run could meet their compatriots easily. The Seibatoron Hotel was already being prepared for the incoming arrivals.  
  
But Prime was so upset, Borealis fretted over tight-beam to Railspike that she might not be able to land safely.   
  
 _You’ll do fine,_  Railspike assured her.  _I know you’re as fond of your passengers as we are._  
  
Prime realized how his distress was spreading over his people and reined himself in sharply before Borealis had to position herself for her final approach. His broadcast apologies were rebuffed, though. Everyone felt he had more than enough reason to be upset; and none of them were happy about the situation either.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Optimus. Promise me…_  Ratchet huddled at the foot of the repair table, face hidden in his crossed arms on his drawn-up knees. Wheeljack sat beside him, offline, head resting on Ratchet’s shoulder.  
  
 **No.**  
  
 _Promise me, that when you catch that mis-forged spawn of the Pit…_  
  
 **No, Ratchet. He must be allowed the same choice as the rest of us.**    
  
Between Ratchet, Wheeljack, Prowl and Sideswipe, they had devised a patch that altered the parts of the code that could not be removed, and erased what could be. Sideswipe had been a surprise, and his coding wasn’t as elegant as Prowl’s but he had a devious mind, useful for unraveling devious puzzles. After that, the collapse of their chambers could not be triggered via remote transmission, but the physical mechanisms were still there, and none of them liked that.   
  
As soon as Wheeljack came out of recharge, he would be building the machines that would build the machines that built the specialized medical equipment needed for a complete spark chamber replacement. Ratchet had already begun the series of emails to human mining and manufacturing companies who could supply them with raw materials at least, though there were as yet no human-built crucibles large and impervious enough to forge the chamber itself. He and Wheeljack had been able to pry most of the “armor” off the Twins’ chambers, as well as removing the other external elements of the mechanism. Sunny and Sides would be in CR tanks for a few weeks while their newly alerted repair systems dealt with the rest. But Prowl had been infiltrated for so long, even his nanocells’ internal programs had been overwritten. His body maintained the collapse mechanism as if it was normal. Wheeljack was optimistic, but they were keeping Prowl in stasis until they could do the chamber swap, just to be on the safe side.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Sam and Mikaela had been watching him surreptitiously most of the afternoon, so when Bee suddenly went still, head cocked, antennae at their fullest extension, they closed game and laptop and waited. Bee abruptly laughed, sputtering, rolling onto his back, one hand covering his optics.  
  
“What? WHAT?” his humans demanded, slapping at his armor.   
  
An old AC/DC song howled from Bee’s speakers:  _'Cause the walls start shaking / The earth was quaking / My mind was aching / And we were making it and you / Shook me aaaaaall niiiiiight long / Yeah you shook me aaaaall niiiiight long…_  
  
“Ooookay, what does that mean?” Sam asked.   
  
“I’m sorry, that’s just what Jazz is broadcasting…erm. Prowl and the Twins are going to be fine, is the point, and we can return home.” He ran fingertips over the backs of both humans, reassuring them and as a simple gesture of his own happiness and relief. Borealis was ensconced in what she called a “big-ass giant robot snuggle” with the bullet trains, but she told Bee she could disengage if he and his humans wanted to get home right away.  _I don’t think anyone will mind if we make this a real vacation,_  Bee replied.  _Cherry blossoms!_  
  
“I still don’t see why that song,” Sam said.   
  
“Ah.” Bee hesitated. Mikaela was beginning to grin. “That was Jazz’s way of teasing Prime and Prowl about what they were doing when they found out about the…difficulty with Prowl’s spark chamber.” He leaned down to Mikaela, squinching his optics. “They were banging bolts.”  
  
Sam rolled around the carpet, kicking his legs in the air. “Aaaaagh! My brain! My brain!” Mikaela threw her socks at him.


	29. 50 Frames Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Maggie's phone gets an upgrade, Miles goes looking for Prowl, Sunny and Mikaela have a chat, Cliffjumper and Bee play freeway tag, Bluestreak intervenes at a press conference, Mikaela helps out, Arcee makes a couple of observations, and the Autobots get together for a special occasion. :DDD

I was the first one who saw him do it. It was an accident, I don’t think he meant to. He looked as surprised as I felt, that first second when my cell phone came alive and transformed and looked up at us quietly. Nothing like that psycho little Nokia of Glen’s back at Sector 7 ten years ago.   
  
“Optimus?” I’d asked, embarrassed, because I’d done it again, left my cell up on the holo-table. I was heading for the ladder, thinking about how the table was huge to us, but looked too low to be a comfortable height for Optimus, and then how nothing in the whole embassy had been built to his scale, really. Except the repair and recharge tables, and those were adjustable. He didn’t even have a chair of his own.   
  
“Here it is, Maggie,” he said, handing it down to me so I wouldn’t have to climb. It looked like a microchip between his fingers. Then blue energy crackled across his hand before I could take my cell from him, and there it was. Cute little beggar, clinging to Optimus’ fingertips.   
  
“Oh dear,” said Prime.   
  
“Hey, c’mere, little fella,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten Nokia-con, but this one was so adorable, wobbling on its four spindly legs, its wee hands clasped under its…well, chin I guess, great big blue optics swiveling from Prime to me and back again.   
  
“A moment if you please, Maggie.” The new little bot scurried up Prime’s arm and across his chest, perching on one of his cheek guards. Optic-to-optic, silly as that looked at first. They were both very still for several minutes. Programming. That’s what the problem with the other Allspark-created human tech critters had been. They had no programming, no context to put the world into – in the middle of a battle, with the Allspark itself in danger. Of course they’d been crazy. The little keypad pieces on the new bot’s head fanned out and waved like a sea anemone.  
  
“There you go.” Optimus extended his arm again – a bridge down to me. The little bot scampered and tumbled and flung itself into my hands, chirping and whirring happily, and then I realized it wasn’t just beepy electronic noises, it was speaking.  
  
“Maggiemaggiemaggie!” it chirred, rubbing its head on my thumb. All right, I melted like a complete girl.  
  
“Awwww! What’s your name, honey?” It was so adorable I didn’t even realize that I was probably out a cell phone, though Wheeljack could whip me up a new one, with all the special Autobot features.   
  
“Chipchip!” it squeaked. And then it transformed. Back into my phone. “Taadaa!”   
  
Glen was going to be so jealous.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Hey, Red, where’s Prowl?” Miles could have walked up to the lookouts when he didn’t see Prowl there in the Security office, but it was easier to ask Red Alert.   
  
Red turned to face Miles squarely and knelt, though his secondary optics remained on the mist screens. “Miles Lancaster, Prowl is in stasis.” He clicked in irritation, sensory fins flattening against his helm before fanning out again. Obviously no one had bothered to inform the young human of what had been, briefly, a substantial crisis and remained a grave concern regarding the tactician. Or perhaps Miles hadn’t read his email lately. Sometimes human modes of communication seemed terribly inefficient. Nevertheless, Miles’ admiration for Prowl was well known; it was unconscionable that no-one had told him.   
  
“He’s…is he oka—I mean, is he going to be okay?”   
  
“We don’t know yet. Ratchet is in the med-bay, reconstructing one of Ironhide’s knees. Again. If you are brave, you might ask him.” Red stood and resumed his habitual stance amid the swirling screens. Miles grinned.  
  
“If I’m brave is right. Thanks, Red.” He fleetingly wondered if “reconstructing one of Ironhide’s knees” was a euphemism for something else, but decided Red wouldn’t have sent him down there if that was the case. He paused by the niche he’d hollowed out of the sandstone a few yards from the Security office doorway. Climbing the rough, narrow steps that lay against the wall, he placed a small vinyl figurine with the others.   
  
Mr. Spock. Hellboy. Liz Sherman. Abe Sapien. Himura Kenshin. And now Miles had finally found a nicely articulated tachikoma model. He collected them because Prowl didn’t collect anything. There was nothing in the entire embassy that bespoke Prowl’s existence. He had no personal quarters, no belongings other than whatever was built into him. Miles couldn’t yet articulate why this bothered him. So he collected small oddments (like the aluminum “sheriff’s” badge from Miles’ gunslinger costume from the Halloween he was six) and action figures that reminded him of Prowl, and put them in the niche. It was high enough Prowl only had to stoop slightly to see its contents.   
  
Once satisfied with the arrangement, he jumped down and jogged to the med-bay. The doors were open – a good sign. “Ratchet?” The bots were generally pretty adept at squishy-detection, but it was always a good idea to let Ratchet know you were incoming so he could close up anything radioactive or whatever.   
  
“Oh no you don’t. Pull that stabilizer out of the way or I’ll do it for you – and let me finish this weld. All clear, Miles, just mind the old rust bucket here; he’s in a mood.”  
  
“Who’re you calling old? Greetings, Miles. Picked a major yet?”  
  
“Shut up, Ironhide,” Miles said, beaming. He climbed Mikaela’s gantry and sat on the edge, dangling his feet. “So what’s up with Prowl? Nobody tells me shit!”  
  
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Ironhide sniffed.  
  
“I was camping! Back to nature and all that.”  
  
“For three weeks?” Ratchet lifted an orbital crest. “You’ve quit your job again, haven’t you.” He closed up Ironhide’s leg and slapped the weapons specialist’s helm. Ironhide snarled at him but heaved himself off the table and ambled out of the med-bay with a sketchy salute in Miles’ direction.   
  
“Meh. It was getting too corporate. Come on, Ratchet, what happened to Prowl?”  
  
Ratchet huffed and transformed his tools back into hands and forearms. He’d long since decided that the easiest way to cope with Miles was to consider him a Tower bot. Vanadium or Mercury, Ratchet couldn’t decide which. “Here, I’ll show you.” Extending a hand, which Miles climbed into, Ratchet brought him over to the stasis vaults. There were seven, including the three from Wheeljack’s ship. Ratchet hoped they wouldn’t need more than that at any one time. At a shortwave command, the pertinent hatch opened and the tray containing Prowl slid out.   
  
Miles had never been the least bit squeamish, but seeing Prowl’s disassembled torso was disquieting. Ratchet briefly explained the events of the previous month. Sam and Mikaela had brought back an armload of gashapon and other goodies for Miles from Japan, and now that sudden and unplanned – for them – trip made sense. Miles squirmed and Ratchet allowed him to jump down onto the tray next to Prowl’s head.   
  
The crimson sensory chevron looked razor-sharp, up close. Miles didn’t touch it. Prowl looked dead, felt dead, giving off no heat as the Autobots usually did. The only indication of life was the screen showing Prowl’s spark’s power output and several other parameters Miles didn’t understand. He hadn’t realized before how constantly the complicated parts of them moved. Seeing one so utterly still was unnatural.   
  
“Damn,” Miles said softly, stroking the vertical plates of Prowl’s angular face.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Everyone spent time in the repair bay. It was no big deal. Avoiding minor injuries wasn’t even in their programming any more. You just waited until the doc was done and your brother was fixed. Or not. Sunstreaker wasn’t worried. It was just so boring without Sides around. He stood at the hangar door, watching the empty desert.   
  
Mikaela rapped on a piece of armor on Sunstreaker’s leg. “Hey. You want to take a drive?”  
  
Transforming where he stood, and Mikaela didn’t have to take even one step away, he opened the driver’s side door for her. “Hop in, sweetheart,” he said, his voice taking on a semblance of Harrison Ford’s.   
  
They headed southwest, toward Nellis and Vegas, though maybe from there they’d tack farther south and east again to cruise around the borders of Lake Mead. It didn’t matter much to either of them. Sunstreaker wasn’t even in the mood to yank the local highway patrol’s chain. Having diplomatic immunity kind of took the fun out of it.   
  
“You and your brother were in the same battalion as Prowl, right?”  
  
“Yep.” Maybe he should have had the radio on, filled up the silence for the past hour. Then again, given recent events, the question wasn’t that far out of nowhere.   
  
“So you’ve known him for a long time.”  
  
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we knew him real well.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“We knew that his was the battle formation you wanted to be in when things were going to the Pit, ‘cause he’d always find some around-the-corner, weird-aft way to pull a win out of it. We knew that if you were going to land in punishment detail you wanted Prowl to be the officer in charge, even though he wasn’t, much, because he was fair and didn’t beat the slag out of people just for fun.” Prime had told them not to divulge some of the other things they knew about Prowl to the humans. This was Mikaela, though. Sunstreaker was tempted to tell her how they also knew it was far better to have Prowl as your executioner, when Sentinel handed down that kind of sentence. Because he was fast, and he’d shoot your CPU out first thing, so you never felt it when he cored you.   
  
“I was just kind of wondering why he’s had a rough time, but you and Sides didn’t seem to have any trouble fitting in.”  
  
“Oh, that’s easy. Sides and I are charming fellows who are loved and adored wherever we go. And we’re very good looking.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
She was willing to let that be his answer, he could tell. She probably wasn’t expecting much else. Sunstreaker didn’t find humans particularly inscrutable. “Okay, the thing you got to understand about Prowl, though,” he said, enjoying how he surprised her, “is that he’s an officer. Him, Grimlock and Silverlance had to report directly to Sentinel, and then pass Sentinel’s orders down to the rest of us.”  
  
“Short chain of command.”  
  
“Compared to yours, yeah. We’re more like a militia. Started out that way, I guess. And then maybe for the first millennium or so there were more layers, but these days there ain’t enough of us for all that slag.”  
  
“And Sentinel’s a psycho.”  
  
“Well, whatever. Point is, me and Sides just did what we were told, and whatever else we could get away with. And sometimes slag we didn’t get away with. No pressure, see?”  
  
“I guess. And you and Sideswipe are twins, so you’re always…you have each other, no matter what happens.”  
  
“Yeah.” Being twins didn’t guarantee anything, but Sunstreaker hated confronting that particular truth. “Maybe that’s a thing, too. Prowl didn’t really have any friends. Swoop was his assigned interface partner, but that doesn’t always make you best buddies or anything.” He grinned to himself, but he already knew Mikaela wasn’t squickable regarding Cybertronian relationships. He hadn’t been trying to bait her. “Kept to himself a lot. Maybe that makes hard times worse. I don’t know.”  
  
Mikaela nodded. “Being alone makes it a lot worse.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Cliffjumper, we should slow down. There are humans ahead.  
  
Woohoo! Obstacle course!_ The little red Porsche 911 sped up, fishtailing at Bumblebee in a taunt. They had practically the entire western half of North America as their playground, and the long, deserted highways of Nevada alone were nice. But sometimes Bumblebee was such an automatic transmission Cliffjumper could scarcely believe they were the same forging.   
  
 _Cliffjumper!  
  
Oh, spare me, we’re not gonna hurt them. Primus, they’re so easy to dodge it’s almost not that fun, except there’re so many of ‘em. Come on, lead-aft!_  
  
Bumblebee considered refusing, but Cliffjumper would go ahead anyway and there was a chance Bee could herd the Porsche through the pack of human vehicles with fewer shenanigans if he rode Cliffjumper’s bumper hard enough.  _It’s not your reflexes I’m worried about. They tend to hit_ each other _when startled…  
  
Hey!_ Cliffjumper protested as Bee tapped him from behind. He poured on more speed, loving the way the rough road surface gripped his tires. But Bee stayed right on him.  _Is that all you got? What’s the matter, too used to squishy passengers?  
  
Mind the traffic ahead,_ Bee pointed out calmly. There was no need to report to Prime. If there was a disturbance, local law enforcement’s bandwidth would alert Prowl and Red…no, just Red, Bee reminded himself. Prowl was in stasis. He let the anger churned up by that fuel his next push at Cliffjumper.  
  
Fortunately it was a small group, commuters maybe from Boulder City heading home from Vegas. Cliffjumper dove in, weaving between two aging SUVs and a pickup. Maneuvering like that let Bumblebee, steady in the fast lane, get ahead.   
  
 _Frag!_  Cliffjumper wriggled through another six cars, flashing his lights and bouncing the horn. The human drivers swerved within their lanes and braked, but none of them crashed.  _I cannot believe how non-fun you are!  
  
Since cow-tipping is among your chief amusements, I am happy to disappoint you,_ Bee replied drily. Cliffjumper had pulled ahead again, so Bee slid up behind, nudging until they were clear of the humans.  _If you want real entertainment, come out to White Sands with Ironhide and I next time they need part of the range cleared._  Driving donuts amid unexploded but primitive, mostly harmless shells – THAT was fun.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“If you Autobots weren’t here, they might just leave!” the reporter shouted. “Has anyone even asked these supposed ‘Decepticons’ what their side of the story is?”  
  
It was an old argument. Older, in fact, than the civilization to which the reporter’s ancestors had belonged. Bluestreak pushed forward, unable to contain himself. “Please,” he begged them. “Please don’t ask us to leave! We thought the same thing on my world. We thought the Decepticons would leave us alone. They left no one alive, Mr. Raman. No one but me.” Prime unobtrusively put a hand on his back.  
  
“Aren’t you from Cybertron?”  
  
“Those who built me were from Cybertron, and of course my frame was taken to the Allspark to be kindled, but I have never lived there. I’m from the Praxian colony of Thulium IV.”  
  
“You’re still a robot, like the rest of them.”  
  
“Yes, but the B’dan weren’t robots, and the Ehr, and the Uuvaardii. Being organic doesn’t make them ignore you!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mikaela tumbled out of Bumblebee and sprinted into the hangar, veering right, into the med-bay, up a ramp and onto the mobile catwalk where her waldos hung, waiting for her.   
  
There had not been such a thing as nurses, on Cybertron. It took a full vorn – nearly a century – to acquire the knowledge and experience required to become a Physician, and before the war they hadn’t needed many, comparatively speaking. Since then a cadre of field medics had been established out of necessity. They each received a massive download of basic medical knowledge, further files emphasizing the treatment of the most common kinds of injuries incurred in battle, plus the personal experience algorithms of whomever provided the download.   
  
Mikaela understood that she simply would not live long enough to gain the knowledge to become a Cybertronian Physician or medic. But she refused to accept the idea that there wasn’t any way that she could help. So, Wheeljack, impressed with her tenacity, built her the waldos. She also had a radiation suit, appropriated from Sector 7, in case of spark chamber breaches. It wasn’t rated for the magnitude of fallout if the chamber in question was Prime’s. Ratchet wasn’t sure if this was just as well or not. Human physicians had long been forbidden to practice on family members, aware that their emotions might hinder them from making the best, most carefully considered decisions regarding treatment or prognosis.   
  
Cybertronians, on the other servo, had never felt the need for such a restriction, and during the war you couldn’t possibly have held to it. What family meant to the bots was a far wider and fluid entity than what most Western humans meant.  
  
Mikaela slid her arms into the harness – a lacy exoskeleton that read her arm and hand and finger movements more accurately than anything the humans had yet built, though many cyberneticists were happily closing that gap. A pair of robotic arms – approximately fifty percent smaller than Ratchet’s – unfolded from the ceiling. Ratchet didn’t spare them his usual bemused glance, right now he was glad of the help.   
  
Prime was a lot of acreage to cover all by himself.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“He’s stirring,” Prime said.   
  
Standing on the edge of the holo-table, Arcee saw him shiver and place a hand over his chest; and knew instantly what he was talking about. Who he was talking about.  
  
“He’s more…aware… now than he has been. It’s so cold…”  
  
“How long, do you think?” she asked, voice low. She. Hmph. She didn’t like that much, being lumped in with the big clumsy ones, just because the humans for the most part only had the two genders. Arcee was  _je_  - small, fast, focused. There weren’t many of her forging left because the Cons had learned early how dangerous they were. Ah well. The  _ae_ s and  _zhe_ s got called ‘he’ and that was just as ridiculous, if not more so. It didn’t matter, really.  
  
“Soon. The humans are afraid.”  
  
“They should have been more afraid, sooner,” Arcee grumbled.  
  
“Perhaps. Fear makes them cruel. It does the same to us.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The curving red stone of the med-bay ceiling was the first thing he saw. Ratchet was at his side, but not leaning over; letting him come online quietly and assimilate his situation. According to his chronometer and Teletraan, he had only been in stasis for three months. That seemed highly unlikely, given the state of things when he’d been put under. How could they have forged a new spark chamber so quickly? The humans couldn’t have helped; they didn’t quite have the necessary level of metallurgy, nor were some of the required elements available on this planet in useful quantities.   
  
Prowl reached out for connections, surprising himself. The Autobot cloud mind lit up as they felt him rejoin them. Many of them were on their way to the embassy now they knew he was online. Ratchet unlocked the doors, letting Prime in first, followed by Hound, Mirage, Tracks, Bluestreak and Smokescreen, who already happened to be there.   
  
“How?” Prowl whispered.   
  
Prime stroked his helm. “Sheffield Forgemasters in Britain were willing and able to rework some of their nuclear engineering facilities for us, once we had enough of the proper alloys.”  
  
“And they were the high bidder for the tech rights,” Smokescreen commented, grinning. He managed most of the Autobots’ Earthly accounts. They were doing very well.  
  
More bots flooded the room, quiet under Ratchet’s warning glare, but pressing close as Prowl sat up on the repair table. “Everyone donated slivers of alloy from their own chambers,” Ratchet explained. “A big chunk, in Prime’s case; scared the slag out of me when he did it, too.” The Allspark had facilitated the division and regenerated Prime’s chamber immediately. It was getting faster at that, and Ratchet still didn’t know what it portended. “It’s not the prettiest chamber I’ve ever installed, but it’s bigger than your old one, and since we reprogrammed your nanocells it should function perfectly.”  
  
Prowl’s optics flickered, almost shorting out. Hound squeezed his hand and laughed. “Aw, Prowl, don’t crash! It was everyone’s idea. We all wanted to.”  
  
“So,” Mirage said, insinuating himself between Hound and Prowl. “Who gets to help him test it under ‘field’ conditions?”  
  
There was a clamor of “Me!” and “I will!” and “Me too!” and “Hey, we can share!” and “Autobot-pile on Prowl!” but Prime shook his finger at them.  
  
“Ah ah ah,” said Prime. “DIBS!”


	30. Interlewd: Distracting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Bluestreak finds a simple gesture of Prime's to be exceedingly distracting. :D

2017 - July  
  
Prime absently scratched at his central seam.  
  
Bluestreak froze. Something about that small, simple motion – ordinary for anyone else – was somehow very…distracting, in Prime.   
  
I’m staring. I really should stop staring. There must be something else I could look at, something perfectly normal and not suggestive of anything no nothing at all but there must be something and I’m still staring and Prime’s going to notice if I don’t stop staring because there’s no reason for me to be staring at Prime’s chest, no reason at all, and I mean really, it’s the Prime, you know so I really should stop, yes I really should, definitely should stop…staring…  
  
“I’m sorry, Bluestreak,” Prime said. “Did you need something?”  
  
“No! I, um…” Bluestreak stammered. His harmonics revealed everything, he could tell, and he wished he hadn’t  _said_  anything at all.  
  
“I see.” Prime smiled and extended a hand to him.   
  
It was still a surprise, how freely the Prime shared himself. Bluestreak wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, or which assumption about big city bots he was hindered by, to even think that. He moved into Prime’s reach eagerly, snuggling into the hard facets of Prime’s torso.   
  
Maybe it was only distance, the distance of a large populace on a big planet, that had made him think the Prime would be standoffish. Here they were so few, and Bluestreak was trying to cope with how few, and how many he had lost, how much he had lost. But so had everyone else, he reminded himself constantly and wasn’t sure if that really comforted him or not. It wasn’t a happy thought, and he didn’t wish such loss on anyone, except maybe the Decepticons. Maybe not even them. He leaned into Prime’s heat. All right, now I’m here, he thought, what am I doing babbling to myself about such depressing things? I could be thinking much more interesting things, couldn’t I, and doing much more interesting things, that’s for sure. I bet no one else gets distracted while Prime’s hugging them and babbles on and on and on about stupid things and doesn’t pay any attention to what’s going on right now. Only me. Yeah, leave it to me to stand here like a lump, just standing here, feeling Prime’s spark – oh Primus, you really can feel his spark, even through the armor – against my cheek.   
  
Prime steered Bluestreak down the stem corridor to an empty chamber. It was slowly becoming reflex to seek privacy even for a nice comforting cuddle. No sense freaking the humans out. Sam turned such interesting colors, though, Bluestreak wondered why, and what Ratchet thought about it and what exactly the color changes meant, because Bluestreak rather thought they didn’t mean quite the same things that color changes in leaves or octopi or cuttlefish or anoles or chameleons or bettas or all the many other things on this planet that changed colors meant. Mostly, like the camouflage mesh of his own people, it was for concealment, blending in. Which was fine, and understandable. But the colors on Sam’s face just made him stand out more. So was it a warning, like the bright reds and yellows on toxic animals? Bluestreak was pretty sure that wasn’t it either. And yes he was being silly, because there were plenty of images on the internet about embarrassed humans and you could figure it out from context in the manga alone.  
  
Bluestreak wrapped his arms as far around Prime as he could reach, which wasn’t entirely all the way around, even though Prime was kneeling, which made him only a couple of feet taller. All right, four feet. There was a lot to Prime. Optimus. It seemed weird to call him that, and Bluestreak didn’t know why that was either. It seemed overly familiar. But then the way Prime’s fingers were stroking his back was rather familiar, and it would be rude not to respond in kind. No matter how disconcerting it was.   
  
It felt quite nice, actually. Prime was good at this…this snuggling business. But then he did it quite a lot, which wasn’t hard to realize if one paid attention. Bluestreak wasn’t sure why he was paying attention to such things when there was a new world to explore, where they’d be settling down for a while. A new home. And they’d keep the Cons from ruining this one, hopefully. Wow, that, right there felt really good, whatever it was Prime was doing, humming, something with his voice and his spark. His chest was open slightly now which was enough to distract anyone, Bluestreak was sure. He unsealed his spark chamber too, though his chest armor was a little fiddly to get around. Ratchet had complained about that at first, but then conceded it was a good idea, even if it made getting a proper medical scan frustrating.   
  
Bluestreak could feel that Prime had a lot of subroutines running, but the bulk of his attention was on what they were doing. It made him giddy. He wondered what it would be like to have Prime focused solely on you, on one person. It was probably scary, he thought, and shivered – and not just because of the things Prime was doing to the edges of the opening to his spark chamber. Blue wondered if he should offer cables, too, though going right for the sparks was kind of nice in a breathtaking sort of way, if they breathed, which they didn’t, but the human phrase had kind of a nice, if graphic and weirdly visceral – but of course Cybertronians didn’t exactly have viscera either – ring to it.   
  
Cables? No, cables were definitely a step backwards at this point. The heat from Prime’s spark felt both good and frightening on Blue’s face and chest. Except they’d need cables for a merge. And why did a merge suddenly sound like a good thing, anyway? Blue hadn’t made up his mind whether he even liked the idea or not, even though Tracks and Smokescreen had both merged with Prime in spring and now there were four tanks running. It certainly seemed unnatural. Irregular. Horrifying? Well, definitely unnatural. Even though it worked. Yes, certainly it did work, and it seemed like…no, not a nice way to get new people, not really. Nice was the wrong word. Prime intimated it was pleasurable in a hazardous sort of sense, but also painful and dangerous and Bluestreak wasn’t as vain as some of the others, like Sunstreaker or Tracks, but he also definitely didn’t like the look of those lightning-tree scars melted into the armor of whomever tried it. Those really looked like they hurt, and not just when they were gotten, either. Like every time you moved hurting. And it took a long time for them to heal. Blue wondered if Ratchet could be persuaded to figure out how to treat them, some new program for their nanocells, to make them knit back together more quickly.  
  
Prime seemed to wear his like the glyphs engraved in his armor. Scars he’d earned on a different kind of battlefield. But Blue wasn’t sure he wanted to walk around marked like that for years and years – however long it took the jagged, melted lines to fade.   
  
Still. It was an interesting idea. New people, who would be a little bit like their progenitors. Kindred sparks, no, wait, how did the humans say it, oh yes, kindred spirits. He supposed they meant the same thing.   
  
 _Could we?_  he asked Prime, not trusting his vocoder at the moment, because it tended to glitch when he was this overclocked, and he got enough teasing about his vocal habits as it was.  _Maybe? I think maybe I’d like to, if it was with you. I trust you, I’d feel safe doing that if it was with you. I think with you there I could concentrate enough, because you’d remind me to, and I’d know you’d remind me which would be embarrassing to have to be reminded what we were doing in the middle of trying to do it, so I would really want to pay attention that time, so could we?_  
  
Prime hummed, low in his range, harmonics blazing with pleasure and an amused happiness.  **I’m afraid I can’t right now, Blue. I have to be in Prague tomorrow, and we’ll both be offline for a couple of days if we merge. Here…let me see. Yes. In two weeks from today, unless there’s some crisis, we can try it then, all right?**    
  
 _Two weeks? Really? That’s not very long at all, will Ratchet have time to set up another tank? I need to donate mass, too, don’t I? That isn’t painful, is it? I mean I’m sure it’s not any fun, or the Twins would be doing it all the time. But two weeks – really? You don’t mind? I could make a good enough new spark?_  
  
Blue wished he hadn’t transmitted that last thought but there it was and he couldn’t take it back and Prime remembered everything because he had multiple, huge memory cores plus the Matrix which was like an extra backup only more so, in spades, and he’d have to ask Smokescreen about that particular idiom because poker didn’t really appeal to Bluestreak especially – he’d taken plenty of chances already and didn’t understand the fun of risking anything in something as inane as a card game during off-duty hours.   
  
 **Blue, you’ll do fine,**  Prime assured him, smiling, even as he opened his chest wider, pulling Blue closer still, so their coronae touched.


	31. Galvatron Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein crazy ~~Mega~~ Galvatron is crazy; Starscream is unimpressed; Rio de Janeiro has a Bad Day; Keller, Prowl and Prime discuss options; and contemplative Thundercracker is contemplative.

2017 – July  
  
He reached for another limb, Bonecrusher’s maybe. Chewing slowly, savoring the way the metal melted down inside his chest, Megatron knew there were more parts nearby and all he’d need to do was roll a bit to reach them, and then he’d be bigger than before. Stronger…hungrier.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There were heavier worlds than this. Gas giants whose roiling atmospheres he had dared – and conquered. He coiled the vessel of himself tightly, a vessel of hatred and hunger, though he remembered he had labored under a different purpose once. A noble goal. No matter. He had time, he could return to that later. For now there was a world awaiting, to slake his thirst upon, to destroy utterly.   
  
Accessing ancient modes of being, he knew the polymorphous ways of the Firstforged now. The grit in this heady oil, however, was the awareness that Optimus could also tread the path to the same depthless well.   
  
He hurtled upward, remade, renamed, dodging underwater missiles or batting them aside. A few struck, but he only laughed, knowing himself truly immortal, unstoppable. These little fireballs could not even scratch his armor. Ah, what a grand game this was! He burst through the surface, whirling and firing his own weapons, their puny ships blossoming into lovely orange and yellow, though part of him noted the shields around some; more Autobot interference. It wouldn't save them in the long run. Those protected today would only live long enough to watch more of their fellows die, and would die themselves in turn. Running the pathetic fleshling gauntlet, escaping most of the firepower aimed at him by sheer speed alone, he laughed, passing the atmosphere as the thin envelope it was, flinging himself joyous into the welcoming arms of space. His loyal minions joined him there - some more readily, more willingly than others, and oh yes he would deal with that too.   
  
 **I am Galvatron! Follow, follow and observe my power!**  
  
The planet turned beneath them, and he dove, exultant, heedless of gravity or magnetic fields, aimed at the bright, flaring centers of technology - primitive as it was, stolen as it was, and his outrage at the use of his body was endless - they would scintillate with a different kind of light under his magnificent attention. Surface-to-air missiles swarmed like rustlets. Harmless individually, but there were so many. Enraged, he drove upward, out of their feeble reach.   
  
He fired his fusion cannon at the coastlines of both sides of this ocean. That would keep the hordes busy while he took up an equatorial orbit. He would sweep the planet with Allspark radiation with every rotation and the humans would be overwhelmed by their own creations. First he targeted a city nearby, convenient to the latitude, situated between mountains and a roughly circular bay. Joyful, he sought within, to that transcendent power, bathing in it, blue ripples coursing through his body. He focused, sending it like a spear down to the glittering city. The surge was tremendous, overwhelming. Galvatron roared in shocked rage, fighting the massive drain on his own systems, body convulsing, melting in places, as though the Allspark within wished to reforge him yet again. With a final howl of fury, he fell offline, adrift above the transformed city wreathed in chaos far below.   
  
Jazz and Optimus had tracked his ascent. The coalition forces readied their orbital missiles; Galvatron was far enough up they dared risk nuclear weapons. NEST's primary strategy was to focus on and hunt down individuals. The robots were few, humans were numerous and needed every advantage they could claim or manufacture.   
  
Having followed their leader into space, Soundwave and Astrotrain pulled Galvatron's inert body away from the targeted coordinates, down, down again into the abyss, where no one dared strike at them. Where the Constructicons were already building another base, intrigued by the challenge presented by the pressure and the current that had created the trough.   
  
Preferring their own mountainous eyries, the Seekers strafed convenient targets and withdrew swiftly, disappointed in Galvatron's show, though Rio frothed with mad, half-sentient little machines.   
  
"So much for the great and powerful Mega- ... _Galva_ tron," Starscream growled. "Once again he fails us." Now the reprisals from the coalition forces would be even more determined and severe. Not that Starscream cared particularly what the humans did.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The soundproofed room beneath the Pentagon rang with shouts. Prowl listened, following Prime’s example. Let the humans reach their own conclusions, or impasses. Unless one had further information they could use.  
  
During a lull, Prowl activated a small hologram-self via the projector in the center of the large table. “Do you wish to break your planet’s crust?” The room fell silent.   
  
“It can be done,” Prowl told them. “We could pursue our enemy to the ocean floor and bombard him there, but only massed thermonuclear weapons stand any chance of doing enough damage to send him back into stasis. We could hurl every weapon we had at him, at that single point. I have seen what happens to layered rocky planets when the crust is breached.” It was one of his worst memories. Outside, Prime wrapped his arms around Prowl as the table’s display altered to show the humans what the death of Coryx VII had looked like. Prowl’s voice was unsteady and rough when he continued. “If you wish to continue living on this world, we cannot attack him in his lair. Not with explosive weapons.”   
  
Keller pounced. “What kind of weapons might we use, then?”   
  
“Wheeljack and Ratchet are working on that,” Prime said, nodding at Keller’s smile. “I believe Wheeljack’s calling them Killer Guppies.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Thundercracker rolled lazily in the sunset winds over a vast desert. It reminded him of the Rust Sea, though the dunes here were much paler.   
  
The weather here was exhilaratingly varied, but not hazardous; although Skywarp had developed a taste for tornado-surfing that the other Seekers felt denoted a serious flaw in his processors. Since Skywarp could conveniently teleport out if the pummeling of wind and debris got too heavy, Thundercracker forbore comment, but certainly had no desire to join his wingmate in such amusements.   
  
Wingmates. It wasn't love. He never really forgot this. They belonged to Starscream, and Starscream never willingly gave up anything he possessed – there was a kind of comfort to be had in that. Their wingmate's jealousy functioned like protectiveness, and was at least as strong a binding force as their mutual hatred for the Autobots.   
  
Megatron had gotten crazy there at the end, obsessing over the Allspark. Becoming Galvatron, it seemed he was even crazier. Starscream had the right idea now; they needed to unite and rebuild the empire. Optimus Prime and his motley group were just being stubborn – over such a foolish notion! Of course Cybertronians were superior to most if not all other forms of life. They were the first, they knew this. The Allspark had called them into being a mere three billion years into this universe's existence.   
  
On the edge of his sensor range, he felt someone fly past far to the south, high and fast. His ping was ignored – or not received. Nothing that lived in the sky long eluded the Seekers' notice. They had observed this jet before and knew it to be of Cybertronian origin, though its outward form resembled fleshling design. Thundercracker had noticed how over time they all - Autobot and Decepticon - had come to know each other. And yet he didn't know the big dark jet. No name came up from the memory cores, no remembrance of past battles. It was easy enough to forget the dead, but those who had escaped your wrath tended to stand out. He let the puzzle go, for the moment.  
  
 **Decepticons attack!**  Galvatron had cried across every frequency.  **Burn everything! We will raze this planet then return victorious to our rightful home!**  The problem was, these pesky humans fought back. In vast numbers. Vast. For Optimus' faction to have allied itself so closely with the native organics was completely unprecedented. It was incomprehensible. Thundercracker was afraid this fundamental incomprehensibility was a factor in the Autobots' favor. If their foe had so abruptly turned so utterly unpredictable - what would they do next? What wouldn't they do? - it was a grave setback to the Decepticon cause and a severe disadvantage.   
  
Sure there were still a lot more Decepticons than Autobots. Word from those incoming to this mudball, answering Starscream’s summons or the more recent call from Galvatron, was always  _There weren’t any Autobots left in that sector, we cleared ‘em all out_  or  _They were already gone by the time we got there, and then we got the message_. Something in their harmonics hinted that the reporting groups were the only Decepticons in their respective sectors as well, though of course no one admitted that outright. Thundercracker had started to pay more attention to these reports, though he didn’t say anything.   
  
He pitched up into a leisurely Immelman, aiming for the Seeker eyrie in the north. There was still plenty of time to watch and listen; he didn’t have to decide anything right away.


	32. The Graveyard Legion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the bad day in Rio has consequences, and Prime scares everyone half to slag. Like he does.

2017 – July  
  
Over eleven million humans lived in Rio and the surrounding tropical urban sprawl. Early reports said there were hundreds of thousands of deaths. It was difficult to assess the actual tally. Many of the dead were in the shantytowns that crouched shoulder to shoulder with even the most affluent neighborhoods. The metropolitan police (reputed to be among the most violent police force in the world, in one of the most violently crime-ridden cities in the world; rumored to kill over a thousand of their own citizens per year) had maintained pockets of relative safety in the numerous and often heavily forested parks; though in many cases their own weapons had been transformed.   
  
Out by the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico was a vast “tank graveyard”, filled with decommissioned military vehicles of all kinds – mostly empty shells, but there was plenty of metallic mass lying around. The President gave it turret, tread and cannon to Optimus Prime.   
  
Despite his age, John Keller was in excellent health, and each succeeding president continued to ask him to remain as Sec Def because of his remarkable rapport with the Autobot leader. Keller had swiftly understood how best to utilize a mix of human and robot forces, and no one wanted to take a chance right now on throwing someone new and untried into the job in the middle of this war. Now he and the Joint Chiefs watched special intensity-filtered screens in the Global Response Center at the Pentagon. Lennox, Epps and their NEST team watched from a bunker at White Sands – the Tank Graveyard itself had been evacuated of all human personnel.   
  
Optimus walked slowly down the ranks of vehicles, head bowed. Once again he followed his brother down this path of horror. Unsure how far the wave would spread, he stopped at what he calculated was the point central to the greatest concentration of vehicles. He stood unmoving for a very long time. The humans watching remotely glanced at each other and sat back, wondering if this was going to be another instance of the robots doing things on their own time scale.   
  
"Want me to call for pizza?" Epps quipped.   
  
 **Please,**  Optimus begged.  **We have squandered the life you gave us; but we must protect this world where you landed. We must protect the lives here, even if we should extinguish ourselves in so doing.**  He opened himself, chest, spark chamber, mind; falling within, holding no expectation of return, surrendering utterly. Some not-where, within and across every without, a thread spun; vibrant and etheric, singing a half-understood call of sorrow and desperation.  
  
Blue-white lightning exploded from him, lashing and coiling outward, caressing the rows of metal forms almost lovingly as Prime was bent backwards until his chest faced the sky and his pedal flanges barely touched the ground. The sand around him glowed orange, then yellow.   
  
Rank by rank they stirred, shifting, standing, optics lighting. A hundred mechs, six hundred; their sparks igniting on the current of Optimus' plea. They turned as one to face their center. As the thunder faded and the ribbons of light withdrew, Optimus dropped unmoving to the glassy sand, chest armor and the edges of his spark chamber molten.   
  
Keller leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over behind him, staring at the screen. Optimus looked dead. It was too easy to believe he would have willingly extinguished himself to give life to the spreading wave of awakened forms around him. Lennox clenched his fists. Epps snapped the pen he’d been chewing on in two.  
  
 _We are alive,_  the new robots said, turning their faces upward, leaping into the Autobot cloud mind and the world nets en masse.  _We have returned,_  came their old voices.  _We have returned to serve him, and, if we must, give our lives again to protect this world._    
  
Six of them, like pall-bearers, carried Prime's exhausted body up to the ridge where Ironhide, Ratchet and Prowl waited. The six appeared to be in no hurry to put Optimus down, so Ratchet did his scans from where he stood.   
  
After a tense moment, he relaxed, shaking his head. “He’s in stasis, more or less. I don’t  _know_ , Ironhide! No one has  _ever_  done this before! It’s…like when he alloyed the Allspark fragment. Probably he’ll come out of it when he’s good and ready.”  
  
Keller sat back down heavily and scrubbed his face with his hands.  
  
“Those aren’t drones,” Lennox said carefully, tapping his screen with a fingertip. “The things in Rio are like that handful in Mission City.”  
  
“Yeeeeees,” Epps said, a slow grin matching the feral gleam in his eyes. “Quality versus quantity.”  
  
Two other new robots came forward, nodding to the three on the ridge. One with a M1 Abrams tank alt and the other a Eurocopter Panther helicopter, smaller but faster than Blackout had been. On the surface, their chameleon mesh made them appear rusty, sun-bleached, sand-scoured and full of holes from target practice; but underneath they gleamed like any newforged mech striding hot off the kindling platform.   
  
"Call me Evac," said the helicopter, smiling widely.   
  
"I'm Bolo," the tank said, executing a neat salute.   
  
"Do we...know any of you?" Ironhide asked, his voice uncharacteristically subdued.   
  
Bolo understood what the question really meant. "We have conferred and decided not to reveal our former selves. We have all chosen new names." He did not say that Prime knew who they all were - that could not be avoided.   
  
"Welcome to Earth," Ratchet said, transmitting out to all of them, conveying gratitude, hope – and sadness at the necessity. It was cruel and wrong to have brought forth new life only to be soldiers in a war that never should have happened.  
  
“We chose to come,” Bolo murmured, nodding at Ratchet. “He asked and we chose. There are no untried sparks among us.”  
  
One of the tanks lumbered up to Prowl. “You don’t know me in this body,” he rumbled, smiling. Prowl held quite motionless but looked him calmly in the optics. “You said you were sorry. You even said ‘good-bye’. That was nice of you. You had no reason to be nice to me when you killed me, but you did. I never forgot.” The tank patted Prowl’s shoulder, then walked away, still smiling.   
  
“Thank you, Raze,” Prowl murmured.   
  
In the Cybertronian Embassy’s war room, Jazz, riding Ironhide’s feed, immediately dubbed them the Graveyard Legion, a moniker they accepted with enthusiastic and rowdy good humor. Two hundred of them were dispatched to help with the cleanup in Rio de Janeiro.


	33. Home Front

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Epps takes his wife on a little joyride in a very fancy car.

2017 – October  
  
It was a nice little suburban neighborhood near the AFB, with new one- to three-bedroom starter homes, and pseudo-Tuscan styled duplexes at the ends of every other block. So when a two-toned royal blue Bugatti purred down the streets at precisely the posted speed limit, faces popped up in windows, out doorways, and over fences. The Veryon’s engines revved a little as it passed a small group of residents clustered at a corner.  
  
Probably discussing the Halloween block party next week, Epps thought. He grinned, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel and leaning back in the not-leather seat. “Yeah,” he said. “You know how to work it.”  
  
A chuckle came from the radio.  
  
Epps’ smile grew wider as they rolled onto his street. Pulling into his driveway, he was about to tap the horn when his wife, Theresa, emerged from the house. Several expressions chased across her face, but she settled on happy to see her husband as he got out of the car.  
  
“Where are the girls at?” he asked, pulling her into a slightly warmer than necessary in public embrace.   
  
“Over at your Mom’s. Baking cookies.”  
  
“Uh huh. She got a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, right?”  
  
“I checked, yes.” Theresa kept leaning around him, peering over his shoulders at the car sitting in the driveway, gleaming in a conspicuously expensive way.  
  
“Before you ask, I’m borrowing this car from a friend. Don’t worry, we are not gonna be making payments.”  
  
“That’s some friend.”  
  
“Yeah. He is. I know you don’t ask me about work, but I can tell you; this friend is about as stand up a guy as it is possible to be, okay? Nothing shady.”  
  
Theresa looked him in the eyes. After a second she nodded, impressed. “It certainly is a pretty car.”  
  
Epps withdrew just enough to retrieve his duffel from the passenger seat. “Wanna take a ride? Just around the neighborhood?” He wasn’t about to tell her that a real car like this cost well over a million dollars. She’d never get in.   
  
“All right,” she said, though her smile crooked a little. She had other plans for him now that he was finally home and she had him to herself until tomorrow. But he was excited about the car. They could get a little joyride out of the way first.   
  
Epps bounced into the house to toss his duffel by the couch. The passenger door opened for Theresa as she walked around the car. He was glad he had the key ring in hand. She’d assume he’d used the fob, and certainly a fancy car like this could have automatic doors. Mirage had probably calculated that assumption and deemed the door trick a safe one. At least there would be no cute stunts with the radio like Bumblebee pulled. He hoped.   
  
Theresa slid down, down into the passenger seat. “Wow,” she said, wriggling at how it conformed firmly to her shape. The whole car felt solid but fleet somehow. She fastened the seatbelt and felt very secure, though it was strange to be so close to the ground. She was used to a minivan. There was no new-car smell. If the interior had a scent at all, it was a very faint tang of ozone, yet it looked like it had just rolled out of a showroom. Bobby got in and Theresa noticed how he wiggled down into the seat too.   
  
The engine roared to life with a thrilling bass purr. When he revved it, she could feel it through her whole body.   
  
“God, Bobby, the gas alone for this thing…”  
  
“Nah, he’s a hybrid. Sure sounds good, don’t he.” He reached over to the shiny console and fiddled with the satellite radio. “What’s that stuff you like, baby? Debussy?”  
  
Bobby usually mispronounced the name as a cruder form, which made her laugh. She wondered briefly why he’d kept it straight this time, but said, “Yes. Debussy.”  
  
Under his fingers – only brushing the controls –  _Claire de Lune_  poured from the bleeding-edge sound system like auditory silk. They rolled down into the street just as smoothly, which was a surprise. She’d always heard the ride in sports cars was a little rough. This felt like she imagined a luxury sedan would. Glassy and quiet. The neighbors were still staring, and for once she waved back, smiling, as she and her husband sailed along in a borrowed but wicked sweet car.   
  
Out on a main road, the engine opened up a little. Theresa kept one eye on the speedometer, though, and it never got any farther above the limit than the surrounding traffic. It just accelerated to that limit much,  _much_  faster.   
  
“Two hundred and sixty miles an hour?” Theresa asked, blinking at the top numbers on the speedometer again. “You’re kidding.”  
  
Bobby chuckled. “Nope.” He didn’t mention that this one could go faster if needed.   
  
A couple of jets roared across the sky, loud enough to drown even the significant rumble of the Veyron’s engine, lower than usual even this close to Nellis. “Uh oh,” Bobby said. The car swerved, a quick, precise movement, as bits of pavement exploded around them.   
  
Someone was shooting at them. Theresa scrunched down in the seat. This wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people shot at you. Especially not from above. She flinched as the jets screamed by again just above the rooftops.   
  
“Hang on!” said the radio, and Theresa thought she must be going a little loopy. The cultured, Received Pronunciation voice on the radio was talking to them. “But not to the wheel, Bobby.”   
  
“Sorry!” Her husband grabbed the edge of the seat and the bar on the door, and braced his feet wide apart. Nowhere near the pedals. So who was driving?  
  
“I don’t want your hands or shoulders to be injured. I’m going to have to be making some sharp adjustments.” True to its word, the car swerved crazily, ending up heading in an entirely different direction, making for the interstate on the other side of an open field. More sounds of weapons firing came from behind them, fading as the Veyron picked up more speed.   
  
“They can still see us from the air,” Theresa whispered, braced like her husband, against turns that should have flipped the car into somersaults.   
  
“No,” said the smug Brit on the radio. “They cannot.”  
  
Bobby was grinning. Until he saw the expression on Theresa’s face. “We gonna be all right, baby,” he assured her. “We’re in good hands, here.”  
  
“Ironhide, Prowl and Hound are incoming,” the radio – the car – added, sounding pleased.  
  
“Do you know who’s up there?” Bobby asked, craning his neck to look behind them. They were on the interstate now, weaving through traffic like in a Wachowski Brothers movie. Except none of the other cars were reacting to their maneuvers, no matter how closely bumpers brushed. The jets were still pounding the field in a scattershot way.   
  
“Ramjet and Dirge.”  
  
“Yeah, didn’t think it was Starscream..”  
  
“As far as we can tell, Starscream is still recovering from whatever Galvatron did to him after that Solar Needle incident.”   
  
Bobby laughed. “Man, I do not wanna know. That Galvatron is crazy. Any idea what they’re doing out here?”  
  
“Prowl thinks they intended to attack Nellis, but spotted me on their way.”  
  
“Just taking pot-shots, huh?”  
  
“Sorry about that.”  
  
Theresa understood now, and wasn’t sure if she felt safer or more imperiled. She wasn’t in a car. She was inside a giant alien robot. And it was friends with her husband. Her lips pressed into a tight line as she regarded all the shiny dials and gauges that were just camouflage. Even with all the news reports for the past ten years, she’d never seen one of their alien neighbors herself, and a part of her had always remained skeptical of their existence.  
  
Bobby caught her look as they slowed to take the next offramp. “His name’s Mirage,” he said, nodding at the dashboard.  
  
“I am honored to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Epps,” said Mirage.   
  
“Likewise,” she said, not so sure. At least he’s polite, she thought. And was disconcerted to notice they were heading back home.   
  
“Prime is also en route,” Mirage told them. “I’m to drop you off at your residence then rejoin the group tracking Ramjet and Dirge.”   
  
“Roger that. But…” Epps squirmed. He hated to miss the opportunity to see Optimus in action. Except he was supposed to be on leave, and Theresa would kill him. Maybe. “Mother may I? Please?” He made puppy-dog eyes at her, even tilting his head.  
  
“Oh my god.” Theresa shook her head. Of course her husband wanted to go out and play with the robots. Yet he would stay with her if she asked him to. He was supposed to be on leave and she was supposed to have him to herself until tomorrow. If she let him go now, he would be in danger. He was usually in danger, out on a mission. She had known that from the beginning. “You’ll protect him…Mirage?”  
  
“With my life,” the car affirmed. As though it – he – meant it as a simple, literal truth. “This shouldn’t be much of a problem. Just Ramjet and Dirge, and neither of them is very smart. Prime and Ironhide could deal with them by themselves, really. Prowl, Hound and I will just be running the perimeter to keep things from getting out of hand on the ground.”   
  
“You’re as bad as… All right, Bobby.” She sighed. It occurred to her that he would return, sweaty and jubilant, all excited by the brush with death… “Go ahead. But I want out.”  
  
“Absolutely,” Bobby said, grinning.  
  
Mirage pulled onto their street. “I’m going to stay invisible,” he told them. Once I’m in the driveway, I’ll wait until we’re unobserved, then I’ll let you out, Mrs. Epps, all right?”  
  
“We’re invisible.”  
  
“Even to my fellow Autobots,” Mirage said, clearly pleased with himself.   
  
Theresa nodded as though that made sense. She didn’t feel invisible, but no one on the freeway had noticed their wild maneuvering.   
  
“Here we go,” Mirage said, pulling into the driveway, sideways to put Theresa as close to the front door as possible without driving on the lawn, and opening the door.   
  
Theresa unfastened the seatbelt and got out on shaky legs. “You be careful,” she hissed and hobbled toward the door. Leaning on the frame, she looked back and blew a kiss to Bobby – to the sliver of him she glimpsed before the door closed and he disappeared. She couldn’t even hear the engine as they left, only a little of the noise of the tires on the concrete.   
  
She went inside and flopped down on the couch, groping for the remote. At least she could watch the news, if anyone was covering it yet.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“There they are,” Epps said, more to himself, since Mirage would be in constant contact with the other Autobots. Out in the field, Prime and Ironhide were tumbling out of their vehicle modes, only recoiling occasionally as the two Decepticon jets hammered at them with steady fire from whatever version of blasters they had this week. Epps could just see the muscular Explorer and the nimble Jeep that were Prowl and Hound out on the roads on the far side of Prime and Ironhide.   
  
Ironhide was pounding right back with both cannons, and Epps put his hands over his ears. The jets’ engines shrieked, the sound echoing painfully off the ground as the Cons flew in crazy, tangled knots to avoid Ironhide’s one-mech barrage. Prime was watching but hadn’t revealed any weapons yet.   
  
A low vibration alerted Epps to the rise of a missile-launcher from the back of the Veyron. He grinned. Mirage would have one perfect, clear shot before the Cons’ software backtracked his position. He couldn’t sustain multiple weapons firing while cloaked, anyway, without burning himself out. Mirage pulled up a small HUD for Epps and locked on to Dirge. With a fiery hiss the missile launched, becoming visible as it did so, but Dirge was busy.   
  
The Seeker took the hit broadside, smack in the center of his ventral fuselage. Tumbling through the shredded clouds of his own smoke, Dirge fought to maintain what little altitude he had, fleeing as soon as he got himself stabilized.  
  
 _Nice shot!_  Came transmissions from Ironhide and Hound. Epps agreed, laughing, and patted the dashboard.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
With Dirge retreating, Ramjet had had enough.  
  
“He’s getting away!” Ironhide shouted.  
  
“No,” Prime said. “He isn’t.” Up came the big laser rifle. Prime’s leg mechanisms locked with deep  _cha-thunks_  that echoed through the ground.   
  
 **Foom! –Foom! –Foom! –Foom! –Foom!**  
  
Ramjet evaded the first three shots…  
  
…and flew directly into the last two. Epps reckoned Prime must have fired in a three dimensional pattern that was impossible to escape. Like a chess game the masters played, where three moves in they already knew who’d won. Insane.  
  
Spinning uncontrollably, debris from Ramjet’s impact spread across the entire field and onto the freeway. Epps had one further moment to wonder what they’d do with a Decepticon POW, when there was a rushing BANG of displaced air. Skywarp appeared for only half a second, grabbing Ramjet and ‘porting away.   
  
“Interesting,” Prowl said, approaching Prime. “Skywarp doesn’t usually go to that much effort for someone out-trine. Thundercracker must have ordered it.”  
  
Prime nodded. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up.” He turned to Mirage. “Hello, Epps. Aren’t you on leave?”  
  
Leaning out the Veyron’s window, Bobby laughed. “Yeah, just couldn’t keep out of trouble. Best take me home, Mirage, before I’m in more.”  
  
Mirage chuckled and revved his engine. “Home it is.”


	34. Interlewd: Perihelion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime and Prowl take care of unfinished business, Ratchet now has six growth tanks to tend, Prime is getting disturbingly thin, and Wheeljack and Ratchet are having technical difficulties.

  
_For passion has come to the verge and leaps_  
Headlong to the blind abyss,  
Yet gathers thereby the strength of deeps,  
And eddies a moment and swirls and sweeps  
Till peril is one with bliss!  
-Harriet L. Childe-Pemberton

  
  
2017 – November  
  
This lookout ain’t big enough for the both of us, Trailbreaker thought. It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Trailbreaker himself was taller and bulkier than Ironhide, and Prowl wasn’t exactly a minicon. Though Trailbreaker wasn’t one to deny another mech a view of the blossoming sunrise, Prowl’s fields had been growing more and more distracting all month. It was like the tactician was deliberately keeping himself over-fuelled or something.   
  
As if it wasn’t crowded enough, Prime joined them as the sun broke between two long banners of golden cloud. He leaned down and nuzzled the back of Prowl’s helm.  **Prowl, I believe you and I have some unfinished business.**  
  
With the slightest of shivers, Prowl turned and looked up at him with optics glowing bright.  _Yes, s—Optimus!_  He reached up and Prime reached down and drew Prowl into his arms.  
  
 **I should think so,** Prime chuckled, and taking Prowl’s hand, led him to the med-bay.   
  
Trailbreaker stared after them. “Wow.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2017 – July  
  
“…DIBS!”  
  
Everyone laughed, Mirage and Hound bumping Prowl merrily, pushing him into Prime on his other side. Prowl stared at his own hand, the one Hound wasn’t holding; keenly aware of every plane and arch – and the weight! – of his new spark chamber. He didn’t deserve this.   
  
Slipping his fingers into the hand Prowl was looking at, Prime smiled down at him.  **Do you consider our judgment so faulty?**  
  
 _No! No. But, they don’t know me. Not truly._  
  
 **Perhaps they know your true self better than you think. In any case, _I_  know you.**   
  
Sensory chevron burning crimson, Prowl turned, gazing at Prime with the intensity of a raptor. With exquisite deliberation, Prime kissed him, his oral polyhedron rolling softly, flexing internal charges. The Autobots around them went silent, leaning forward, inward, their fields rising and flaring with commingled heat. The repair table adjusted itself and Prime slid in behind Prowl, nibbling his chevron, drawing Prowl against his chest, mindful of the quivering door-wings.   
  
Prowl wanted this. Wanted Prime. For long moments he immersed himself utterly in that wanting, allowed his passion to spread past restraint through his CPU. He felt like a comet pinioned by a star’s gravity, burning off the outer layers when it swung too close, but spreading a beautiful cloak behind it for all to see. Prime’s fingertips stroked his body. Sound escaped him, one complex chord, absorbed then echoed by the mechs around them. Cables leapt between Prowl and Prime, between many of those watching, hard-line nets hot with shared emotion.   
  
Hands aching with the desire to measure every surface of Prowl’s body, Prime hummed into Prowl’s neck, slipping a single fingertip into Prowl’s small mouth, shivering as the tactician’s oral polyhedron rolled, lighting up concentrated haptic sensors, crosstalk shooting a charge up Prime’s arm to the shoulder, across his chest; and through Prowl’s jaw to his neck and down; the impulse making his outer armor jump and part at the central seam. The watchers thrummed in counterpoint, optics focused on Prowl’s chest.   
  
 _Tease!_  Mirage gasped, clutching Prowl’s upper leg, at the mercy of Hound’s hands and body pressing him from behind. Moonlight crept through the med-bay skylight. Ratchet had doused the recessed lamps – the brightest source of illumination would soon be Prowl’s spark.   
  
Prime insinuated his fingertips between the narrow seams of Prowl’s armor, pulling Prowl’s body tight against Prime’s own expanding chest, stroking the edges, widening the gap little by little as Prowl writhed within his embrace. The whorls and spirals of the melded alloys of the new chamber shone in the growing aperture, redolent of sweet oils. Prowl arched, spreading himself further, his hands covering Prime’s, fingers interlaced, pulling with heedful determination. The bodies of the watchers resonated with the faint hiss and thump of the chamber’s seals retracting.   
  
 **Now,**  Prime rumbled.  _Now!_  Prowl sang, and cried out, plunging down through the code, the fierce, ancient command seizing reforged internal mechanisms, inexorable and joyous, splitting the hemispheres like an atomic nucleus. Cold air struck his spark, the movement of it like a forgotten caress. Pale, radiant as new silver, spinning hot and fast, greeted by whirrs and appreciative murmurs, gleaming off all their shuddering, heated metal shapes.   
  
Engines revving, optics lambent, the watchers withdrew slowly, by twos and threes and fives; the cloud mind open to their sighs and pleasured hums, each reaching out to brush fingers over Prowl’s body as they passed him. Only Ratchet remained behind, vigilant and kind.   
  
Prime, core vents blowing superheated steam, mindful of cables, turned Prowl and rolled them on the table. With one arm beneath, cradling Prowl’s shoulders and back, he covered Prowl gently with his massive form, opening himself.  **As I know you, so you shall know me.**  Prowl flinched slightly, speared by that light, but willingly overwhelmed, leaping into the measureless depths as their coronae brushed together. Three million years of war suddenly ceased to exist.   
  
This he remembered now, this abandonment of borders, immaterial firewalls ignored, spark swirled with spark, star to star, in a dance of wholeness fleetingly regained. Bathed in Prime’s corona, Prowl was strong enough, wise enough to endure the contact, embrace the enormity of Prime’s love. He understood that this was the merest taste of what rejoining the Allspark was like.   
  
Blue static roiled across their armor like breaking waves. Their bodies bowed, enraptured.  _Optimus—!_  Prowl sang, reverting to their native tongue, his voice rising to a high clear frequency that alone would have sent Mirage or Tracks into overload had they heard it.   
  
 **YES!**  Prime responded, triumphant, the vast pulse of his spark catapulting them into the fulminating fire of overload.  
  
Ratchet withdrew, chuckling, and left them in the kindly dark.  
  
Prowl came online racked with sorrow. Three million years wasted, worlds destroyed… Prime held him tightly as he screamed, sadness converting to rage – but only for a moment. He fell limp, cables retracting sluggishly, groping for control again.   
  
Prime’s thumb made slow transits across Prowl’s cheek flange. He shifted in Prime’s arms, placing his hands – the beautiful, clever hands Ratchet and Wheeljack had given him – on Prime’s chest.   
  
“Am I crushing you?” Prime asked, shifting his weight off the tactician.   
  
“No,” Prowl said, his voice raw, hands grasping at Prime’s armor. “Please stay.”   
  
 **Of course I will,**  Prime said, and kissed him.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Months passed, filled with the reek of scorched metal and spilled energon; pain that one must fight through, live through; the hues of spreading arterial blood, and the dying cries of millions.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2017 - November  
  
“You’re going to be good at this,” Prime rumbled, rather smugly Prowl thought. He was probably right. The merge protocols, though complex and alarming, were very precise. Prime laid himself on the table nearest the growth tanks, beckoning to Prowl, who leapt up gracefully despite the heaviness of his armor. Trembling, Prowl knelt astride Prime’s waist.  
  
Ratchet smiled, watching them as he prepared the tank. He hadn’t seen Prime quite like this in a long time. He seemed to find Prowl…intoxicating. It made sense. The two of them had shared so much pain, sharing pleasure would be cathartic.   
  
“Mmmmmmmmmm.” Prime’s hands wandered almost possessively over Prowl’s body, careful of the door-wings held high and erect on the tactician’s shoulders.   
  
Optics flickering, Prowl caught one of those wandering hands, drawing it up to his face to nuzzle the palm, then leaned close to trace Prime’s central seam. He opened himself, still shaken by the novelty of the sensations.   
  
“Beautiful,” Optimus hummed, rubbing his thumbs over the edges of the opening. Prowl’s head fell back and he moaned weakly.   
  
“Pay attention,” Ratchet reminded them, adjusting a few last controls. Once they were set he’d retreat to the outer med-bay until the thunder and lightning was over. From the outside the early stages looked fun enough, but Ratchet remembered the searing intensity of that kind of link and…no. It was not his idea of fun. He’d take the perennial shoving matches with Ironhide any day.   
  
 **Fussbudget,**  Prime tight-beamed at him. Jazz had taught Optimus that the prelude to a merge could be as pleasant as any other sort of lovemaking. It need not be a grimly desperate act half on the edge of panic. That first time hadn’t been Ratchet’s fault, certainly. Making a rude noise at Optimus, Ratchet left them to it.   
  
Returning his full attention to the overclocked mech on top of him, Optimus seated all three pairs of his thoracic cables, petting the covers of Prowl’s ports until they opened, accepting Prowl’s six cables as well. The link engaged smoothly, only the edges of their memories of shared anguish rippled through, swiftly banished. As Optimus had known they would be, Prowl’s mind and will were quick and incisive set to this task. Prime opened his chest, curling his hands around Prowl’s shoulders, drawing him down, drawing that bright, new-silver spark down until their coronae lapped at one another, striking chords from Prowl’s vocoder like flint on steel.   
  
Deeper, past rising clouds of hope and desire, driven by wonder and turbulent need, they reached for the fundaments of time and matter; Prowl’s mind soaring ahead in fascination, turning as though winged to meet Prime’s more leisurely descent. A delicate, elegant curve of sparkmatter arced outward, plunging into the blue-white wave of tendrils from Prime. A new spark whirled itself into being, joyful, leaping; they thought they heard it laughing as it spun into ignition.   
  
Ratchet slipped inside, glad Prime had worked out how to keep the pyrotechnics more or less under control. Prime lay sprawled on the table as usual, chest closed but smoking; the latest set of merge-scars overlaying the previous ones which had already created quite a mess of his armor beneath the chameleon mesh. Prowl was curled on top of him, hands cupping the new spark though his optics were dim and guttering. Ratchet moved swiftly, clasping Prowl’s wrist as he moved into Prowl’s field of view. “I’m here,” Ratchet said, smiling. “Well done, Prowl.”  
  
“Pro…tect…” Prowl whispered, and fell offline.   
  
“I will, my friend,” Ratchet said, touching Prowl’s helm before turning to place the new spark in the waiting tank. He had the oddest feeling, though, that Prowl had been speaking to the spark.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2017 - December  
  
“No! Absolutely not. I don’t care that you’ve donated mass for every other new spark we’ve had here. No more from you until I can’t see  _through_  your torso.” Ratchet turned Prime bodily around and pushed him out of the med-lab. “Out!”   
  
“But—”  
  
“No, you do not get to argue with me on this. Out. I mean it.”  
  
“So, Prime, are you eating brains yet?” Bumblebee asked, leaning around the human scaled area’s partition. “Reference:  _Return of the Living Dead_.”  
  
“Gah!” Optimus and Ratchet said together.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2018 - April  
  
Ratchet and Wheeljack had been trying to start nano-cultures for new Wells here on Earth, thus far with no success. They had been implementing the normal protocols as closely as possible under the circumstances. It could be something as subtle as Earth’s gravimetric field – they had never had Wells off Cybertron, which Ratchet now realized was stupid. Although the Allspark had never been – had never been intended to be – off-planet either. And what was the use of one without the other? Ratchet had been swearing steadily (barring recharge) for five days after the latest failure.   
  
“Donated mass works perfectly in the growth tanks!” he raged, pacing the inner chamber of the med-bay. “Look at them! All six, just like Borealis, developing exactly the way the protocols said they would. And Borealis grew on the first attempt, Wheeljack! We didn’t have to try five thousand different variables, slag it, we just plugged her in and off she went. Slag, slag, SLAG!” He kicked an inoffensive section of wall, only denting the treated sandstone. “What aren’t we thinking of?”  
  
Wheeljack sat on a worktable, knees akimbo and the bottoms of his feet pressed together. He wished Perceptor was here. Perceptor wasn’t Serendipity, but he and Wheeljack had worked together a time or two and they complemented each other well. If only Serendipity had been one of the sparks in the Graveyard Legion…no. There was no use in following that cascade of thought. He had asked Prime – he suspected they had all asked Prime – if any of the 600 had been lost friends. Prime, following the wishes of the Legion, refused to answer.   
  
He supposed it wouldn’t help to point out that not all of the six in-tank were developing exactly alike. Jazz’s progeny was smaller than Borealis had been at the same stage. Inferno’s had reached about half of her full size quickly but now its growth seemed to have reached something of a plateau, while Smokescreen’s was remaining even smaller than Jazz’s. And Prowl’s looked like it was trying to catch up with Inferno’s, growing half again faster than the rest. The protocols Prime had gotten from the Matrix had provided a range of growth parameters, true; and they really didn’t have a very large data set. It was probably normal variation.   
  
“We’ll figure it out eventually, Ratchet,” Wheeljack said. “Don’t worry.”


	35. Interlewd: Fatigues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prowl and Red discuss personal differences, and Trailbreaker editorializes. Waff! Fluff!

2018 - April  
  
“The problem with you, Prowl,” Red Alert said, with no preamble and as though he was reporting on the weather – again, “is that you don’t display any warning signs of fatigue. You keep working until your body shuts down and you go into stasis lock.”  
  
Prowl didn’t look at him, but there was that feel about his energy fields. “You,” he said carefully, as if he was trying out a new language and wasn’t certain his vocal processors were functioning properly, “are just as bad.”  
  
“No.” Red was smugly positive in this. “I start to glitch. Ask Inferno.”  
  
 _Or don’t_ , Inferno said plaintively, from the Tranquility fire station where he frequently assisted. The fire chief knew he was an Autobot, but not all of the crew there had figured it out. He was currently glad of the physical remove from the embassy. Not that an overclocked Red wasn’t a fine thing, most days. Frequent overloads were Red’s coping mechanism and that suited Inferno right down to the ground. But it was also nice now that there were other Autobots around who could help.   
  
“My audials collect static,” Red continued, ignoring Inferno. “They actually give off ball lightning sometimes. Or St. Elmo’s Fire.”  
  
“That doesn’t stop you from going without recharge for far longer than is recommended for your forging.” Prowl felt he could not properly calculate any given team’s strength without knowing such minutia. The propensity toward what humans called workaholism ran strong in Autobots, and had to be accounted for. “My inclination is to become focused on a task to the exclusion of all else.”  
  
“You should dedicate a subroutine to monitoring your physical condition and power levels more consciously,” Red purred. “Clearly the standard relays aren’t enough.”  
  
On his way to the lookouts for his turn on watch, Trailbreaker stopped and leaned in the door to Red’s office. “Will you two just interface like normal mechs and get it over with already? You’re both glitching, and your static is driving me crazy every time I have to come by here.”  
  
“Up your shields, Trailbreaker,” Red snipped. Trailbreaker replied with a rude gesture, but he was grinning as he trundled off up the corridor. “Subtlety is wasted on some people,” Red continued, turning back to the mist screens.  
  
“Not everyone knows how to build up a deep charge,” Prowl offered. The look Red shot him sizzled.   
  
Ensconced in the western lookout, Trailbreaker opened the casual chat channel and held forth, as he sometimes did. _Augh, Windcharger, they’ve been at it all week again! You can’t even tell they’re flirting until about the third day when their fields really start to flux, and by that time it’s not worth the defrag time to get within a hundred meters of that office. And I have to go right by there every day to get to the lookouts._    
  
Windcharger wasn’t entirely sympathetic. _All right, but the next thing you know, they’ve got each other up against the walls, blowing plasma everywhere. And then they’re fine for two or three months._  Besides, Windcharger thought to himself, why didn’t Trailbreaker just climb down to the lookouts from the top of the mesa, if he so disliked walking by Red’s office? He had the code key, like the rest of them; the shields would open for him and it wasn’t that steep a climb if you were coming at it from the top.  
  
 _You wouldn’t complain so much, Trailbreaker,_  Bumblebee cut in, from Sam’s garage,  _if you’d ever let Prowl get you up against a wall._    
  
 _Do tell!_  Jazz slid in, all silky and insinuating.   
  
“Gossips,” Red murmured.  
  
“Mm,” said Prowl. “Perhaps if you had secondary static dampeners next to your audials, the charge buildup could be more efficiently managed before it discharges so violently.”  
  
They both enabled their separate search alerts – if their monitoring equipment picked up anything of a certain value of odd, or outright mischief of the Decepticon variety, they would be paged on their personal frequencies. Teletraan also kept a processor on the world, and would ping them and Prime.  
  
Prowl let Red take the lead as they transformed and drove out of the embassy, engines roaring in the tunnels, then broadening to a sexy growl out in the open desert. There was a particular slot canyon they liked because it was annoyingly difficult to get to, even from the air. Once they were there, however…  
  
Red liked cables. A lot. Immune to almost any form of outside hacking, cables made him feel safe, secure in the snug little shared world he and his partner or partners created within the link. And Prowl, for such a fierce combatant, was spark-shatteringly gentle. Red had the bulkier mech up against a particular section of stone. He was beginning to think Prowl’s outline was becoming visible from all the scratch marks and gouges his armor made.   
  
By mutual consent they avoided the deep places in each other’s minds, preferring the safety and calm of a more superficial, casual joining. Prowl’s hands were clever and he was adept at finding interesting places in Red’s body. The raw pleasure paired with a more intellectual affection through cables was as much as they needed or wanted.   
  
Nibbling at Prowl’s neck cables, Red offered a recent memory – it still made him smile, his spark purring warmly.   
  
.:{}:.  
  
He and Prowl had been in the Security office as usual, when Windcharger scampered in.  
  
“Did you guys see that? The opening ceremony for the Olympics? It was so cool! The whole audience had blue LED glasses like our optics and Bluestreak got to light the flame!”  
  
“Of course we saw it,” Red said, as Windcharger scurried off again. It was irritating the way most of the other Autobots assumed he and Prowl were isolated in there; that monitor duty was  _boring_. “What do they think we do in here all day? Play pinochle?”  
  
A peculiar grating noise came from Prowl’s direction; like a servo that hadn’t been used in centuries, working the grit out. Red oriented all four optics on Prowl, and took a quick, polite passive scan, just to be sure.   
  
 _Prime! Everyone!_  Red Alert sent out on the public-but-coded/secure channel.  _Prowl **laughed!**_  
  
The Autobot cloud mind lit up, and rang and giggled from Tokyo to Siberia to Tranquility as Red shared his sensory feed and the brief recording. Windcharger came barreling back in, gave Prowl’s legs a quick, daring hug, and scooted out again.  
  
Prowl’s sensory chevron went bright crimson, but he was smiling.  
  
.:{}:.  
  
He smiled again now as they let the warmth of the memory enfold them. Prowl was silent, and Red was grateful. Though Prowl’s voice was indeed acquiring a disastrous species of beauty, for Red it was like an energon blade through the spark, too full of anguish and remorse, and things Red did not want to remember. They crackled and sparked and Red – who was rarely knocked unconscious from overload – caught Prowl as he fell offline, easing them both to the cool stony ground.


	36. Third Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Perceptor and crew have a delightful survey trip rudely interrupted, and much of North America becomes a no-Seeker zone.

2018 – June  
  
It was always exciting coming through an uncharted system’s Oort cloud, when said structure was extant. Sometimes it was not, not from peculiarities of that solar system’s formation or because there were planets at that distance large enough to sweep any debris into itself, but because there was a civilization there advanced enough to have used most if not all the matter in the cloud for their own purposes. There were a few small sub-planetary bodies in this system’s cloud, Perceptor noted – and cataloged – and from the data hidden in Prime’s transmission, he knew the civilization inhabiting this system’s third planet was very young, too young to have mined anything off its kindle-world as yet.   
  
Prime wanted them to have the chance to become that advanced if they wished, so he was in effect calling in available defensive forces. Well. That’s how Warpath had put it. Warpath had rather ignored the part about the destruction of the Allspark, and everything that implied. Perceptor had tried, gently, to correct this oversight, but Warpath had gone on about kicking Decepticon tailpipe for Great Justice with such enthusiasm that it was apparent no rational argument would penetrate.   
  
The ship’s AI, Event Horizon, piloted their craft in long, graceful loops, taking advantage of gravity while swinging them close to each planet in this system. Perceptor and Seaspray concentrated on the planets, which out here were mostly gas giants with rocky cores buried deep in sludgy atmospheres, while Beachcomber collected as much data as possible on the rocky moons, laughing softly now and then whenever interesting phenomena or formations were observed. The two outermost ice giants - one azure, one aquamarine, both ringed and quite lovely - were relatively eccentric in terms of orbital plane, magnetosphere, the aquamarine one’s rotational axis and, in the case of the outermost azure one, weather. Event Horizon editorialized that she would not want to have to fly within that atmosphere even with full shielding.   
  
The next planet in was rather intriguingly less dense than water and had a prominent ring system with the expected flock of moons. Event Horizon plotted a lingering course including a complete polar orbit at Beachcomber’s request. They had plenty of time and they might as well take advantage of the opportunity for close observations while they could.   
  
“How fascinating! That moon has a fully developed atmosphere!” Perceptor enjoyed such arrangements greatly. If the moons had moons it was even more delightful.   
  
The proximity alarm sounded, shrill and jarring after such a long, uneventful journey. “Decepticons,” Event Horizon told them. “Preliminary scan indicates Seekers, two of them. Attempting to correlate with database for identity matches.”   
  
“Great,” said Huffer. “At least we’ll know who slagged us.”  
  
“Huffer,” Perceptor said. “They haven’t even fired on us yet.”  
  
“Database matches found,” said Event Horizon. “Overcast and Dreadwing. Their capabilities, including estimated fire power and scout range without base support have been upgraded since last contact. Adjusting database now.” They slewed about as the predictive avoidance software evaded laser fire. The next volley scraped their outer hull, the sound ringing through the ship.   
  
“Thank you,” Perceptor said. “I don’t suppose we have any decoy capability? No countermeasures to confuse their scanners while we hide behind one of these little herder moons?”  
  
“Our last supplies of that nature were expended as we passed Cybertron 2.7 vorns ago, I’m afraid,” Event Horizon told him.  
  
Warpath manned the ship’s rear guns, returning fire, while Powerglide took to the forward lasers. Everyone else locked themselves to their seats.   
  
Perceptor slid into the pilot’s chair just in time as they pitched abruptly to evade another barrage. “Seaspray, send a distress call toward Earth, try to reach Prime himself if you can. They may not be able to help us, but we should at least let them know where we are.”   
  
“Yeah,” said Gears. “So they can come out and find our bodies for interment later.”  
  
“Thank you, Gears,” Perceptor said dryly.   
  
“Message sent,” Seaspray said.   
  
 _ **KCHOOM! KCH-KCHOOM!**_  
  
Missiles this time, by the sound. The ship spun, falling through the ring plane toward the gas giant. “Damage report!” Perceptor cried, as Event Horizon’s screens and other indicators went dark. He slipped his arms into the piloting jacks.   
  
“Hull breach in starboard dorsocaudal sector – that quarter’s engine is offline, as are long-range sensors. And I think Event Horizon’s CPU main was hit,” Beachcomber said unhappily. Perceptor nodded and linked himself into the ship’s systems.  
  
Beachcomber was right. Event Horizon was still alive in the periphery backup drive, but her main processor was a slagged knot of molten metal. She had copied herself out just in time. Perceptor would have to take over the AI’s functions.  
  
“I have a reply from Prime,” Seaspray said. “They’re tracking us, but there’s no way they can get up here fast enough.” Prime also gave them more precise landing coordinates, which Seaspray fed into the nav system where Perceptor could get at them when he was ready.   
  
“Very well,” Perceptor said grimly, pulling them away from the planet; back into the rings. He rebalanced the overtaxed engines and dove for a large chunk of ice. Before they got near the moonlet, the barrage from behind and to the sides increased. The Seekers transmitted laughter over an older Autobot frequency, but they were evidently done playing. “Hang on, everyone, and prepare to abandon ship.” Perceptor wasn’t going to waste time on fighting back now, not if he could give them at least a slim chance of escape by fleeing in their cometary protoforms. “Beachcomber, eject Event Horizon’s backup core and take her with you.”  
  
“I have her,” Beachcomber said, sounding a little sad but not giving up. They’d been aboard this ship for a long time, searching for the Allspark, mostly far from home.   
  
They were struck again, harder – the Seekers aiming to enlarge the hole they’d already created on the starboard side. Close-range sensors went down. Perceptor hissed in pain as a chain reaction of explosions took out the next engine. Without Event Horizon’s software, they were in trouble, Perceptor’s personal battle systems were not the same as those of a spaceship.   
  
“What the…” Beachcomber said suddenly, gawking at the scanner readouts. The barrage eased, then ceased. Bright flashes came through the forward windows, and Perceptor glimpsed a more solid flash of white. It can’t be, he thought. The chances were astronomical. It could not possibly be—  
  
“Skyfire!” Beachcomber shouted.   
  
Skyfire it was, swooping down from above the ring plane, taking the Seekers by surprise with solid hits from his enormous cannons. Overcast and Dreadwing went cartwheeling into space, their hulls bright with molten alloys, trailed by corkscrew tails of smoke. Perceptor stabbed a hasty scan in their direction with his personal sensor suite through the viewport. Dreadwing might regain functioning, but there was no discernable energy signature from Overcast.   
  
“Skyfire!” Perceptor called on the last secure Autobot frequency he knew of since they’d been scattered. “We are more than gratified to see you! Your timing is impeccable! Thank you!”  
  
 _You guys look like you’ve been banged up pretty bad,_  Skyfire responded on the same channel.  _Need an escort down?_    
  
“That would be a most beneficial idea,” Perceptor said. They might still have to abandon their vessel and transfer to the big white jet. Skyfire was large enough to carry all of them, and more, like the emergency supplies, fuel and their scientific samples and records. They had attempted to avoid becoming distracted by their curiosity while searching for the Allspark, but over thousands of years, slips had occurred, and there was no wisdom in wasting their data.   
  
Perceptor re-laid their course directly for Earth, doing the navigational corrections, power distribution balancing and calculations himself. Prime’s coordinates had indicated a location on the planet’s northwestern quartisphere. Perceptor wasn’t certain he was going to be able to be that selective. “This is not going to be a soft landing,” he warned. “It would be wise if the rest of you evacuated before we reach the thermosphere.”  
  
“What are you going to do?” Grapple demanded, alarmed. Hoist put a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Prime’s transmission indicated this is a primitive world,” Perceptor answered with what little attention he could spare. “We cannot afford to lose this ship to a burn in the atmosphere. Nor is this vessel functional enough to maintain a stable orbit.” They passed Earth’s natural satellite. It was rather large in proportion to its parent world, almost a pair of planets…his curiosity could be allowed no further rein. They were about to lose a third engine if he wasn’t careful.   
  
“So you’re going to try to land on that ‘Earth’ rock,” Seaspray said, “and you think we’re going to take off and leave you alone? Thought you knew us better, Perceptor.”   
  
“Suit…yourself,” was all Perceptor said, and they stared at him because really there should have been a great deal more arguing.   
  
 _Do you want me to get beneath you, try to slow you down?_  Skyfire inquired. They could still see him out the port windows, keeping close.  
  
“Too…dangerous,” Perceptor said. The ship was no longer symmetrical or entirely aerodynamic in shape. Once they hit atmosphere steering was going to become deplorably problematic. They were more likely to take Skyfire down with them – not to disparage Skyfire’s flying skills.   
  
The first licks of exosphere hissed across their sundered hull, and Perceptor rolled the ship onto her port side, putting the damaged section, where the forced convection heat of reentry would rip into the vessel's innards and blow them apart, on the trailing edge away from the greatest temperatures. The ship was roughly lenticular in shape and could handle atmosphere in that attitude as well, but they’d have to flatten out to land.   
  
“We’re losing the last starboard engine,” Hoist said, knowing it from the sound.   
  
Perceptor no longer needed damage reports, he could feel it directly. “No,” he said quietly. The sensory arrays on his head folded down into their most compact configuration and the aperture of his optics closed to pinpoints. “We. Are. Not.” Repair drones swarmed the stuttering engine, new ones replacing any that melted. Fuel and power distribution were altered nanosecond by nanosecond.   
  
“Sea…spray…help…me,” Perceptor said, struggling to keep everything together. Powerglide was the only one among them with a true flight mode, but Seaspray was equally accustomed to three-dimensional thinking and this was no occasion for aerobatics.  
  
Seaspray jacked into the secondary controls and cabled himself to Perceptor arm to arm. The glow out the windows turned red as they tore through mesosphere to stratosphere. They could still abandon the ship now, but it would be tricky. Skyfire pulled up behind and above them, out of their way but close so that he could assist once they were on the ground. Wherever that ended up being. Even decelerating since the fourth planet, they were coming in hot.   
  
Skyfire chirped an update to Prime. From the outside that ship did not look like something one should be trying to land. Someone down on the planet sent up a list of alternate “safe” landing sites. Skyfire relayed but wasn’t sure it was received. Neither Seaspray nor Perceptor were answering comm, though their pings came back functional. Skyfire spread his control surfaces to their fullest extension, unable to do anything for the others but watch and hope.   
  
The heat, noise and vibration increased. Perceptor fought to maintain the ship’s unconventional orientation. Beachcomber was a calm, solid presence beside him. Though it was Seaspray to whom he was linked, he found comfort in Beachcomber’s steady confidence. Beachcomber trusted him to get them down safely. So he would, somehow.   
  
As they came around the terminus into night, Perceptor knew he wasn’t going to make the exact landing coordinates Prime had given in his original message. Nor would he be able to stop in time for the new coordinates Skyfire had relayed. The ship was still on its portside edge, slicing through the thick air like a broken knife.   
  
“We missed the—” Seaspray began.  
  
“I. know.” There were so many habitations and developed areas they had to avoid. “Braceforimpact.” He began to roll the ship into proper landing attitude; braking more out of hope than utility. They wobbled violently as the damaged section bit into the air, slowing that side down. Perceptor compensated, pushing hard with the half-slagged engines. Brute force was never his first choice, but sometimes it was all you had left. The main engine finally failed despite Perceptor’s careful balancing and what little the self-repair systems had been able to do on their way from the ringed planet.  
  
“There’s a mountain,” Powerglide noted helpfully. “In the way…”  
  
A mountain that did not have a human city at its perimeter, which was the point. Perceptor aimed for the narrow valley beyond, but they never reached it. They slewed to the left as a big chunk of the hull broke off on that side. Shearing forces tore Perceptor’s and Seaspray’s arms off at the elbow, breaking their link with the ship as it hurled into a flat spin and crashed into the foot of the mountain.   
  
Before the dust and debris thrown up by the impact had settled, Skyfire – blazing white with aerodynamic heat – transformed in midair and landed. He cleared away some of the rocks and burning organic matter, but a quick scan indicated more rock would fall if he continued. Another quick scan told him the forward third of the ship was badly crumpled, but further rearward was more or less intact. He broadcast to those within, but got no answer.   
  
 _Prime! They’re down, but unresponsive to comm. We need Ratchet out here as soon as possible!_  
  
 **Understood, Skyfire. We are en route, ETA .8 groon. And welcome to Earth.**  
  
They had mobilized as soon as Prime had gotten Skyfire’s initial message during the Seekers’ attack, loading into a big cargo plane at Nellis. It was a quick, two and a half hour hop to the Oregon Cascades, on the coastal side. They landed at the nearest air base and rolled out at top speed from there, Prowl’s and Ratchet’s sirens clearing the minimal human traffic.   
  
Having climbed up somewhat on the shoulder of the mountain to avoid igniting more trees, Skyfire was easy to spot, even through the smoke of the smoldering forest. Fortunately it had rained recently or there would have been a serious blaze. Inferno kept an eye on the area and doused any hot spots, while Raze and Sharp from the Graveyard Legion established a patrol perimeter.  
  
Ratchet and Prime cut through the hull as far from the molten engines as they could get. Everyone inside was offline. Ratchet carried them out one by one, handing them to Prime and Skyfire, who laid them gently on a relatively flat area to one side of the trough their landing had ploughed.  
  
Perceptor hadn’t been able to get the ship fully rotated, so it sat at a canted angle. Cliffjumper cocked his head to one side, staring at the embedded vessel. “Who let Perceptor drive?” he asked, grinning. Arcee smacked him.   
  
“It’s nothing short of amazing he got them down in one piece,” she said.  
  
“The only serious injuries are Seaspray and Perceptor,” said Ratchet, moving along the line of mostly smallish robots. “The others are somewhat dented, but they should be coming online shortly.” Beachcomber had Event Horizon’s backup core, safe and sound.  
  
Hound and Arcee went inside to retrieve Perceptor’s and Seaspray’s severed arms from the ship linkages. Ratchet poked at the frayed ends of the severed limbs. “The joints are shredded and the data jacks bent; those will have to be replaced. But I can reattach the arms momentarily.” He transformed a hand to micro-tools and, setting the limbs aside, got to work on Seaspray and Perceptor’s stumps.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Secretary Keller, Colonel Lennox and Senior Master Sergeant Epps answered their comms almost simultaneously. “I have good news for you boys,” came Jazz’s cheerful voice over the lines. “A big chunk of North America and the Pacific just became a no-Seeker zone.”   
  
“Hot damn!” said Epps, grinning.  
  
“All right!” agreed Lennox. “I take it the guys who just crashed in Oregon have big shiny guns?”  
  
“How big a chunk?” Keller asked.  
  
Jazz laughed. “You know it, Epps. Very shiny, and a radius of 3.2K kilometers from the crash site – if the Prez lets us build a base there.” Two thousand miles was what they’d agreed to state as Perceptor’s effective line-of-sight target range. In reality, from where he was Perceptor could engrave equations on the surfaces of Jupiter’s moons in characters half a meter high. And then read them back.  
  
“3.2 thousand…really?” Epps made an appreciative noise. Lennox was already mapping it out on his palmtop.  
  
“I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble getting permission,” Keller said drily.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Perceptor snapped online, scanning about wildly, the sensory tines and fins on his head flailing about. He would have leapt to his feet if Ratchet hadn’t held him down. Sparks and energon dripped from the raw end of his left arm. Ratchet had turned off the pain receptors already and was sealing the leaks with his customary speed and economy.   
  
 **Everyone is functional, Perceptor** , Prime transmitted a quick assurance even as he accepted Skyfire’s account of his lengthy journey. He disengaged politely from Skyfire and made his way back down the slope to the crash site. “You made it. Welcome to Earth, all of you.”  
  
“No thanks to Overcast and Dreadwing,” Gears grumbled.   
  
“Optimus Prime! Oh, it is good to see you!” Perceptor said, struggling to rise. “Please, Ratchet, I am well enough. Repair Seaspray while I make my report; I promise I’ll be right here when you’ve finished with him.”  
  
“Hmph,” Ratchet grumped, looming. But after a moment of unflinching attention from Perceptor’s unusually large and vivid optics, he moved over to Seaspray and began reattaching the aquatic mech’s arms with Hoist’s assistance.   
  
Gaining his feet awkwardly, Perceptor linked via cephalic cable with Prime, receiving detailed data-packets on everything that had happened here on Earth since the Allspark had been found, and in return giving a brief – for him – report on everything the little science vessel had encountered, up to the crash.   
  
Ratchet interrupted, waving one of Perceptor’s arms at them. “Are you done with my patient yet, Prime?”  
  
“How is Seaspray?” Perceptor asked.   
  
“I’m fine,” Seaspray said, saluting merrily from behind Ratchet. “Come on, Perceptor, let Ratchet give you a hand.”  
  
Perceptor laughed, though the pun was quite dreadful. “Very well.”   
  
Beachcomber, behind Seaspray, nodded, smiling. Glad to see Perceptor on his feet, though he’d be happier when his friend was whole again.   
  
Perceptor sat down and Ratchet and Hoist got to work.   
  
Prime took a moment to survey the area.  **This wouldn’t make a bad base, if the humans don’t object,**  he tight-beamed to Perceptor. He called the President’s private line to begin negotiations for permission.  **Do you think the ship is repairable or can you salvage it? You could carry on research as a secondary priority.**  
  
 _What? Really?_  For so long the war had taken complete precedence, art was gone, and science was the slave of the needs of the soldiers. Weapons, repairs, defenses, that’s all he had done for thousands of years. Now Prime himself was giving them leave to explore this new home. Perceptor beamed up at him. They’d do their best to remember what research for the sake of knowledge was like. “I am not convinced the ship will ever be spaceworthy without a complete rebuild. We can salvage it certainly. This volcano is inactive, but I suspect there are plentiful raw materials here to work with. If Hoist and Grapple feel they’re up to the task and are willing to undertake such an endeavor…?” Perceptor flinched as Ratchet reconnected his haptic network, but made no sound as pain shot up both arms.   
  
Hoist looked at Grapple and the two consulted privately for a moment. “We would be delighted!” Grapple said. “I already have plans. If we expand the raised edges of the impact area, we can have a bunker-style structure with minimal use of…”  
  
“I’ll leave it to you, then,” Prime said hastily. “Perceptor will be in charge here.” He looked down at the astonished mech with a twinkle in his optics. “He has performed admirably. Install Event Horizon as soon as possible. Teletraan-1 is distributed through and around the human internet system worldwide – he’ll be happy to have another AI to interact with.”   
  
Perceptor nodded. “We shall commence immediately, Prime,” he said, wriggling his multitude of fingers.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Thundercracker yawed angrily, slowing over the Alps.  _Slaaaag!  
  
What is it?_ Skywarp asked, yelping and climbing up out of his trinemate's suddenly unpredictable flight path.   
  
Thundercracker swore again. Skywarp would have known for himself if he could be bothered to monitor the open comm frequencies. Lazy scrap. _ **Perceptor** 's on-planet,_ Thundercracker snarled.  _And the fraggers are BROADCASTING it. The last surviving member of the Light Brigade. Here. That’s just great._    
  
 _We’ll just have to kill him, then, won’t we,_  Starscream purred.  
  
 _Yeah!_  said Skywarp.  _We’ll just gang up and frag him._  
  
The problem with ganging up to kill Perceptor, Thundercracker growled behind a large number of firewalls, was that it motivated him to get serious about killing you. Most of the time you didn’t know he had you targeted until you were suddenly missing major body parts. The light cannon beam was undetectable from the side, and while it cost him in energy use, he could sweep large arcs of the sky with the thing. Hard to avoid. He could also do creepy slag that shouldn’t be possible, like  _bend_  the beam. If Thundercracker understood correctly, that only worked in atmo, but if you were in hard vacuum you were probably in space, and he'd have a better than clear shot at you already. Thundercracker really, really did not like Perceptor.


	37. Many Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein TC bitches, Screamer manipulates, the Killer Guppies attack, Hook is not pleased, Skyfire is freaked out, Prime is amused, Borealis takes Sam, Mikaela and Bee up to the new base and is somewhat discomfited by Skyfire, Hound has a plan to contribute to Borealis' mental health, Sam and Mikaela meet the new crew, Borealis meets Perceptor, and Bee is reunited with Beachcomber. Whew!

2018 – June  
  
Inattention. That’s what Starscream had called it. Thundercracker knew it was indeed his own fault – he needed to remember to do his thinking when the others couldn’t catch him at it. So now Thundercracker was here making sure they hadn’t left anything useful behind.  
  
They had hewn this first eyrie out of the rock with their own lasers and plasma grenades. Now it was empty, abandoned. Too close to the base where Perceptor – Seekerbane – resided. And not just Seekerbane; frag Skyfire to the Pit. They hadn’t thought the old deep-Seeker was still functional, but there he was; and they hadn’t heard from Dreadwing and Overcast in some time and Darkwind was getting jittery about it. Screamer was going to get them all killed, the mood he’d been in. As if the sudden and mysterious appearance of an alarming number of Autobot ground troops and a handful of heretofore unknown helis wasn’t bad enough. No. Starscream had to go riding Galvatron’s tail – when Galvatron was conscious between bouts of drone-kindling – about rebuilding the army with real people instead of those seething hordes of fragile drones.   
  
Galvatron had caught Starscream by the neck, slammed him to the floor of their mid-continental eyrie, and sneered, “Coward! Do you truly think we need more than drones to reduce this filthy, pest-ridden planet to a cinder? Once the parasites have been extinguished,  _then_  I shall bring forth true-life!”   
  
Starscream had been lucky to escape with only a bent wing and one severed neck cable. Idiot. Never could resist tweaking Megatron’s relays. Not that the old Megatron hadn’t actively encouraged him at it, but Galvatron was a whole different puddle of slag.   
  
Thundercracker clawed at a ledge. They were down another couple of trines due to injuries, and not a few groundpounders had gotten themselves slagged by the obviously veteran Autobot tanks. Something very wrong was going on.   
  
In any case, there was nothing here. Thundercracker transformed and headed for the narrower of the planet’s two oceans. He hated this descent, but Starscream was down there and had stipulated a face-to-face report, just to torque his ailerons. The seafloor base designed and built by the Constructicons was nearly completed. Hook and Scrapper had enjoyed the challenge of such an alien environment, but the eight big Cons were getting dangerously sullen about how they were being treated. If they were smart, they’d shut up before Galvatron slagged them slowly, one at a time so they would feel every astrosecond of the gestalt bonds breaking.  
  
He flinched as he broke the surface; he couldn't help it. I hate this, he thought, descending. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this... It wasn't the dark or the cold - space was both and Thundercracker was fine with space. Space was no big deal. But those things in addition to the pressure, down at the bottom, crushing one's spark down to an ember; or at least that's what it felt like. The salts and organic compounds in the water were also disgusting and corrosive. Not as bad as the rain back home, but still unpleasant. Why can't we just leave? There were plenty of more hospitable planets back in their own galaxy. They could start again from bare rock if they had to, though Thundercracker didn't see why they couldn't salvage most of Cybertron once they found a suitable star system. There weren't enough Autobots left there to be of any trouble. And so what if the Autobots here on Earth still lived? They seemed to have thrown in their lot with the puny fleshlings. Let them. Much as executing Optimus Prime for his crimes would be satisfying, at this point wouldn't it be better to just leave him here to rust and rebuild the empire without a Prime's interference?   
  
Down, down... Thundercracker felt more than heard the whine escape his vocoder. I hate this, I hate this, I hate you, I hate you... Fragging Starscream. I hate you. He shuttered his optics to protect the more delicate focusing mechanisms. I hate you, I hate you...   
  
The descent only took four or five breems, but it felt like an entire vorn before he finally reached the locks. Cycling through, he hardened himself against his body's inclination to shiver, and he was careful not to stumble as the inner door opened. Rumble and Buzzsaw liked to take potshots at people coming through.   
  
But it was Starscream who met him as the door slid aside. Thundercracker had never seen anything more beautiful.   
  
 _I'm only trying to protect you, you know,_  Starscream tight-beamed, pulling Thundercracker into a forceful embrace, spinning his engines up for more heat, nuzzling Thundercracker's jaw spars hungrily.  _You have to stop moping about like that. You'll draw attention to yourself. Maybe now you'll remember, hm?_    
  
 _The eyrie's empty,_  Thundercracker mumbled, pressing his face into Starscream's shoulder.  _We got everything._    
  
 _Very good. Come on, let's get you to the oil baths._    
  
Both Seekers paused. For a moment they were unable to discern whether they had heard or felt it. Then both of their alert systems were pinged; Unauthorized Proximity!  
  
“Down here? Are they malfunctioning?” Thundercracker growled. Both of them shut the alarms off, irritated. Usually that particular alert meant some of the native life forms had gotten too close and tripped the perimeter sensors. Hook recalibrated them each time, entering the signatures of the life-forms that could be safely ignored so the little exoskeletal things and the larger squishy things wouldn't trip the fragging alarm every other breem. Unfortunately there were so many different kinds... Starscream tapped into Hook's channel to be sure.   
  
 _It's another swarm of very small squishies,_  Hook told him, harmonics indicating that he was inclined to dismiss them. Except.  _Hmm. They are not squishy; they're metallic. Galvatron is offline... Soundwave!_    
  
 _Acknowledged. Dispatching Laserbeak._    
  
"Good," Starscream muttered as he and Thundercracker resumed their progress to their trine's private oil baths. "Let the little nuisance do some work around here for once." They reached Starscream's quarters, and had settled in to a nice long hot soak in adjoining vats when Soundwave reported again.   
  
 _All targets destroyed._    
  
 _Really?_  Hook asked, deceptively languid.  _Laserbeak didn't bring back a few samples for me and Mixmaster to analyze?_    
  
 _All targets destroyed._    
  
 _Unfortunate. You're confident none escaped back to the surface? Because I am fairly certain Wheeljack is behind this._    
  
Thundercracker tensed. Not that the crazy Autobot inventor hadn’t been a hazard before, but now that the war had gotten close and dangerous, Thundercracker found it made him nervous that the list of survivors included Perceptor and Wheeljack. They’d heard from Shockwave recently, but somehow that didn’t feel like it evened the odds.  
  
 _All targets destroyed._  Soundwave sounded vaguely irritated.   
  
 _You'd best hope so,_  Starscream sneered. Not that it mattered. The Autobots could do as much recon as they wanted. They didn't dare attack for fear of damaging this miserable planet. Placing their fortress near large deposits of methane clathrates was clever, though Starscream was loath to admit it. Thundercracker ladled hot oil over Starscream's shoulders and the Air Commander stretched and lolled under the attention.   
  
The alarms went off again.  _If I have to get out of this bath,_  Starscream informed the base at large,  _I'm going to have someone's legs off at the hip gimbals._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Grinning, Lennox leaned over the display, shading it from the sun. The first school of Wheeljack's Killer Guppies had been destroyed, but they'd done their job – thanks to the microbots they had a complete external scan of the Decepticons' Atlantic base, as well as the surrounding seafloor in greater detail than humans had yet been able to map. It was kind of a shame. The KGs (Epps had wanted to call them "Kuppies", but for some reason Wheeljack, Ratchet and Ironhide had very firmly nixed that idea once they could stop laughing) were pretty cute. They looked a lot like real guppies, but this batch had tiny cameras and other sensors instead of heads, and their bodies were ceramic and metal, though perfectly articulated like their piscine inspiration.   
  
"Okay, ready for the second batch," Wheeljack said, crouching over his Rube Goldberg-esque contraption. Lennox couldn't tell if he was fussing with the settings or just poking at it in a rather proprietary way.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Oh do shut up, Starscream,” Hook muttered to himself.  _Another swarm incoming. They appear to be of the same general type but there are considerably more of them._  
  
 _Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Rumble: attack._  
  
Hook noted Soundwave wasn’t in any hurry to get out there himself.  _Scrapper,_  he tight-beamed to his gestalt-mate,  _I want one of those things before Soundwave’s blasted symbionts ruin them all._  
  
 _Go get one yourself, then,_  Scrapper replied.   
  
 _You are closer to an external lock. Hurry!_  
  
 _Slag. Fine._  
  
Observing his screens closely, Hook soon realized there were substantially more of the tiny not-squishies than before. This could become a problem. _Scrapper, be careful._  
  
 _Yeah, yeah._  
  
 _I mean it—_  
  
 _Hey! These things bite!_  
  
 _Scrapper!_  The wretched things were getting past the symbionts, swarming directly for the base. Hook switched to broadcast – their AI hadn’t been fully written yet; they would have to man the external guns themselves.  _Everyone to defensive stations! A massive incursion of microbots is attacking the hull._ The first few microbots had reached the base’s armor. Hook narrowed his scans. As he suspected, the microbots were chewing through the alloy and further deploying nanobots that were spreading into the armor itself like rustlets.  _Don’t touch the hull itself; I’m rerouting power to the shields._    
  
 _You should have had those up already,_  Starscream commented. He was carving a new glyph into the base of Thundercracker’s portside wing.   
  
Frag you, Starscream, Hook thought. I hope your trinemates rust. Galvatron had threatened to eat Longhaul if they didn’t get the base completed before the next time he came online. Then the Seekers came prancing around down here, sucking exorbitant amounts of power into their private suites. Hook dropped the circuit for the oil bath heaters – for the sake of the shields of course.   
  
The exterior cannons lit up the depths, frying the wriggly little things in broad swathes; but more and more came, single-minded in their multitudes. The jolt of plasma Hook sent through the shields fried any attached to the hull, but there were yet thousands to resume the assault.  
  
 _Slag they’re fast!_  Mixmaster shouted.  _Hull breaches in several sections – highlighting on the main screens now, Hook. Starscream, get out of the tub!_  
  
 _Oh I think you fellows have this well in hand,_  Starscream replied.  _Wheeljack’s trying to yank our cables. He and the rest of them won’t have time for silly pranks soon enough._    
  
 _Maybe we should…_  Thundercracker began, on the private trine channel. Starscream pulled him closer, insinuating claws around Thundercracker’s cockpit, stroking gently.   
  
 _Nonsense. Mixmaster is repairing the breaches already, and the symbionts can mop up the rest of those…things. I think I’ll have to appropriate one of the samples Scrapper managed to catch._  Studying it would keep him occupied for a breem or two, at least. Keep his mind off how tempting it was to permanently deactivate Galvatron every time he fell offline for extended periods like this.  
  
 _Have fun with that. Try not to get your face blown off,_  Thundercracker said, smirking.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“What do you say, Will?” Wheeljack asked. “Think they got the message?”  
  
“Yep.” Lennox flipped a quarter into the water as the USS  _San Jacinto_  turned and headed back to Norfolk. “‘Don’t get cocky.’”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ratchet – and any other Autobot on the channel within transmission range – could tell each time Skyfire had assimilated another block of data from the massive download he’d received from Prime.   
  
Skyfire: PRIME! YOU PUT AN ALLSPARK FRAGMENT  _IN. YOUR. SPARK CHAMBER!!!_    
Perceptor: Really?  
Prime: Yes.  
Skyfire: And you’re not dead.  
Prime: No.  
Ratchet: Not any more, anyway.  
Skyfire: Gah!  
Ratchet: Yes.  
Perceptor: Fascinating!  
  
…  
  
Skyfire: YOU LET THE MONKEYS HAVE SHIELD TECH??? AND ALL THIS OTHER TECH? OPTIMUS! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???  
Prime: There wasn’t time for wisdom, not in the old sense. We don’t have a century to cogitate and twiddle our thumbs.  
Skyfire: Twiddle…?  
Ratchet: They were going to figure it out anyway.  
Skyfire: Oh come on.  
Wheeljack: No. Really. They would have, in less than a century. Probably.  
  
…  
  
Skyfire: THE MONKEYS KNOW ABOUT SPARKS??? WHAT THE FRAG???  
Ratchet: Some of them do, yes. We had to warn them, our radiation is harmful to their self-replicating molecules.  
Perceptor: Oh dear.  
  
…  
  
Skyfire: YOU’VE BEEN TEARING BITS OFF YOUR SPARKS AND…AND  _MERGING_  THEM?????  
Prime: It’s not that terrible.  
Ratchet: Well…  
Prowl: It’s rather interesting, actually.  
Skyfire: Er. That sounded a bit…smug.  
Prime: Heh.  
  
…  
  
Skyfire: YOU PUT MONKEY BRAIN ENGRAMS IN A CYBERTRONIAN BODY?????? AUGH!!!  
Ratchet: The Matrix said to.  
Skyfire: DAAAH!  
Ratchet: I’d agree with you there, but it worked out all right, so shut up.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The moon rose bright and full over the western coast of North America. Skyfire stretched out an arm and encircled the silvery disc with his fingers.  _Prime?_  
  
 **Evening, Skyfire.**  
  
 _Sorry about the yelling, earlier._  
  
Optimus chuckled, warm over the private channel.  **We’re glad to have you among us again, Skyfire.**  The plural pronoun he used had for most of their history meant “we Cybertronians”, but had recently come to mean “we Autobots”. Prime’s sorrow at the shift threaded across his harmonics, faint but inescapable.  
  
 _I was wondering._  
  
 **Yes?**  
  
 _If I could ask you a few questions? Perceptor’s making a list—_  
  
 **Oh dear.**  
  
 _Yes. Hoist finally wheedled him into recharge, but he asked me to make myself useful if I was going to be online._  
  
Prime was on the mesa-top, looking up at that same moon, with Jazz curled up on his chest after a particularly sweet overload. Thus pleasantly relaxed, he was perfectly amenable to some light grilling from the old explorer.  **Ask away.**  
  
 _Thank you, Prime. While I was in the Universities, before I was rebuilt to deep-Seeker mode, I studied the Allspark’s radiation and structure. As much as was possible at that time._  
  
 **Ah yes. I read your thesis on the subject.**  
  
 _And?_  
  
Optimus laughed. Skyfire had sounded so young for a moment.  **Your idea that the Allspark entered this universe “through” what the humans call the Big Bang appears to be correct. Bear in mind that the Allspark can be…how shall I put this…coy…about certain lines of inquiry. Or perhaps I have not yet learned how best to frame my queries.**  
  
Skyfire took several moments to process that.  _Do you know which dimensions the Allspark exists in?_  This was a matter of some mathematical significance.  
  
 **All of them.**  
  
“YES!!!” Skyfire nearly fell off the side of the volcano.  _That’s…that’s… Thank you._  He basked for a moment in scientific glee and Prime’s affectionate amusement, but soon sobered.  _It is extremely disturbing that Megatron survived._    
  
 **Yes. One of my worst miscalculations.**  
  
 _Prime, I don’t think you can die._  Skyfire’s voice was both cruel and grief-stricken.  _Either of you. When the last star in this universe burns down to a cinder, he and you will still live, all alone in the cold dark forever. Can’t you see what you’ve done? How can you bear it?_  
  
 **At least I don’t have to worry about turning into the Face of Boe.**  
  
 _Er, what?_  
  
 **Never mind. Earth joke.**    
  
 _Ah._  
  
 **Skyfire, embracing change is a fundamental part of what we are.**  
  
 _I know, but_  Optimus!  
  
 **All right, all right,**  Prime said, laughing.  **I’m going to hear about it from Kup next time I see him, I assure you.**  
  
 _I’ll leave the scolding to him, then. But I still…_  
  
 **I know. I’m sorry. Whatever price I pay for my decisions will be worth it if the war stops here, in this system, and the humans survive to make their own choices.**  
  
 _I hope you’re right,_  Skyfire said, gazing upward. The moon was bright and cold and beguilingly near.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Sam, Mikaela, would you like to visit the new base in Oregon? Just for the weekend?” Bumblebee felt Sam could be spared from the Foreign Service Office for a couple of days, and Mikaela had just hired a new mechanic, so her apprentice, Rafaela, wouldn’t be alone in the shop on a Saturday.   
  
“That’s kind of a long drive for a weekend, even for you, isn’t it?” Sam said, not looking up from  _Grand Theft Auto XI._    
  
Mikaela brightened and Bee nodded at her. “I didn’t say we were driving.”  
  
It was a very short flight, hardly meriting the grab for altitude, but Borealis never passed up an opportunity to get hypersonic, and none of her passengers minded – even Bee, curled up in her small payload bay, enjoying the heat.  
  
Skyfire was there to meet them when they landed. The access road to the crashed spaceship/Autobot base was curvy as any mountain road, but just to the west was a straight section of Highway 101, as mandated by law during World War II, and that afforded an adequate runway.   
  
“Wow, and I thought Borealis was big,” Sam said, looking up and up. Skyfire was easily twice Borealis’ size. Her canopy and payload bay hatch opened and Skyfire offered a hand so Sam and Mikaela could climb out without touching the hot fuselage.  
  
“Hello, Skyfire!” Bumblebee slid neatly out from below, but he was too hot to touch the humans as well. “This is Sam Witwicky and Mikaela Banes.” Borealis transformed once they were clear, being careful not to brush against anything flammable, like trees. “And Borealis.”   
  
Skyfire cocked an optic ridge at him, then nodded pleasantly at the humans and Borealis. “Pleased to meet you.”   
  
Carrying the humans, it was a short walk for the robots around the mountain to the new base. From 50 feet up – Skyfire was carrying them at about his hip level – it was still easy to see the path of the crash, but that wouldn’t be the case for long. The robots were working like, well, robots.   
  
Mikaela smiled, reminded of watching Optimus’ crew clear out the Nevada base. Optimus and Ironhide had done much of the excavating; their big guns set to narrow beams and precisely deployed. It had been impressive observing them carry boulders weighing considerably more than themselves. Like ants, Mikaela had thought, as Optimus had passed her, doing a respectable impersonation of Atlas.   
  
Skyfire put Sam and Mikaela down in front of the hexagonal entrance that was already taking shape below where the ship’s engines jutted from the side of the mountain.   
  
“Visitors!” cried a dark green bot, about the size of Trailbreaker, carrying an armload of steel I-beams. “Bumblebee! Hello there and welcome!”  
  
“Hello, Hoist,” Bee said, and introduced his friends.   
  
“Excellent,” Hoist said, kneeling and extending a fingertip for Sam and Mikaela to shake. “It is my very great honor to meet you.” Standing, he gestured expansively with his free hand as he spoke. “Let’s see, Warpath is on patrol with Raze and Sharp. That’s Grapple, our architect, over there tinkering with the holo stand. Dear me but the dust gets into everything here! Brawn, Huffer, mind your footing, we have humans on-site.” The two named robots, about Bee’s size but considerably bulkier in build, stumped by carrying huge cut blocks of stone, casting mildly interested glances at the newcomers.   
  
“Tell Gears to come help with the tunnel,” said Huffer. “He’s been in the repair bay all morning fussing with that right shoulder gimbal of his.”  
  
“You heard Prime, Huffer. We are on a relaxed war footing. Gears and Powerglide are off-shift until tonight.” Hoist gazed skyward then bowed slightly to the visitors. “My apologies. Give me a moment to put these down and I’ll show you around the place.” He hesitated, clearly embarrassed. “I am sorry, but I’m afraid, Borealis, that you won’t fit. We have every intention of enlarging the major sections to accommodate larger people like you and Skyfire, but at the moment…”  
  
“Oh, no problem,” Borealis said, waving off the apology. She didn’t fit a lot of places – she’d always been used to that.   
  
Leaning the I-beams against the side of the mountain, Hoist led the humans and Bumblebee inside, leaving the big jets to enjoy a beautiful Northcoast morning.   
  
“Huh,” said Sam. “Never actually been inside an alien spacecraft before.” Well. The Autobots themselves didn’t count. The interior was more metal, less stone than the embassy in Nevada, and on a smaller scale, Sam noted. Prime could probably walk around in here, but he’d have to duck through some of the doorways.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _If you want to cool off faster, the ocean’s not far,_  Skyfire told her, rather unnecessarily.  _There isn’t much of a beach. The cliff is approximately a seven meter drop to rocky seafloor.  
  
Typical Oregon coast._ Borealis suddenly realized she hadn’t been in water since…since her ignominious flight from Starscream over Denver. Ixchel hadn’t been able to swim with anything like recognizable strokes since her twenties, but she could float. Had in fact loved being in water, the freedom of as close to weightlessness as she had ever known. Now she couldn’t even float. However, these days hiking around the bottom of the ocean wouldn’t kill her. An interesting trade-off.  _This may take a while…I’m trying not to squish too many sea urchins.  
  
You can follow my footprints. I’m afraid the first time I went down there I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. I was more concerned about setting the forest alight at the time.   
  
Aww. Yeah, I see ‘em. Thanks._ Billows of steam hissed up around her with the waves. It was kind of like wading into a hot tub to warm up, only the other way around. It felt equally nice, though. “Aahhhhh!” She continued out past the breakers until she was up to her shoulders. The surfing-worthy rollers felt like lake waves, with no more power to topple her. She realized she hadn’t really spent enough time out in the world in the kinds of places Ixchel had known, to truly appreciate the differences in scale and perception. Some things weren’t essentially different. Mountains, for one thing. And the ocean, taken as a whole. And storm waves would be…if not lethal, then certainly dangerous, and powerful enough to affect her body if she was caught in them.  
  
 _You seem to be adapting very well,_  Skyfire said. Which she realized could mean a couple of different things, possibly at the same time.   
  
 _Um. Thank you. I’m trying.  
  
Prime and Ratchet took an astonishing risk when they created you,_ he continued, which more or less let her know which kind of adapting he meant.   
  
 _I know,_  she said, splashing around for the fun of it. She could get the entire cliff-face wet with one swipe.  _I’m grateful._    
  
Skyfire watched Borealis play in the ocean, but didn’t join her. The waves here were chilly, rarely getting much over 295 degrees absolute. Not a desperate kind of cold, not spark-threatening. But he was tired of cold. He’d been so long alone in the void, in the bitter chill between star systems, rarely making planetfall. Once, he’d spent three vorns orbiting a particularly beautiful blue supergiant as closely as he dared, just to try to get the heat to penetrate his metal. He should have spent that time in searching, but even his spark had felt cold.   
  
 _Ratchet doesn’t give himself enough credit; he’s quite brilliant. I’m not surprised you came out so well._    
  
It sounded like Prime and Ratchet had been baking a cake. She headed back to shore, unsure whether to laugh or be offended. Once she’d cleared the headland, Skyfire was an easy landmark to steer by, and she soon joined him on a bare shoulder of the mountain.   
  
 _Optimus, being Megatron’s twin, ought to have Megatron’s flight mode data archived somewhere. He certainly has more than enough memory capacity. What puzzles me is why he didn’t allow that to integrate into your protoform. It would have given you interstellar capability from the beginning. Limiting you to the flight characteristics of an air-breathing jet is a rather odd choice._    
  
Borealis almost fell over. Prime had Megatron’s….oh great googly moogly. “I… You… That’s… Wow. Um.”   
  
“I apologize,” Skyfire said. “Since there were no Autobots on Earth who had a flight mode at the time you were ensparked, I shouldn’t be surprised it didn’t occur to any of them. They don’t understand. But Prime should have.” He picked up a rock – boulder – and ran his fingertips over it in a distractingly sensual manner. “Although. Prime knows very well how to deploy fliers. He does not necessarily know how to be a flier.” He set the rock down carefully where he’d found it. “Upon further consideration, he may have had definite reasons for not wanting to endow you with that particular data set.”   
  
“Urk.”  
  
“Indeed. And perhaps even subconscious inhibitions against accessing those memories.” He turned to her, looking abashed, which was interesting in a robot his size. His harmonics grew increasingly complex. "I understand there has been some difficulty with Starscream."   
  
She didn't know whether it was because Skyfire was so old that he spoke and transmitted in an ancient mode that was no longer commonly utilized, or whether, as usual, there were simply a number of circumstances of which she was ignorant, but she knew she wasn't understanding everything. There was a lot going on behind his words. "Oh. That. Well, actually Hound figured out a terrific solution," she said, blundering ahead anyway.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2016 - November  
  
She had come online late that evening after she’d returned to Nevada. Smokescreen was sitting on the recharge table next to her head. "Hi," he said, petting her forehelm.   
  
"Hi," was all she could choke out past the snarled tangle of shame and fear that rose suddenly to overwhelm her CPU.   
  
"How're you doing?" Smokescreen had a warm, mellow voice, with just a touch of friendly rasp to it.   
  
Her optics felt hot and she wondered if trying to cry nonexistent tears would make them overheat and damage them somehow. Checking and double checking to make sure she wasn't transmitting anything on any channel, she said, "I'm doing just...crummy. How're you?"   
  
Smokescreen had a laser burn across his left side, which the chameleon mesh hid, but he didn't mention it. The injuries that had occurred in Denver would have happened regardless of Borealis' flight. "Ratchet was ready to send half the US Pacific fleet out to find you," he said. Borealis made gargling noises and covered her face with her hands. "Ironhide told him to knock it off, that you'd come back on your own when you'd calmed down."   
  
“Wha...?”   
  
"He was the first to realize that not preparing you to encounter Starscream again – especially in the air – was a serious oversight."   
  
"You…”  
  
"I know about your Ixchel memories," Smokescreen said, grinning.   
  
"Ah, okay," she said. "Ratchet, Prime and I kind of decided, after they told Mirage and I was out of integration, that we wouldn't make a huge effort to hide it. But we don't exactly blab it around either." They  _were_  explicitly forbidden - for now - to tell any human. “Ratchet said you could help.”  
  
“Yes. What some humans call the “talking cure” usually works beautifully on us Autobots,” he said, rapping her helm with what she interpreted as big-brotherly affection.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A few days later, Hound came in from patrol, happily muddy. Where Hound found mud in the middle of the Nevada desert was considered a Great Imponderable. "Hey, Smokey?" he called, transforming.   
  
“Evening, Hound.” Smokescreen came out of the war room and joined him in the hangar. "What's up?"   
  
"I have an idea to help Lissi with old Screamer."  _Borealis?_    
  
She came down the unlit stem corridor - only her reassuringly blue optics visible until she stepped out into the hangar. Slag she's big, Hound thought, dismissing it right after. He wasn't often struck by her size. Borealis didn't act huge, for the most part, but sometimes she was kind of imposing. "Hey, Lissi. C'mere a sec, will you? Yeah, stand behind me here. Okay, what I'm going to try is what Smokey calls ... what was it again?"   
  
"Desensitization therapy," Smokescreen provided. He thought he knew what Hound was up to, but he only knew the half of it.   
  
"Right. Desensitization therapy. So, I'm going to project a holo of Starscream, all right? That way you can get used to the look of him little by little. If that goes okay we can add his voice, unfortunately, and even his energy signature. That sound doable?"   
  
Borealis looked at Smokescreen, unenthused. Smokescreen nodded. "Just remember, it's only a projection, and Hound can turn it off any time you want. How about you make it transparent the first time, Hound?"   
  
"Sure thing. Ready?"   
  
"What, now?" Borealis squeaked. "Crap. All right." She hunkered down behind them, feeling ridiculous because instinctively she really was trying to hide.   
  
"Want us to call Prime in?" Hound asked.   
  
"Oh sure, make it even more embarrassing why don't you."   
  
Hound chuckled. "All right then. In three...two...one." Only a slight hum gave away the activation of his emitters. "Lissi, turn your optics back on."   
  
"Drat." Slowly, she looked up, peering between her fingers. And froze.   
  
Smokescreen had linked with her via an arm cable. All his filters were very carefully in place. It was hard, and painful, but he needed to fully gauge her reaction, to understand exactly what she was experiencing. It was a standard procedure in such cases. What wasn't standard was Hound, also hooked up via arm cable on Borealis' other side.   
  
The transparent Starscream hologram fizzed out abruptly as Hound screamed and fell to the floor, clutching his midsection. Shaking the cable connections loose, Borealis scooped him up, cradling him in her hands. "Hound! Hound? I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"   
  
"Frag it, Hound, you idiot, what were you THINKING??" Smokescreen was shouting, climbing up Borealis' leg to reach him and assess the damage. Mirage was pinging them worriedly, demanding to know what had happened. Hound was shaking, his optics flickering and unfocused.   
  
He'd wanted to know what it was like to be a human. Now he knew what it felt like to die as one.   
  
"Lissi," Smokescreen cajoled. "Little Bird, let me get to him, all right? I can help him."   
  
"Oh! Sorry!" She lowered her hands and Smokescreen climbed into them, plugging into Hound with a single cervical cable. Hound sat up abruptly, batting at Smokescreen’s hands and cable.  
  
“I’m all right, Smokey. Sorry, didn’t think it’d be that strong.”  
  
“You didn’t th… Primus.” Smokescreen crossed his arms and slapped a hand over his visor. Borealis carefully put them down.   
  
Hound seemed steady enough on his feet, though he shook his head as if to clear it. He had thought, being with Maggie utilizing his holomatter form, that he understood pretty well what being human felt like. No, he realized, he hadn’t understood at all. To be so small, amid towering metal giants, plucked up like a blade of grass, broken so carelessly; and the way the pain burned through everything when his legs were snapped, how his own screaming filled up the fragile spaces in his skull, and then the shock of being dropped, helpless and unable to compensate for the height or attain a position that would absorb the impact. Impact upon impact; breathing was hard when his diaphragm was ruptured, and half the available lung space was taken up with intestines.   
  
He shook himself again and sent Mirage a reassuring ping. “I’m all right.” He looked at Smokescreen, half guilty. “I won’t erase them,” he said, a stubborn set to his shoulders. These memories, raw and disorganized as they were by Cybertronian standards, were important.   
  
“Hmm,” said Smokescreen.   
  
“Let’s try it again,” Hound said. “I won’t connect this time!” He really shouldn’t have to begin with – he hadn’t meant to add more trauma to what Borealis already found so terrifying. If they’d give his idea a chance he was positive it would help. “Lissi?”  
  
She looked down at him as he tugged on her fingers. Earnest and concerned and hopeful and so very Hound. She didn’t want to, but she hadn’t wanted to return from her flight either, and putting things off didn’t make them easier. Besides, how could she deny Hound when he was that cute? “Fine. Your funeral.”  
  
“Hope not. Ready?”  
  
“Remember,” Smokescreen said kindly, patting her knee. “It’s just a hologram.”  
  
“I know. Go ahead.”  
  
“Three…two…one.” The spectral image coalesced again. Knowing that making a big deal was just adding to the difficulty, Borealis made herself look; a little sideways, but she was looking. Hound took a step forward, pointing dramatically. “RIDDIKULUS!” he shouted. The image of Starscream altered – the Seeker commander’s armor flashed from stealth drab to glimmering silver, and bright pink ropes of jewels strung themselves across his angular frame. Starscream struck a coy pose.   
  
At Hound’s shout, Borealis started, then gaped. Smokescreen sputtered and coughed like a Model T on its last legs.   
  
“I…am Sparkle Princess Starscream,” the hologram crooned, clattering his optical shutters at them. “Still the prettiest!”  
  
“ _HUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!_ ” Borealis slapped the floor, making Hound and Smokescreen jump, booming with shocked laughter. The hologram blew them a kiss. Mechs appeared from all over the embassy to see what the hullaballoo was about, and soon Arcee and Cliffjumper were propping each other up, Ironhide was guffawing, Bluestreak almost ran over Windcharger and everyone was trying to stay out of the range of Borealis’ wildly kicking feet as she rolled around on the floor. Prime and Ratchet, in Washington DC and at the CDC near Atlanta, respectively, shot inquiries to everyone, getting mostly giggles in return.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2018 - June  
  
"I...see," Skyfire said, scratching his left cheek flange, one main antenna raised.   
  
Oh dear, Borealis thought. That wasn't what Skyfire had been asking about.  _Bee?_    
  
 _What's wrong, Lissi?_    
  
 _I've done it again, Bee. What's the deal between Skyfire and Starscream?_    
  
 _Oh Primus. We should have... Quick and dirty version: Skyfire and Starscream were very close friends before the war, Skyfire followed Screamer in joining the Decepticons. But when Skyfire refused to execute a group of captured civilians, Starscream cried him traitor and nearly killed him. We found Skyfire in time and Ratchet saved him. Now Skyfire and Ratchet are friends but Skyfire and Starscream hate each other with every molecule of their beings. Does that help?_    
  
 _Good gods. Yes, thanks, Bee. Jeez, am I ever going to be able to speak to any of you without blundering through the most painful episodes of your history?_    
  
 _Borealis, at least you keep trying. Besides, every new person has that same difficulty. We're accustomed to it, or we used to be. Most of us find it refreshing, even when it's uncomfortable._    
  
The worried look in the young jet's optics made Skyfire abruptly and completely understand Jazz's propensity to call this one "Little Bird". Unused to much social contact, he rather awkwardly patted her arm. "I’m glad Hound assisted you in overcoming your fear. Prime has requested that Powerglide and I aid you further - much as we all wish circumstances were other than they are, we must make you an effective warrior if you’re to survive long in the same skies as the Seekers."   
  
"Yeah. I know. I suck."   
  
Skyfire took a few nanoseconds to process the idiom. The human concept of suction was physically incorrect, and she was not referring to the ramscoop portion of her engines. "Er. Well, to begin with, I can give you my battle programs. Now, if you like."   
  
“Oh yes. Please.” She felt like a complete failure most of the time. Too small to carry more than one or two or three of her friends at a time. Her cannons were too small, her blades laughable. Compared to Cybertronian jets she was hideously slow with an embarrassingly short range – being unable to reach escape velocity was shameful, somehow, even though Powerglide couldn’t either, and it didn’t seem to bother him. But Powerglide had chosen his alt form from a stance of knowledge, deliberate function, and an ancient, purposely small flight mode. He was useful, he knew what he was doing. Borealis, on the other hand, had flailed about, choosing alt mode and weapons based only on the giddiness of being able to choose such things about her body. She’d been doing nothing but fangirling. Well, it was easier to take if she saw it as a childish phase – something she could, and would, grow out of. Maybe she was playing at being an Autobot, but perhaps it was deep play, and not entirely useless.   
  
“Extensive reformatting is uncomfortable,” Skyfire said, breaking gently into her thoughts. “And our resources aren’t optimal at the moment. I’m speaking with Ratchet now…and he’s shouting at me for being tactless.”  
  
“Is he? Oh for…”  _Ratchet._    
  
 _He’s being an oaf, isn’t he,_  Ratchet grumbled, sending her a glyph representing a comforting pat on the shoulder.   
  
 _He’s a little blunt, maybe. But he’s not wrong. So quit harassing him. If you still are. I can’t tell. Besides which, YOU’RE giving HIM what for about tact? The hell, Ratch?_    
  
 _Oh, he can take it,_  Ratchet chuckled.  _And you. Quit worrying about needing upgrades. Did you think we looked like this when we were first ensparked?_ He brandished an image of his railgun at her.  _We change all the time, hadn’t you noticed? It’s our nature. No one expected you to keep those pea-shooters forever._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“What I envision,” Grapple told them, having joined the tour group, “is a central atrium to let in the sunlight – it’s so nice to have sunlight energy readily available again, don’t you think, Hoist? – with further rooms of various functionality radiating outward from it. You know at first I automatically drew up a purely defensive structure, but it occurred to me that it needn’t be  _ugly_. Nor would it necessarily remain a purely military installation. Someday it could be a research center! Look, Powerglide! Bumblebee brought his humans for a visit. Aren’t they nice?”  
  
The small red jet hadn’t ducked around a corner in time. “For Primus’ sake, Grapple,” he said, joining rather than beating, “they’re not pets.”  
  
“I know, I know,” Grapple said, fluttering his hands. “I got so excited I forgot myself.”  
  
Powerglide leaned down to Sam and Mikaela and whispered,  _sotto voce_ , “He doesn’t forget, exactly, but I don’t think he has enough RAM, you know what I mean?” Grapple began to sputter but Hoist grabbed him and patted him in a conciliatory manner, shooting a look at Powerglide while a flurry of private comm among the three settled the argument before it could progress any further.   
  
“It’s all right, “ Mikaela said, smiling. “We’re his and he’s ours, in a way.”   
  
“Very kind of you,” Grapple said, bowing slightly.   
  
“Hey, Grapple,” called a voice. “Got Ven plugged in. She says your holoscreen should be working now, but you need to keep the control panel cover closed when you’re not using it.” Seaspray dropped from a hatchway in the ceiling – which in this part of the base was the underside of their ship. “Sam, Mikaela, Bumblebee,” he said, smiling and nodding at them. Sam was coming to appreciate how thoroughly the bots kept in touch; introductions could get tiring after the first several dozen, though Sam was learning mnemonic techniques for keeping track of people’s names and faces. He was getting pretty good at it.   
  
“Thank you, Event Horizon,” Grapple said to the air.  
  
“Uhhh, we don’t have speakers down here yet,” Seaspray said. “Use internals.”   
  
“Perceptor has a free moment,” Hoist said hurriedly. “Let’s go up to the lab before he gets engrossed in something else, shall we?”  
  
Red, Mikaela reflected as they entered the ship’s laboratory, seemed to be a very popular body color among Autobots. The mech hunched over something at the far side of the room was about Ironhide’s size and hadn’t yet transscanned an alt mode, displaying instead a gracile protoform with an unusually elaborate head. The lab itself was the usual confusing array of incomprehensible Cybertronian technology that was – even to Mikaela’s trained eye – largely indistinguishable from their physiology.   
  
“Come in, come in,” Perceptor said quietly, waving them forward, though he remained where he was, peering into a brightly glowing slot on what Mikaela hoped was a piece of equipment and not someone’s disassembled chassis. Closing the aperture, he straightened and turned, gazing at the visitors for a moment before stepping carefully to meet them in the center of the room. Sam and Mikaela were accustomed to the full-speed movement of bigger mechs than he was, but Perceptor’s restraint was appreciated. “My apologies for not meeting you outside.”  
  
His voice reminded Mikaela of the British librarian guy, Giles, on  _Buffy_ ; kindly and soft-spoken. She’d had quite a crush on him when she was eight. Perceptor knelt before them in that way many of the Autobots had which conveyed their respect and full knowledge that Mikaela had partnered Bumblebee in the battle of Mission City, and that Sam had faced Megatron one-on-one and had prevailed.   
  
“There is so much to learn about your beautiful planet,” he said. “One of my spheres of study is organic biochemistry, so I must beg your indulgence should my enthusiasm overwhelm good manners.”  
  
“No probing and we’re good,” Sam said, grinning.   
  
“Where’s Beachcomber?” Bee asked. Everyone’s personal comm channels had changed over the years. Perceptor’s optics unfocused for an instant.  
  
“He’s approximately ten kilometers to the southeast,” he said. “Looking for bears.”   
  
“Is that bad?” Sam asked.  
  
“Only if he brings some back with him,” Bee said, thanking Perceptor via tight-beam for Beachcomber’s comm channel. “He’s on his way back now,” he added, communicating a broad smile even without a mouth built for it. “Without bears.”   
  
“Have you already shown them—?” Perceptor asked, rising smoothly to his feet.   
  
“Everything but the engine room,” Hoist said. “Ratchet informs me that area is too radioactive for unprotected humans at the moment. I should resume helping the others in the radial tunnel.”   
  
“Shall we wait for Beachcomber outside?” Perceptor suggested. “And I understand there is another member of your party who could not fit inside?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said. “We should probably see how our ride home is doing.” He supposed she had followed their tour via Bee’s optical and audio feeds, but it felt weird to have left her waiting outside like a taxi.  
  
Once they emerged it was easy enough to find her. She sat motionless on the mountainside, optics dim, head tilted to one side, her energy signature fluctuating strangely.   
  
Bee climbed up and shook her arm. "Lissi? Borealis? Are you all right?" There was no response.  _Skyfire, what happened?_    
  
 _I couldn't merely give her the base programs, Bumblebee. She needs my experience as well, to implement them to her full ability._    
  
 _You did a psychotronic transfer!_  Ratchet cut in angrily.  _On someone less than a vorn old. Skyfire...!_    
  
 _……Asked him to, Ratchet,_  Borealis said, her transmission faint and more than somewhat preoccupied.  _Not a baby._  
  
 _That’s open to some debate,_  Ratchet responded crisply.   
  
“Is she all right?” Mikaela asked. Borealis and Bee exchanged an  _ohshit, what do we tell the humans_  look.   
  
“I’m fine,” Borealis said, glad that the internal comm byplay among robots took place at a rate the humans didn’t notice. “Skyfire was just giving me some files about what physics is like at the edge of the expansionary sector of the universe.”  
  
Sam could read Bumblebee’s body language as keenly as he could that of his own species, and he knew a cover-up when he heard one. But given how close together Borealis and Skyfire were sitting, he had no desire to delve any further. “Geek.”  
  
“Politician,” Borealis responded, with a jut of her chin in lieu of sticking out a tongue she didn’t have.   
  
“Hey!”  
  
“You got cooled down okay?” Mikaela asked, putting a hand over Sam’s mouth before the bickering got going.   
  
“Oh. Yes, I went and played in the ocean,” Borealis said.   
  
“Wait a minute,” Sam said, pulling Mikaela’s hand down after giving her palm a surreptitious kiss. “You guys can’t swim, right? I mean you’d just sink.”  
  
“I didn’t go that far out, Sam.”  
  
Perceptor climbed nimbly up to the big jets, various things unfolding and spinning and whirring on his head, his large, bright optics open to their widest aperture.   
  
Skyfire leaned toward Borealis.  _If he starts a running monologue about every detail of your anatomy, don’t be alarmed. He does that to everyone._  
  
It took Borealis longer than usual to realize she was staring. Perceptor was both fish and fowl; his elegant head finned and flanged with a dazzling array of receptors for plumage. His neck was unusually long and armored with what looked for all the world like scale mail, giving him protection while still enabling him to turn his head 180 degrees like an owl. His optics were the largest and the most vivid she’d ever seen, and he had a sweetly handsome, somehow innocent face. The face of someone who’d lived gently in an Ivory Tower, who couldn’t quite credit the depths of evil the world showed to others. She wouldn’t find out until later how wrong she was.  
  
“Hello there,” Perceptor said.  _I am exceedingly pleased to meet you._  His voice thrilled through her processors.  _You have several…hm…”siblings” on the way, correct?_  
  
“Hi.” Woo! Look at me, Queen of Stunning First Lines!  _Yes. Six more; one of whom should be decanting pretty soon, I think. I know Cybertronian._  He had switched to English with the word "siblings".  
  
“If I may venture an opinion, you appear to have a most intriguing vehicle mode.”  _Of course you do, but whatever terms we once might have had for such relationships were lost along with the knowledge of the merge process itself. It seems fitting to borrow from your…I beg your pardon, from a human language._  
  
“It’s an experimental craft originally designed for high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance, but the humans got so good so quickly with satellites and unmanned vehicles they abandoned this line of development.”  _Sunstreaker and Sideswipe call each other “Brother”…except… Oh I see. That term in Cybertronian very specifically means a twinned spark._    
  
“Ah. Called the Aurora, hence your chosen designation in English.”  _Precisely. Hm. Based on your protoform, I would have guessed your forging to be_  de, _delta-class Seeker type, like Skyfire. Yet your mass is more in keeping with the alpha- and beta-class, though at the larger end of that scale._  
  
“Right.”  _I…what?_  Terrific, Borealis thought, making sure she wasn’t transmitting it somehow. I’m a freak, a snot-nosed kid  _and_  I’m short. Or fat. Lovely.   
  
 _Without Wells it’s astonishing they were able to feed you as much mass as they did; although with Optimus being regenerated via the Allspark…and that in and of itself is a dizzying concept indeed!_  
  
 _About the Wells,_  Bee interrupted. He was steering Sam and Mikaela down the mountain to the game trail where Beachcomber would be emerging when he got there. “Perceptor and Skyfire will be talking science for the rest of the day, we might as well leave them to it.”  
  
Perceptor had climbed further and was examining one of Borealis’ hands. Borealis held very still and tried not to notice how meticulous yet gentle his touch was.   
  
 _Oh yes,_  Perceptor said.  _Ratchet has already elicited my opinion on the matter. I assured him I didn’t feel that he and Wheeljack had done anything improperly. It must be something environmental, changes in which we have never been compelled to deal with before. Most intriguing!_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Sunlight filtered through the redwoods, forming glowing pools of emerald where it struck the damp ferns and mosses of the lush understory. They were far enough away from the base to have lost the noise of construction; their footsteps – especially Bee’s – on the duff sounded loud against the low sigh of the wind far above in the treetops.   
  
“Nice day for a hike in the woods,” Sam said. He was missing his games, but at least it wasn’t hot like it was back home.   
  
“This is such a beautiful area, I’m surprised it isn’t a National Park or something,” Mikaela said.  
  
“I think it is,” Sam offered thoughtfully. “State Park maybe. But the President seemed happy enough to let the Bots set up shop here.”  
  
“Beachcomber!” Bee ran forward. He didn’t actually tackle the geologist, as he generally did Jazz, but the approach was the same. Mikaela noticed Bee slip cables into ports in Beachcomber’s body as they embraced.  
  
Sam hugged Mikaela and smiled. It gave him a good feeling to see the bots reunited with friends, though it was laced with the suspicion that it didn’t happen very often any more.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Sam and Mikaela were bedded down in their fancy little tent – a construction that had fascinated the science bots – with Bee parked beside them in vehicle mode. Borealis sat on the mountainside, thinking, and occasionally talking with Skyfire, who was in orbit.  _So what do you think of Perceptor?_ Bumblebee asked. He’d thought she’d like him, but wanted to hear about it from her point of view.   
  
Finally she found something – a little outdated but apt – on the radio.  _“Seven days and seven nights of thunder/The water’s rising and I’m slipping under/I think I’ve fallen in love with the 8th world wonder!”_  
  
 _That much, huh?_  Bee laughed.


	38. Interlewd: Opal Pavanne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Beachcomber surprises Perceptor with a new specimen and then recalls a past encounter with Red Alert's former self and gestalt, Perceptor has to make some tough choices, and Seaspray helps out with Perceptor's defragging. :D

2018 - July  
  
For half a second, Perceptor thought Beachcomber was handing him another rock sample of the sort that Beachcomber found immediately fascinating, and Perceptor would have to set aside to study later after the teetering masses of more pressing matters were addressed. In the next 0.5 second, Perceptor glimpsed the irregular slab's molecular structure and staggered. He caught the sample up, holding it to his scope as impossible thoughts crackled through his CPU. Beachcomber could not have returned to Cybertron. Could not have, conversely, kept such a rarity hidden for so long. Perceptor's investigations of Beachcomber's anatomy had been numerous and thorough over the millennia.   
  
"Hey there, I'm sorry," Beachcomber said, laughing, putting out a hand to steady him. "Didn't mean to startle you." His visor flashed a swift, apologetic pattern, then an amused one. "You thought this was Ellsee!"   
  
Perceptor chuckled, transmitting a glyph acknowledging and complementing Beachcomber on the clever translation of the name. LC for liquid crystal, which was accurate enough for the purpose. The substance's designation in Cybertronian was also a pun, though of a different order. "I'm afraid I did. But now I see this must be native. What is it?"   
  
"It's called opal. Hydrous silicon dioxide. The humans use it as a decorative gem, though I understand there's some unfortunate mythology involved in some cultures."   
  
"Naturally occurring? Astonishing!" He turned the sample this way and that, marveling over the play of colors. There were only thin seams of opal in quite a lot of the rust-and-ochre matrix, but the contrast made it all the more lovely, Perceptor thought.   
  
Beachcomber chirped him the entire file he'd accreted, including a comparison of the structure of opal to Ellsee. They were in fact closely related.   
  
On Cybertron, before the war, silicon dioxide molecules were arranged around relatively rare H2O molecules. Discontinuities in the non-crystalline structure were then dynamically induced via an energon field. Vast panels could thus be constructed to display moving images in vivid color, with some degree of three-dimensional depth as well. The original purpose of the constructs had been another form of non-volatile quantum memory, but Cybertronian artists had swiftly adopted the process to adorn buildings, and even embodied people and drones. The panels were fragile, however, and expensive to maintain. Mirage or Tracks would recognize Ellsee, but perhaps not many others would.   
  
Perceptor felt a brief pang of rare homesickness. He had seen panels of Ellsee once in Tyger Pax, on his way to some event or other. He no longer remembered what, as his memory core had been damaged during the third battle of Iacon. He had of course reinstalled the backups of the important technical data.   
  
Beachcomber smiled. “You’re thinking of the time we went to Tyger Pax for the Vectorion Awards.”  
  
Borrowing a human gesture, Perceptor snapped his fingers. " _That’s_  what it was! You  _were_  there. I thought perhaps you might ha—”   
  
Beachcomber looked stricken.  
  
“What? Surely you’re not still upset over that Iacon incident are you? Really, that was millennia ago.” If Perceptor was lucky that was all Beachcomber was upset about.   
  
“You were offline,” Beachcomber said. “You never saw. They burned off half your face.”  
  
“Yes, yes, so I’ve been told. And Infusion simply rebuilt a new one for me from the original design.”  
  
"No," Beachcomber said, clutching at Perceptor's free hand. Perceptor had never truly understood Beachcomber's reaction to the incident. Admittedly, as Beachcomber had pointed out, he'd been offline until the med-bots had finished repairing him. "No, Infusion was an artist, too, remember? She said you were too beautiful for an ordinary replacement. She re-sculpted your face herself."   
  
“Well! I…did she really?” Perceptor preened.  
  
Beachcomber fell forward to embrace him, arms around his waist. He refused cables, glad Perceptor had no direct experience of this particular memory. "When they brought you in you looked dead. The exposed circuitry wasn't even sparking any more."   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
3.0084 million years ago.  
  
Ferrum carried Perceptor's body off the field, more out of habit than any hope that he was still alive. Then Infusion's scans indicated his spark was still generating, despite external indications to the contrary. Welder paused, noting Beachcomber's reaction as they passed him. The call for retreat had gone out two breems ago, what was the little mech doing out here still? Unless he'd been looking for a friend. The expression on Beachcomber's face confirmed it. Welder took his arm gently, ready to carry him if need be. "He'll be all right. Infusion says she can repair him, understand?"   
  
Beachcomber shuddered and pulled himself together, jogging to keep up with the rest of the retreating bots. He had lost friends before, everyone had. That it never got any easier to face was probably a good thing. This time for some reason he felt a chill he couldn't shake, as though his spark was fading. And his memory was looping - the flash of particle beam fire, Perceptor staggering backwards, falling, the housing for his main memory core exposed where his face had been seared away, the remaining optic shattered.   
  
"Perceptor." Beachcomber's voice had taken on an uncharacteristic, high-pitched whine. "Perceptor... "   
  
Welder kept him moving, extending an arm cable that Beachcomber was too distracted at first to accept. Once he had, though, Welder let him into the periphery of the gestalt link, enveloping the geologist in that unconditional acceptance and warmth.  _Be calm. Come with us, we will repair him._  Parhelion and Flare met them at the entrance to their underground base, holding the door and shielding open for them. Ferrum and Infusion ran directly to the left, into the repair bay.   
  
For good or ill, the head injury was what had taken Perceptor down. The rest of his body bore no more than superficial injuries from the battle. "He's beautiful," Infusion murmured, touching the intact side of Perceptor's face with one delicate phalanx. "Welder, keep him in stasis. I'm going to stabilize his CPU and memory core and then we need to work on these others." She transmitted the triage list, which Beachcomber caught the edges of, until Welder partitioned the datastream.   
  
 _You're unusually good at holistic communication,_  Welder transmitted to Beachcomber with a pleased glyph.   
  
"Thanks," Beachcomber said. "I… I'm all right." He released Welder's cable and stepped away, casting about for the short-wave channel that would give him the base's non-classified floor plan. "Just…call me when there's any news about Perceptor? Please?"   
  
Infusion looked up from her work to catch his frantic gaze. "This will take some time, Beachcomber. Once the structural damage is repaired I must reforge most of his facial components."  _And,_  she tight-beamed to him,  _his memory is damaged, I don't know how extensively yet. Please be prepared - you may be crucial in anchoring whatever memories he still retains. Do you know where his backups are stored?_    
  
Beachcomber nodded, feeling the cold again.  _They’re hard to get to, but I know where they are.  
  
Good._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Beachcomber dropped and flattened himself beneath the overhang, Flare right beside him. The fourth Decepticon squadron in as many breems passed above them without stopping. The place where Perceptor’s memory backups were hidden wasn’t far in terms of surface distance, so Flare had volunteered to accompany Beachcomber to retrieve them. However, the entire area was well inside the zone of active fighting. That was the “hard to get to” part.   
  
If Beachcomber had had to navigate by landmarks, they’d have been in trouble. The entire district’s buildings were in ruins; collapsed or blasted. Fortunately, what he was looking for was under what had been the “live” layers of the city, and his geo-sensors led them unerringly to the entry, even taking the circuitous route required by avoiding Decepticons.   
  
“The door we want is buried about here,” Beachcomber said, pointing. “About three meters down. It feels like things are intact beyond there, though.”  
  
Flare nodded and set to helping Beachcomber dig and cut their way down. He was equipped for rescue, though not as powerfully as Ferrum or Welder. Soon they had cleared enough wreckage for Flare to get to the double doors Beachcomber indicated. The doors had to be cut through, but once beyond them, Beachcomber hummed happily.   
  
"Ah!" he exclaimed. "It's still here!" Though most of the walls were caved in, a circular mosaic in the center of the floor was remarkably intact. "Now. Flare, you take the right-hand alcove and I'll take the left. Inside you'll find a nine-square of glyphs. When I signal, press the third glyph in the second row."   
  
Flare gave Beachcomber a quizzical look, but moved gamely across to the indicated alcove. "Got it."   
  
Beachcomber chuckled. "Three, two, one!" As they pushed the glyphs together, a booming, grinding noise came from below. "Hurry!" Beachcomber said, beckoning. Flare ran from the alcove, hopping onto the circular mosaic with Beachcomber as it sank. Once below the level of the floor, Flare could see that the platform was being moved by a set of three huge screws threaded onto knoblike projections beneath the platform’s edge. It was an elegantly simple, mechanical arrangement, sturdily built and therefore unlikely to break down even if unused for millennia.   
  
"How far down are we going?" Flare asked. The darkness beyond their headlights was indistinct, even to acoustic sensors. He wasn't sure if they were passing layers of bombed-out floors or complex machinery of some kind.   
  
"Mm. All the way down," Beachcomber said. Flare didn't find that answer particularly helpful.   
  
After at least a breem and a half of steady descent, the platform at last shuddered to a halt. The floor here was mostly free of debris. Seven archways gaped blankly at intervals around the heptagonal chamber. Above each arch, Flare noticed more nine-squares of glyphs. He devoutly hoped they wouldn’t have to unravel the poems that each nine-square depicted. Beachcomber moved off the mosaic purposefully and Flare followed, confident that Beachcomber knew which was the correct archway.   
  
Ignoring the arches completely, Beachcomber stepped over to a small podium and pressed a softly glowing button. The booming, grinding noise started again and the platform began to rise.   
  
"Uh. How are we going to get back...?" Flare trailed off as the rising platform revealed a sunken pit beneath. Beachcomber climbed down the ladder at one side, grinning at him. Inside the pit was another open doorway. Through this they followed a long, gently sloping corridor down to yet another room. This one had four archways, again with the poetic or riddle nine-squares. Again Beachcomber ignored the arches; Flare was coming to expect that but he didn't see any other egress from the room.   
  
Between the archways were vaulting shelves containing multitudes of specimens of... Flare had no idea what, actually. Some were in jars containing liquids, some were articulated into almost protoform-like arrangements suspended in elaborate frames, while most were set out in rows that seemed to denote a kind of succession or sequence. His scanners labeled them as mineral in composition, but non-metallic, and the shapes were weird. Beachcomber went directly to one of the shelves and moved one of the jars. There was a distinct click, followed by clunks and whirrs of more machinery. The shelves retracted and sank, becoming a short stairway up into yet another corridor.   
  
"Your friend is incredibly paranoid," Flare commented.   
  
Beachcomber laughed. "No, this is for fun. Besides, Perceptor didn't design this place, my mentor at Xenon University, Archenteron, did. She loved environmental puzzles."   
  
The little room at the end of the corridor was circular and paneled with irregular slabs of multicolored stone. A natural enough collection of specimens for a geologist, Flare admitted. Beachcomber pushed at the edge of a slab that to Flare's untrained optics was indistinguishable from a dozen others, and with a faint click the slab opened, revealing a niche. From the niche, Beachcomber withdrew a box; plain unalloyed aluminum, with a simple clasp. He opened the box, checked the contents with a whirr of relief and closed it again, caching it in his torso. "That's it. Let's go," he said, nodding to an equally relieved Flare.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Cycling the airlocks carefully behind her, Infusion emerged troubled from the ultra-clean room. Perceptor’s inner cranial chamber remained open and would until she was certain whatever repairs could be made had been completed. A brief whisper of transmission from Flare told her where Beachcomber was.   
  
Folding her tall, narrow self down to his height, she met his optics squarely. “Are you certain those were all the memory shards?”  
  
“Yes. I think so.”  
  
“I…I can’t pretend to understand half of what he has on them, but the directories are terrifyingly organized. Beachcomber, there’s nothing in those backups except technical, scientific data.”  
  
Beachcomber stared at her.  
  
She placed a hand on his shoulder. “There are no personal memories there.”  
  
Beachcomber shuttered his optics. Oh, Perceptor, he thought, what have you done?   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Perceptor?” Welder said. “There’s someone here to see you. And leave that alone or I’ll get Ferrum in here to sit on you.”   
  
Perceptor jerked his hand guiltily from the monitor cable he’d been about to unplug from his arm. He felt perfectly fine, the fussing of the medical bots was entirely unnecessary. “Hello, Beachcomber,” he said, noticeably testy. “Would you please convey to our esteemed colleagues that—”  
  
“It’s not going to deactivate you to stay put until Infusion has finished with the latest batch of casualties,” Welder interrupted. “And yes I know you’re a certified field medic, but until we get a chance to make sure your memory core is stable there is no way in or out of the Pit we’re letting you near patients, got it?”  _Is he always like this?_  he tight-beamed to Beachcomber.  
  
 _Yes,_  Beachcomber replied happily.  _He really is._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Do you remember the time we kissed for three orns?” Beachcomber sat at the foot of the repair table, kicking his feet, his back to Perceptor. His friend’s new face was exquisite, and though it closely resembled his old one, it was for now too much a reminder of what else about him might have changed.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
Beachcomber turned at the wistful tone, and caught the fleeting little smile before it disappeared behind Perceptor’s meticulously cultivated mask of boredom. “Do you remember that time we went exploring down in the Sonic Canyons…?”  
  
“MUST you bring that up? Exploring, ha! You dragged me down there knowing full well—”  
  
Beachcomber climbed into his lap and kissed him. “Want to try for four orns?”  
  
It turned out they’d been incredibly lucky. Perceptor had only lost the last twenty voors of memory. He recalled nothing of the second and third battles of Iacon, or being shot, and nothing too personally significant appeared to have happened in that timespan, according to Beachcomber’s corroborating memories. They could never be absolutely certain, of course, but twenty voors wasn’t very long. Chances were good that the technical backups had been all he needed. Perceptor was grateful to Beachcomber and Flare for having retrieved them; he’d been missing a large organic chemistry module.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
3.008 million years ago.  
  
He stood in the center of what had been the innermost University Library. There was nothing left but cooling pools of molten slag. Perceptor swayed, but kept his feet, pressing his temporal fins with trembling fingertips. There was still hope, he told himself. Down in Uraya, where no one would suspect, there was a hidden vault where the backup archive was kept. Few had ever known of its existence – Perceptor was terrified that he might be the only one left who did.   
  
Somehow, he had to go there.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Megatron’s forces had struck both Towers and Universities at the same time. Osmium and Rhodium Towers and the Helium University had gone down full of mechs who refused to take up weapons, protesting with their peaceful determination. None had survived.   
  
Perceptor gathered a few University survivors; some friends of his from the Astronomy and Mathematics academies, others simply individuals willing to assist. Valence helped Perceptor build eight large but portable memory shards. They knew how big the Library had been - it was public data, anyone could look up the stats, even if most of the time it was only to settle bets on its current size. The Archive, they reasoned, was probably smaller since it wouldn’t necessarily contain the last batches of raw data.   
  
Essentia knew a shuttle, Spinner, who was willing to fly them fairly stealthily into Uraya and back. Within less than a voor they were ready.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Farad! Get him out of here! We'll keep them busy!" Apogee shouted. Threadwinder was down, her head messily blown off.   
  
"Come on, Perceptor, hurry!" Farad urged, tugging on Perceptor’s left primary arm.   
  
He kept looking back. "But..."   
  
 _No, you have to make it at least,_  Farad tight-beamed.  _We decided last night. You're best suited to decide what to keep and what to let go if it comes to that.  
  
That's absurd! The more of us there are, the more space there will be available, and we have more than enough portables. I told you before, we're taking everything.  
  
Seems the Cons have other ideas, old friend. Come on!_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Perceptor lowered the portable memory cores to the floor and connected them to the archive system's main data port. He and Valence had modified them during the journey; the download speeds would be astonishing. The others would meet him here when they could; he might as well get things started. No one would blame him if he dipped into the directories as the transfer was taking place.  
  
Centennial’s Fifth Theorem, Quadratic’s Teleharmonic Equations – but those had been lost! There were even the personal journals of Vector Sigma, the oldest known living Cybertronian, since Vector Prime was generally assumed to be mythical. Perceptor realized the University Library was an abridged version. The Mentor Council must have pared the working library down to the more recent, most useful sets of data; which were in fact vast enough for most people’s purposes. The full archive must have been considered to be of interest only to ancient historians, and no one had looked at it for eons. Or no one currently alive had, Perceptor amended.   
  
He had miscalculated badly. The Archive was several orders of magnitude larger than the Library. Oh no, he thought. Where are we going to put it all?   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Cybertronian memory cores were, at their most basic, intended to last for an average mech’s entire three billion year lifespan. Based on quantum storage and advanced compression techniques, the cores did not take up a great deal of physical space – but they were, ultimately, finite.  
  
With a sob, he erased another block. Surely there would be other sweet, silver-lit days, full of love and laughter. The war couldn't last much longer. When it was over they would rebuild. They would need every scrap of data he could preserve.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
My spark, he thought, that will safeguard my self, won’t it? Even if he had to dump everything but core programming, he would still essentially be himself. But he had to be careful. He had to find a way to conceal the memory loss, especially from Beachcomber. He created a text file – it would take up negligible space – with the names and faces of his friends and colleagues, adding brief notes about shared events and overall impressions. I love Beachcomber very much, he told himself. He was my first friend at Xenon University…  
  
If the Decepticons found out he had the archive it would make him a target – for kidnapping if not deactivation. Shockwave would be interested in combing the archive for useful ideas. There were old engine designs, abandoned because something new and pretty had come along, not because there was anything inherently wrong with the old designs; even at a glance Perceptor could tell they were incredibly fuel efficient; a factor that was becoming more and more important these past several vorns.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Gently, tenderly, he withdrew from the data jacks, crumpling to the ground. His whimpering would give away his position, so he shut off his vocal processors. By his internal chronometer he’d been there for three orns. The others had not come. He would wait for as long as he could, but within a quartex he would have to be at the pickup point to catch Spinner back to Iacon.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Spark be true, spark be true. Dizzy with how much he had lost and gained (oh, not everything, no, but spark be true, spark be true), he staggered on through the darkness, carrying the seven surviving memory shards; he had lost one to laser fire from a Seeker patrol that had spotted him. There was so much soot and dust in the atmosphere it had blocked the sunlight for orns. The acid rain was more often than not acid hail.  
  
Spinner wasn’t at the pickup point.   
  
It was too open and exposed; Perceptor couldn’t stay long. No one answered on the agreed-upon channel.   
  
North. He would simply continue as he had progressed so far, slow and careful, all the long way back. His left lateral ankle strut bent and he went down, falling into the sharp debris, slicing off most of his secondary hand and forearm on that side. Fortunately he’d forgotten to reconnect his vocal processors; whatever screams he would have uttered echoed only in his own CPU. Spark be true, spark be true.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A vorn later.  
  
“Hello, there!” the bot said cheerfully, waving with a delicate secondary hand as he picked his way through the debris.   
  
Wheeljack, constantly scanning, kept one optic on the sky as he ran to meet him and help with the bulky cases he was carrying. That drone lens-head patrol could return at any moment. “Hiya! What the slag are you doing out here by yourself?” He pulled the mech along as fast as they could go over the uneven ground. “Never mind, tell me later. Springer! I have him, let’s go!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A medical bay. Perceptor knew he’d been in such before, but could not recall where or when. The lighting was dim, soothing, and it was quiet except for the soft hum of a mech nearby. He didn’t recognize the tune.   
  
His optics lit. A primary hand reached toward the tenuously familiar little blue mech sitting on the foot of the repair table. “Beachcomber?”   
  
“I’m right here.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2018  
  
"Beachcomber." Perceptor knelt so their heights were more even. Placing the opal carefully on the table, he took both of Beachcomber's hands and pressed them to the sides of his own face, optics meeting visored optics. "Look at me. I am perfectly functional now, am I not?"   
  
“Not perfectly,” Beachcomber whispered, though his mouth flickered with a wisp of smile.  
  
"Oh dear," Perceptor murmured, sliding his hands down Beachcomber's arms to the elbows. Hidden beneath the inner surfaces of the joints were particularly sensitive afferent nodes. Perceptor brushed them once then rested his fingertips there.   
  
Knowing there were times when his cascade of thought needed to be broken, Beachcomber leaned into the caress. Perceptor had been so busy since they'd landed, setting up the base and helping Prime negotiate over the site with the humans, Beachcomber knew he hadn't interfaced at all in three or four weeks. Whereas Beachcomber had managed to slip in a few cablings with Seaspray now and then. And even once with Bumblebee when he and his two young humans had come up to visit and lend a servo with the base equipment. Bumblebee was always a delight. It was rejuvenating even to be on the same planet with him again. Perceptor's delicate fingers resumed their deliberate movements, and Beachcomber shivered.   
  
Outside. He wanted them to be outside. But they would pass other people on the way, and Perceptor would get called to some priority task. Beachcomber sent the command to lock the lab's doors, scanning first to make sure there were no stray humans inside amid the chaos of equipment still scattered about. Only to find that Perceptor had already locked them. Beachcomber grinned and pulled his friend down to the floor in a crash and flail of limbs.   
  
Getting to Perceptor's spark chamber was always a fussy business. He tended to arrange much of the heavier support structures for his scope/light cannon around his torso, obscuring the central seam. Beachcomber was determined, though. Perceptor's unwontedly clumsy, frantic movements betrayed how badly he needed the most powerful form of interface.  _Hey. You shouldn't, mmm. let yourself go so long,_  Beachcomber chided him.   
  
 _I....acknowledge ... unintentional .... oh open, please, Beachcomberrrrrrr ..._  Perceptor clawed at him, scrabbling at Beachcomber's chest, half transforming himself to expose his own spark.   
  
“Wow, Perceptor. You’re like totally fragged.”  _Want me to call Seaspray in for a trine?  
  
Nnnnnnn…_    
  
Perceptor's spark shone bright from the depths of his chest. It was hard now for Beachcomber to get words and glyphs out. He hadn't cracked his own chest yet only because he knew once he did he'd be no more coherent than Perceptor.  _No time. I gotcha._  With a sigh of hydraulics, he opened up.   
  
Overload flashed over them the moment their spark coronae brushed together.   
  
They were online within a few minutes, though. Perceptor curled around Beachcomber slowly, like a chiton protecting its soft underside.   
  
“Seaspray?” Beachcomber allowed a note of wistfulness to thread through his harmonics.  
  
 _MmSeaspray._    
  
Pleased, Beachcomber tight-beamed their nautical friend.  
  
 _Thank Primus,_  Seaspray replied.  _His static has been giving me surges for a week! I’ll be right there._    
  
Seaspray still hadn't chosen an Earth vehicle alt mode, so he was still in protoform, solid and impervious, and a bit squat. But his spark was clear and calm, both like and unlike Beachcomber's.   
  
“Hullo, Perceptor,” Seaspray said as they unlocked the door to let him in. Beachcomber re-secured it behind him.   
  
Perceptor’s vocoder was still a little glitchy, so he simply extended an arm towards Seaspray, fingers gracefully beckoning. He pulled Seaspray down into their, well cuddle was a soft, human word, and no parts of them were soft, but it was descriptive enough. It was times like these that Perceptor was pleased to be larger than most of his crew. He could hold them both close, surrounding them, wrapping them in a moment of safety, no matter how illusory.   
  
Seaspray regretted that he hadn't chosen an alt mode yet. In protoform his haptics were so dulled he could only feel vague pressures and some slight warmth. Extrapolating from that he guessed the other two were quite overheated indeed. It was frustrating that they had landed near a relatively unpopulated and unfrequented area of coastline. Shipping lanes were far out to sea here, and no watercraft he had yet scanned had suited both his mass and his personal preference.   
  
 _Slag it, can we schedule to do this again after I’ve found a vehicle mode?_    
  
Perceptor and Beachcomber laughed. With Seaspray as he was, they elected for cables. A pleasant tangle. The three were soon humming, driven by Perceptor’s still keen need. Land, sea and air – they were amused by how they fit the humans’ categories for their homeworld.  
  
As one they opened their spark chambers.


	39. Oratorio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein another new mech joins the crew.

2018 - September  
  
 _Jazz?_  Ratchet called, something about his tone alerting the First Lieutenant. Jazz was already on his way down to the med-bay by the time Ratchet finished his transmission.  _You might want to get down here, he’s awake._  
  
Prime was already there. Jazz slewed around the corner with his toes retracted, his tires screeching a little when he stopped, directly in front of the growth tank.   
  
 **If I hadn’t been the other half of that merge, Jazz, I’d be tempted to accuse you of cloning yourself,**  Prime whispered across a private channel as the plex column retracted. Jazz sent back a brief, static-y sputter – the sound of solar wind hitting the Van Allen belts – and elbowed Prime in the knee.   
  
The slender, silvery mech – taller than Jazz by a full meter but more attenuated – looked around at everything – just as interested at first in the medical equipment as the people. Once he noticed the people, though, he stepped down, scanning intensely, signals tapping at each of them for entry; seeking their data to add to what he had already downloaded and integrated from the human Net and Autobot AIs before the growth tank had even signaled Ratchet of the impending decantation.   
  
“Hey there,” Jazz said, grinning and holding out his arms, barely restraining his impulse to tackle-glomp the newcomer.  _Mind your manners, young one. The distinction may be fine, but people don’t like being cracked like any old computer._  
  
“My apologies,” the new one said, voice like warm caramel and silk and the finest vintage oils.   
  
Jazz swayed a little. There was no mistaking where that power came from.  _Cloning! Ha!_    
  
“Welcome,” Prime said, deliberately harmonizing, Jazz thought, though of course at a much deeper register. And how Optimus could pull stunts like that and still not be able to string two notes together without shattering silicon was beyond him.   
  
“Thank you,” the new one said, moving gracefully to embrace first Jazz then Prime, then – somewhat to that worthy mech’s startlement – Ratchet. “My name is Oratorio.”  
  
“Welcome, Oratorio,” Jazz said, nodding. Both he and Optimus had known their names from the first moment they’d come online. Optimus because he’d been deliberately programmed to, and Jazz, well Jazz because he was just like that. Sure of himself from astrosecond one. “Come on, man, let’s go introduce you to the rest of the crew!” Prime clasped Oratorio’s shoulder and hands warmly then excused himself, returning to the war room. The functionaries from Jordan with whom he’d been teleconferencing never noticed the interruption.   
  
“It’s like a leaf,” Oratorio said, comprehending the plan of the embassy almost as soon as they stepped out into the hangar. Sonar and radar and subtler scans pinging away actively as he turned his head side to side. Stem corridor branching into veins of smaller halls and chambers, with the big hangar as the petiole.   
  
“Yep, the organic nature of this world is rubbing off on us,” Jazz said, not displeased. “Even Wheeljack’s getting all funky with his too bad self. I don’t even want to know what Perceptor’s got cooking, though.” Jazz pulled his toes in again and skated an extended curve up the stem corridor toward Red Alert’s security office. Might as well get that out of the way first, so Red didn’t get twitchy about an unrecognized mech wandering the base. He was pleased to see Oratorio put a little groove in his walk, as though he was eager for wheels too, wanted to dance.  
  
“Ah,” said Red Alert as they rapped on the doorway and came in. “So it worked a second time, did it? Well, come in, come in, don’t stand there blocking the door.” Prowl was there as usual, and nodded politely, though the largest part of his attention was on the mist screens floating throughout the chamber.  
  
“Oratorio,” Jazz said proudly, “this is Red Alert, our Chief of Security, and Prowl, Prime’s Tactician.”  
  
Prowl inclined his torso in a neat way he must have picked up from Mirage. “Pleased to meet you.” He gravely shook the hand Oratorio offered – an automatic gesture that was to be a hallmark of the Earth-built Autobots for a long time to come.   
  
Red was less enthused, keeping his hands carefully to himself. Oratorio picked up on this so smoothly only Jazz noticed the aborted gesture. No harm done.   
  
“Hold quite still a moment, please, “ Red said, fiddling with some occult piece of equipment. Jazz felt the fringes of the scan and forbore messing with them for Oratorio’s sake. No sense fritzing Red out this early in the game. “There.” Red nodded at Oratorio not unkindly, smiling in fact. “Now the base will respond to you as it does to the rest of us, and you can run about without setting my alarms off, thank you.”  
  
“Thank  _you_ ,” Oratorio echoed, smiling back, and staring fascinated at the mist screens. Jazz agreed that the constantly moving, overlapping array was kind of pretty if you stopped to think about it. He himself almost never came in here except on rare occasions; most of the time things were handled via commlink.   
  
“Let’s waltz before Red kicks us out,” Jazz said, saluting as he retracted his toes and skated off. Oratorio followed.  
  
“Not so different,” Red muttered to himself.   
  
Prowl smiled.  
  
Hound and Mirage were out on a mission with the Twins as backup, as were Cliffjumper and Arcee. Smokescreen’s team was in Europe. Inferno had taken to staying with the Tranquility Firehouse No. 1, so, aside from remote intros to the Oregon base group, that left Borealis and Wheeljack. Jazz grinned as a message from Bee came through – he’d be coming out himself in a day or two, with Sam and Mikaela for the weekend, and had they messed with the comet sighting records yet to hide Oratorio’s origin?   
  
 _Yeah, Bee, we got him covered. Perseids were a little more spectacular this year, hey?_    
  
Bee snorted, or something like.  _Welcome, Oratorio,_  he said happily, adding the new channel smoothly.  _I’ll see you in a few days. Jazz? Don’t drag him into any trouble!  
  
Me? Oh, I get it. You want to christen him yourself._   
  
While Bee made suitably offended noises, Jazz cast about for Borealis, pretty sure she wasn’t up in Oregon drooling over Perceptor and/or Skyfire at the moment. Although she could also be 500 miles away – just out for a quick jog around the neighborhood.   
  
Ah, there she is.  _Come down, Little Bird, your baby bro is out!  
  
Whaaat??? I’ll be down in two shakes!_   
  
Oratorio blinked. “What did she mean…oh. Interesting.”   
  
Jazz wondered if it mattered, really, where Borealis got her idiom. The rest of them picked it up fast enough. The accented Cybertronian was weird, true. Jazz thought it was cute.  
  
“The Wide World,” Jazz said, skating in a broad figure eight as they stepped outside the hangar doors, spreading his arms.   
  
“Oooooohhhhhhh!” The damping fields and the solid rock of the embassy no longer shielding, Oratorio was wide open to the vast input of a living planetary surface. Wind, sunlight, sparse vegetation, the variegated colors of the sandstone, the sharp tang of rust on the camouflage roof over what they tended to call the “porch”, birds zipping around, the creak and hum of insects, heat rising in waves off the rocky ground. And high above, the approaching energy signature of an Autobot jet.   
  
Oratorio gaped as Borealis hove into visible-spectrum view and landed. Jazz giggled. It was one thing to know that there were some big ass jets among your kind, and something else entirely to see that ginormous dark delta shape swoop down like a black swan on steroids, transform 20 meters from the ground and land neatly on two feet, then  _sprint_  at you. Physics, let alone instinct, told one that that much mass didn’t stop on a transistor. But Borealis didn’t run them over, and they didn’t flinch.  
  
“Hiya!” Borealis said, crouching down low and extending a forefinger, which Oratorio gamely shook. “Pretty! Starlight Express!”  
  
Oratorio laughed, and found some of the music.  
  
“Eee! Harold Faltermeyer! Good times! I’d say oldies but goodies but thirty years isn’t that long.”   
  
“Ha. You want old?” Jazz dug up snatches of Medieval Baebes and The Merrie Consort, Gregorian chants and a traditional song from China that really had to have the dust blown off.   
  
“Show off.” She stood up. Oratorio watched the process raptly. “Okay, just got a ping from Hound, I gotta make like a jet, here, guys. Great to meet you, Oratorio!”  
  
 _See you around, big sister,_  Oratorio tight-beamed happily as she transformed and took off.   
  
 _Absoflogginlutely, little brother!_    
  
Jazz let Oratorio take his own leisurely time walking out to Wheeljack’s tower. It gave him time to comm the inventor.  _You blowing slag up in there today?  
  
Not on purpose,_ came the cheery reply.  _You bringing the kid in?  
  
Oh Primus. Yeah.   
  
All right, all right, lemme shut this generator down. I got some alloys cooling but those won’t spontaneously combust, so come on in._   
  
“Okay, Rio? You see me bolting for the door? You stay on my leg like smarm on a Seeker, got that?”   
  
“Chuckwalla!” Oratorio said, pointing at a dark, rough-skinned lizard as they passed it. It seemed completely unconcerned by their presence. Jazz wondered if letting his inquisitive progeny into Wheeljack’s lab was such a good idea.  
  
Most humans would not have described Wheeljack’s workshop as a tower per se. The Cybertronian word for tower specified only a structure that was a certain ratio of height to width, regardless of how much of it protruded above the “active” surface of the planet.   
  
About ten meters of the workshop’s height were aboveground, topped with an overgrown scraggle of Humble Gilia, dotted with Newberry’s milkvetch and Tidy Fleabane, presided over by a single, ambitious Joshua tree. From the air, this made the building harder to spot; particularly since a great deal of desert flora grew rampant about the base of the walls as well. The walls of the tower were the same colors as the surrounding rock but constructed of a Cybertronian substance akin to resin composited with carbon fibers and double-corrugated in such a way as to withstand a very large explosive (or, coincidentally, implosive) force. Its twenty-five meter diameter gave it a rather squat appearance from the outside.   
  
Inside, however, the structure was sunk another fifty meters belowground, with a spiraling ramp hugging the curved walls, providing access to the three levels of work space under the entry floor.   
  
“Hey there, kiddo,” Wheeljack said as the blast-resistant door slid aside. Oratorio’s name was already up in the cloud mind along with several subroutines that were watching what all the other Autobots and the few connected humans were doing, so Wheeljack got snuggled into not like a new acquaintance, but as a friend Oratorio hadn’t physically met before.  
  
“What’s on the burners today, Jack?” Jazz asked, pleased.   
  
“Next batch of Kuppies,” Wheeljack said, winking in acknowledgement of the unofficial name. “I’ve got them insulated this time, so the Cons can’t fry them with the base shields. These’ll get to chew much bigger holes in the bulkheads.”  
  
“A non-lethal tactic?” Oratorio said, as he and Jazz followed Wheeljack down to the second level where Jack’s screens and backup computers rested in a nest of cable and seemingly tangled wire and spare components and indicators glowing softly in the dimness.   
  
Jazz hesitated before answering. How deep did this new one need to be led into the war yet? Couldn’t they give him a little time just to exist first?  _Our aim at this point is to drive them off-planet,_  he tight-beamed.  _Prime is trying to keep the killing to a minimum, on both sides._    
  
“I have another batch in the works, too,” Wheeljack continued, indicating a small mist screen to one side. “These’re gonna have modified fuel systems; they’ll go around eating all the different kinds of plastics in the oceans and convert them to fuel for swimming. Get that Northern Pacific Gyre cleared out, as well as the rest of the sea-bourne trash before the little jellies and things try to eat it.”  
  
“Nice!” Jazz said. “Except I can already hear the environmental groups squealing about what effect the Kuppies themselves and their waste products will have on an already stressed environment.”  
  
Wheeljack nodded. “Beachcomber’s working on that; we’ll get the chemistry hooked up so that the end products don’t cause algal blooms or contribute greenhouse gasses. I think Beachcomber wants the Kuppies to poop nano-assembled sand. Depending on how much carbon they have to deal with, might end up having to be diamond sand. The Kuppies themselves have little EM emitters to discourage things from eating  _them_ , but they're also non-digestible and should be able to swim on through most digestive tracts if they do get gulped up by humpbacks or something. Perceptor’s writing the report we’ll send out before we launch.” He laughed. “It’ll be interesting to see how many people actually read the whole thing.”  
  
Jazz grinned. “How many thousand pages is he at so far?”   
  
“Only three, he says. He wants to make sure every contingency is covered. Like he does.” Wheeljack’s smile was fond. “Oh! And you know how Hook built all those Insecticons that look like house flies? Well me and Perceptor came up with robot spiders and mantises, and even some Little Brown Bird bots – we’re calling those last ones ‘Libbies’. We’ll have ‘em patrolling areas we really want to keep the Cons out of. Beachcomber thinks Hook hasn’t grokked organic food webs very well yet.”  
  
Oratorio and Jazz looked at each other for a second, then burst out laughing. “Awesome, Jack,” Jazz said. “We’ll let you get back to it, then.”  
  
“We are not of this world,” Oratorio murmured, coming out into the sunlight again, holding Jazz’s hand. “But we are in it.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A whisper of sound tugged at Oratorio’s consciousness. Abandoning the 1923 “tree corpse” unabridged dictionary Maggie had brought for him to peruse and smell and touch, he ran outside, trying to make sense of the distorted sonic ripples. They were echoes, bouncing off complex stone shapes. Someone was singing, up in the canyons.  
  
Not wanting to interrupt the performance, Oratorio approached as silently as he could, climbing around a spire of sandstone until he could get a clear sensor reading. This close the sheer potency of the voice was dizzying, invoking extraordinary, overwhelming emotions. It was even making his video processors buzz and wobble. He crept closer, recording everything.  
  
Prowl? Quiet, gentle Prowl, who never raised his voice to anyone, no matter how rambunctious the Twins got; who patrolled like everyone else, but rarely engaged in battle? Prowl sang like  _this_?  
  
Did anyone else know? They should, they must – Oratorio configured his inputs and outputs so that he could broadcast the audio feed in realtime on every open Autobot and human channel. Before he could fully engage the feed, a splash of white noise fritzed it.   
  
 _Shut that right down, young one,_  Jazz told him. Climbing up to lean across Oratorio’s shoulders, arms winding gently around his neck, Jazz rested his chin atop his progeny’s helm.   
  
 _But, Jazz! His voice is amazing!_  Prowl’s ruined voice was strangely beautiful – like a bombed-out cathedral, or the way some humans looked peaceful, transcendent, shortly after death.   
  
 _I know. It is. But, spark of my spark, he’s not doing this for your or anyone else’s entertainment._  Jazz knew he needed to be clear and firm on this point. Oratorio’s general curiosity and compulsion toward the arts were on the scale of forces of nature.  
  
 **Wonder where he got that…**  Prime commented, amused.   
  
 _Oh no,_  Jazz retorted.  _You ain’t hanging that one on me. They made you Prime so you wouldn’t have time to get your nosey self in trouble._  
  
Prime chuckled.  **…Yes, Bumblebee, the other Primes are laughing, too. Jazz, Volant wishes to point out that I was made Prime in order to handle mechs like you.**  
  
 _Zing!_  contributed Ratchet.   
  
 _Aha!_  Jazz crowed.  _No wonder they had to build a whole new Prime with unconventional programming – I am more than a normal Prime could manage!_  
  
The other mechs groaned, Oratorio giggled. He sobered abruptly when Prowl’s song ended. Jazz took him by the hand and led him back toward the embassy.  _He does this when he’s hurting, Rio, not for fun. Let him be._  
  
 _Do you…do you think he would ever consent to sing, just sing for us?_  He didn’t hold out much hope, but it was counter to everything he was that such beauty should be withheld, hidden, and not shared with everyone.   
  
 _No. And don’t you pester him, either._  
  
 _I won’t. But…_  
  
 _I know, Rio. I know._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Maggie locked the door, tossed her courier bag and keys on the entry table, kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the couch. She hadn’t been back to her apartment in almost forty-eight hours, working on a project so top-secret she wasn’t even supposed to think about it at home.   
  
Dinner wasn’t going to make itself. Was it more trouble to wait 45 minutes for a pizza delivery or just throw something in the microwave? She discovered the freezer empty. Again. Popcorn works, she thought and tossed a bag in while the computer was booting up.  
  
Working at a desk in front of a screen all day every day and what did she do when she got home? Sit right back down in front of her computer. As usual, there were "welcome home" emails from Prime and Hound. They could have pinged her on her occipital comm, but the use of conventional email was deliberate. She could read at her leisure, without any pressure of reply. They weren't tracking her, or checking up on her; they were just leaving little notes to let her know they cared. It was a nice touch, and almost frighteningly perceptive from aliens. Most of her boyfriends hadn't been that courteous.   
  
Speaking of boyfriends, Glen was finally moving out West permanently. His grandmother had died of a stroke in May. People who didn't know him well had usually assumed he was a big fat loser, living off his grandmother's social security. It pissed Maggie off. Glen's old job didn't pay very well, true, but he had always contributed his fair share, bought his own toys, and – because Dorothy Mae had not been able to get around as well as she had thought she could, those last four years or so – had been in fact a great help and support. Now she was gone, he was free to move out of the old Columbia Heights neighborhood; though not without a twinge or three of regret.   
  
The robots in Nevada were more than happy to receive him for a permanent position at the embassy, however, and that was a tough offer to refuse.   
  
Maggie sighed. She really needed to break ...things... off with Hound. Being FWB with a giant robot was pretty awesome, but while she was still closer to 30 than 40, in her more sober moments she admitted that wouldn't be true for much longer, and she'd been doing a teensy bit of late-night thinking about her life. It had kind of snuck up on her. When she looked around her apartment, she saw no plants, no pets, no art on the walls. No kids. Did she want kids? She hadn’t given it much thought, what with the war and everything.   
  
She instructed her chat program to change her status to “active”. When Ratchet and Wheeljack had first proposed the comm implants, Maggie had thought that having access to the constant chatter of the Autobots and other humans on the system would be maddening. Soon, however, she had found that even though she could mute everything – Ratchet in particular had insisted on an “off” switch – it was silence that was more often oppressive. In any case, it was totally solid (as Anna Lennox had taken to saying lately) to have instant access to the internet, without needing to lug around a laptop or squint at a palmtop screen, made logarithmically more fun because there was always someone on who was happy to entertain her or share information if that’s what she wanted. At the moment, though, she opted to use the old desktop so it wouldn’t get lonely.   
  
Only a few minutes passed before her chat program pinged.  _Hi, Maggie! What are you doing?_  
  
“Hello, Oratorio,” she typed back after wiping her buttery fingers on her skirt. “Nothing much, just perusing the latest set of equations on the physics forum.”  
  
 _New ones?_  
  
“Yep.” The maths were way out there, but she almost understood some of it. It was like trying to read Italian when she had learned French. Certain fragments looked familiar, but the meaning of the whole eluded her. At least the comments gave her enough to be going on with.   
  
Recently there had been a new entry in the game  _entelechy451_  had started.  _Redshift_  was the username, and like  _entelechy_ , couldn’t be traced, to Teletraan or Event Horizon or anywhere else. After hearing Mikaela’s account of her visit to the Oregon base with Bee and Sam, Maggie’s bet was on it being Perceptor. She told Oratorio as much.   
  
 _I can neither confirm nor deny your supposition._  
  
“Pleeeeeease? You can tell me, what harm would it do?”  
  
 _Clearly the party or parties involved wish to remain anonymous._  
  
“Not even a hint?”  
  
 _Hm. From the pattern of interlocution and symmetry, if they are indeed two separate people, they appear to be flirting._  
  
Maggie groaned. This was remarkably unhelpful information. She and Mikaela had for a while played a game they called “Guess Who’s Shagging Whom This Week” – speculating about the myriad and ever-changing Autobot physical relationships. Once she and Mikaela had a list, Maggie went to Hound to see how they’d done. Most of the time the women had missed a significant number of liaisons, but those they did call were usually spot on. “Fine. Whatever. So what are  _you_  doing, Rio?”  
  
 _I am watching Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Gears and several members of the Graveyard Legion play football in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Ooh! Gears just scored! Ran right under Lowroad’s legs!_  
  
“Aren’t they supposed to be helping rebuild the shipyard there?”  
  
 _They are. Doesn’t mean they can’t have a little fun on the side._  
  
“Nope,” Maggie typed, laughing. “Throw me a feed, will you?”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Trailing his fingertips along the rough red stone of the corridor, Oratorio activated little fans to draw the comforting scent of clean, warm oil into the chemoreceptors in his lower legs and forearms. Past the control room the light reflecting off the bath’s surface created mesmerizing, flickering patterns on the tunnel ceiling, and he could hear soft splashes and an occasional whisper of voices. There were usually one or two, or sometimes several other people in the oil bath whenever Oratorio went down to wash the desert sand and dust out of his chassis. Only Tracks and Mirage were there this time – but they weren’t bathing.   
  
After several fascinating seconds, they at last became aware of him and froze. Oratorio wished he had Mirage’s cloak, but he smiled and waved as they turned their bright optics toward him. They smiled back, not in the least discomfited.  
  
“Hello, Oratorio,” they said, in near unison. They continued to hold each other close, but did not resume the very interesting things they’d been doing, and Oratorio could sense their systems winding down and cooling. His core temperature was going down, too; disappointing since that had felt decidedly nice.  
  
“Hi Tracks, hi Mirage. What were you doing?”  
  
“Just interfacing,” Tracks said. He and Mirage separated and beckoned to him.   
  
“Please come in, Oratorio,” Mirage said, grinning. “You look like you’ve been following Hound around all day.”   
  
Oratorio swiftly waded in to meet them, taking their outstretched hands. “What do you mean by ‘interfacing’?” Perhaps they would resume so he could observe. Or better yet, perhaps they would include him! He felt warmer again at the thought.  
  
“We’re helping each other overload,” Mirage explained. Oratorio would understand what that meant, as it was a sort of “housekeeping” process included in core programming.   
  
“You can do that with other people?” Oratorio’s optics widened, incandescent with the possibilities blooming in his CPU. “Show me! May I?”  
  
“Whoa, easy,” Tracks said, gently. “You haven’t been through integration yet. Once you have, we’ll show you anything you like, all right?” He and Mirage moved farther apart, subtly flanking Oratorio, their optics giving nothing away.   
  
“But …you’re both so beautiful,” Oratorio purred, letting his voice settle down into its deepest, warmest registers. “I want to touch you, want you to touch me like you were earlier…”  
  
Both Tower bots shivered, Tracks shuttering his optics. “Oh my,” Mirage murmured.   
  
“Rio,” Tracks said, careful harmonics taking the sting out of the refusal. “We might hurt you, send you into integration, if we did that, understand? And then you might accidentally hurt us.” It was the latter possibility that deterred most mechs. Tracks smiled mischievously and splashed Oratorio. The young mech widened his optics but immediately splashed back. Behind him, Mirage kicked up a big wave that doused both of the others.   
  
“Free-for-all!” Tracks shouted, and it was  _on_.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The Cons had tried to provoke a supervolcanic eruption at the Lakagígar, or Laki fissure in southern Iceland. Skyfire and Borealis had helped drive the Seekers west toward Perceptor’s range of fire while a troop of the Graveyard Legion led by Prowl and Raze fought off Onslaught, Mixmaster, Rampage and Scavenger. Prowl returned via USAF transport to the embassy, armor carbon-scored and dented, but relatively undamaged. Ratchet was staying in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, tending the casualties.   
  
Too depleted to drive all the way out to his usual spot in a canyon to the north, Prowl simply found a shady niche at the base of the mesa on the opposite side from the hangar door. It frightened him badly when the Cons pursued attacks like this, and he sang terror softly, wordlessly, for he had found no human song that conveyed the depths of his dread. Nor was it an emotion even war-changed Autobots had written ballads about.   
  
Thus immersed, he did not notice his audience, until said audience became incapable of remaining silent.  
  
Oratorio lay on the mesa top above Prowl, listening with all his being. He didn’t understand this song. Usually there were words, though Oratorio suspected the way Prowl used them held several meanings, which might be clearer to someone who knew Prowl better. But the emotion in the melody this time – and Oratorio felt certain the emotion was vast and strong – was nothing he had himself ever experienced. He could put no words, no easily manipulated labels to it.   
  
So engrossed in this puzzle, he did not notice at first that he was shaking and couldn’t stop. Something was very wrong with his body. Suddenly he understood Prowl’s song with a clarity that was like the concussion and flash across the EM spectrum of a lightning strike at close range. The shaking grew stronger, and stronger. Hands touched him and he screamed. Every input was completely wide open, pouring cataracts of data into his CPU. He was fighting to save it, process it, but it felt like new pathways were being torn in his mind, raw and bleeding no leaking energon searing ion channels melting can’t stop oh it  _hurts!_  
  
Hands on him like laser burns, uncontrolled motion, cacophony of sound, reek of stone and metal, light to dark and everything was drowning everything else and the wild convulsions of his body abruptly ceased and he was trapped inside and he couldn’t even scream and the not-sound of that filled him for centuries for nanoseconds and then there was a voice. Low and gentle and rough but he must not consider it beautiful and all he wanted forever was for that voice to keep speaking.   
  
 _Jazz, Prime,_  Red Alert sent across the Autobot command channel.  _Oratorio has gone into integration. Evac and Prowl are here with him._  
  
Embattled north of Detroit, a muffled, anguished sound escaped Jazz’s vocoder at Red’s message.   
  
 **Go, Jazz,**  Prime told him.  
  
 _I…Evac can handle it. I can’t leave you here!_  
  
 **I mean it, Jazz. Skyfire and Borealis are refueled and inbound – one of them will take you to Nevada.**    
  
 _But—_  
  
 **This war will no longer dictate the entirety of our existence. Rio needs you.**    
  
After a short flight, Jazz hit the ground running. Prowl and Evac were in the repair bay with Oratorio; Evac having shut down all of the young mech’s motor systems under comm supervision from Ratchet. Prowl was at the head of the repair table, whispering calmly but steadily into Oratorio’s audial.   
  
 _It was my fault,_  Prowl tight-beamed to Jazz.  _I shouldn’t have been so close to—_  
  
 _What? That’s crazy,_  Jazz responded, climbing up on the table and taking Oratorio’s hand.  _This was going to happen sooner or later, and besides, this is a routine part of a new mech’s functionality, remember?_  “Thanks, Evac.”  
  
“No problem, Jazz,” the Graveyard Legion helicopter said, smiling. “Nice to see new sparks again.” He patted Oratorio’s shoulder and left them, Prowl following.   
  
Jazz settled himself beside his progeny, maintaining his hold on Oratorio’s hand – he could still feel and hear and see, was in a form of consciousness, though not a pleasant one. Borrowing an old tale from Mirage, Jazz began. “In the days of the Firstforged, in the nights when six moons were strung across the stars like beacons, there was a starship named Vector Prime…”


	40. Interlewd: Optimism Fling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Bumblebee and Wheeljack spark-merge, Bee tries to explain the resulting progeny to his humans, and Sam has some difficulty with Cybertronian notions of gender.

2018 - autumn  
  
“Bumblebee?” Ratchet poked his head out of the med-bay as Bee, Sam and Mikaela came in. Bee transformed and raised his antennae at the medic.  
  
“Wheeljack was asking for you. He’s in his workshop.”  
  
Bee nodded, having gotten the ping himself, and Ratchet withdrew. “Coming, Sam?”  
  
“To Wheeljack’s workshop? No thanks, I want to live.”  
  
“Ditto,” said Mikaela when Bee looked at her. Normally she liked learning anything she could from the Autobot mechanics, but bearding Wheeljack in his demesne was pushing the boundaries of self-preservation.  
  
“Faint heart never won fair maiden!” Bee waved and headed out to the workshop. “No guts, no glory.”  
  
“Nice knowing you,” Sam called after him.  
  
Bee gave a piercing whistle when he was about 50 meters from Wheeljack’s tower. There was a low crash but no smoke issued from the vents, and once Bee actually reached the door it opened right away, so nothing too catastrophic had happened this time.  
  
“You rang?” Bee said, poking his head around the door frame.   
  
Wheeljack was dusting himself off. “Yeah, yeah, come on in, Bee. I got a proposition for ya.”  
  
Bee entered and something about Wheeljack’s tone made him close the door carefully behind him. Wheeljack nodded and remotely keyed the lock.  
  
“Just don’t want any interruptions for a sec here,” he said. “So, no, you’re not trapped or anything.”  
  
“I was not concerned.”  
  
Wheeljack chuckled. “Well, what I wanted to ask you is, would you consider trying the spark merge with me? I was thinking, some of us should try it without Prime. I don’t like what it does to him.”  
  
Bee nodded eagerly and followed Wheeljack down to the third level. “I agree. The burden should not be his alone. I’m not afraid. I’d be honored to merge with you, Wheeljack.”   
  
“Terrific! I built another tank out here for the new spark, and I have some protomass in there already.” He and Ratchet had solved the problems with the Wells with assistance from Perceptor. Rather than adhere slavishly to the ancient protocols, Perceptor had proposed they build a new system entirely, based on improvements Serendipity had made to CR chambers just before she was killed, and on much older precepts of nanoculture maintenance that Wheeljack decided he wasn’t surprised Perceptor knew. Bumblebee lifted an orbital ridge at him. “Don’t look at me like that, I know I’ll have to curtail my riskier projects for a while. It’s not a big deal. It’ll be worth it.” The tank would in fact be safer out there than in the main base. It was a commonly held belief among Decepticons that bombing any known Wheeljack workshop was suicidal. The resultant explosion would engulf the bomber, no matter how fleet. “Lemme tell Ratchet what we’re up to, just in case.” He paused, looking at Bumblebee apologetically. “Or, we can wait till you’re ready. I sorta sprang this at you out of the blue, there. Sorry about that.”  
  
Bee made a dismissive whirr. “A moment only, and then we can begin.” Wheeljack nodded. Bee called Sam’s cell.  
  
“Bee? What’s up?”  
  
“Wheeljack needs me for an experiment that will require me to remain here in his workshop for a day or two. Bluestreak has already agreed to serve as your vehicle during that time.”  
  
“Uh. What is he going to do to you, exactly?” Sam sounded anxious.  
  
“Nothing I haven’t agreed to, Sam,” Bee said gently. “It’s…technical, or I would explain more thoroughly.”  
  
“Okay, that’s not reassuring,” Sam said. “But Mikaela and I were going to just hang out here all weekend anyway, so it’s cool. We just thought we’d be, y’know, hanging out with  _you_.”  
  
“I apologize, Sam. This is important.”  
  
“Okay, no problem. Just. Try not to get blown up or anything.”  
  
“Yes, Sam.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Sam closed the phone and stared at it for a moment. “Please tell me I didn’t just sound like my dad.”  
  
Mikaela leaned over and rested her chin on his shoulder. “You sounded like your dad. To a sixteen-foot-tall robot who is older than Western Civilization.” She patted his head and returned her attention to the game she was playing remotely with Jazz.  
  
“Great.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Bumblebee’s spark was already spinning faster. Wheeljack gazed at him intently, his optics taking on a more vivid hue.  _Ratchet, Bumblebee agreed. We’re going to try now.  
  
Good luck,_ Ratchet transmitted to both of them. Prime might have misgivings about the physically less massive bots merging – the power consumption alone was hazardous. But Ratchet knew they had to figure out how to make it possible, and relatively safe, for any Autobot to merge, regardless of size. Jazz was smaller than Bumblebee, and he’d survived all right, even if Prime had borne most of the drain in that instance. No, Bee and Wheeljack had Ratchet’s full blessing, if they needed it. Ratchet had his optics on a few other pairs as well, who he thought would try it sooner or later. Hoist and Grapple, perhaps. Hound and Mirage definitely, and probably the very day it occurred to them to do so. Perceptor and Beachcomber would have already if they weren’t so busy with the new base. Some of the members of the Graveyard Legion might - though the very idea made Ratchet’s processors ache. Brawn, Warpath and Gears were too set in their ways.  
  
Wheeljack made himself comfortable on a table right next to the tank, then beckoned to Bee, who climbed gamely up on top of him.  _I missed you, kid,_ Wheeljack said, touching Bee’s facial plates gently as Bee cabled them together. The sentiment echoed and grew full of meanings, blooming with the connection. Bee nuzzled his hand.  
  
 _I missed you, too._  Bee straddled Wheeljack’s waist and wriggled to bring their chests into proximity. Bee hummed contentedly. It had been a long time since he’d had a good snuggle with his oldest friend.  
  
 _Pay attention, now,_  Wheeljack chided gently.  
  
 _I know. There is no reason why this cannot feel nice, at least at first.  
  
You got me there, kid._ Wheeljack wrapped his arms around him, fingers stroking lightly, but his focus within. Wheeljack was nearly as self-disciplined as Ratchet, though most of the others wouldn’t have guessed it. Bee wiggled, then settled, determined. Their chests opened, their sparks burning gold and aquamarine, spinning faster and faster. They strove to reach the depths they needed, fighting their inclination to give in to pleasure alone. Soon love drove them deeper, for Prime’s sake as much as their own.   
  
Their chests widened, coronae overlapping. The workshop leapt with dancing shadows. Bee extended his sparkmatter as a crown of little rays, questing gently, inquisitive. Oddly, he found it easy. Giving of himself was Bee’s primary nature. Wheeljack struggled, more solitary, older, self-sufficient. But at last a curving frond uncoiled from his spark, and stretched to meet Bee’s little rays. The strands wove themselves together as if eager to do so, drawing just enough matter together to find its independent spin and ignite. Power lashed outward; melting curling, branching lines across the two Autobots’ chests, arms and faces. Bee and Wheeljack shuddered together, succumbing to overload at last, their new spark cradled between them.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Bee dragged himself to his feet, by sheer stubbornness mustering enough energy to move past the pain to get the new spark properly installed into the growth chamber. Wheeljack lay still, offline, smoke rising from his scars. Bee wished he could have contained the backlash better, or, like Prime, taken the larger share of damage and power drain himself. But Wheeljack was wily, he’d probably gotten hints from Optimus. Shaking fit to fly apart, what little power he had left surging unpredictably, Bee pulled himself back up to the table, crashing against Wheeljack’s closed chest, offline.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Did it, Ratchet,_  Wheeljack transmitted feebly. Fortunately the distance wasn’t great.  _We’re okay and the new kid’s looking good._  
  
Ratchet sent congratulations and relief, and elicited a chirp of more detailed data on the new spark’s condition before bidding Wheeljack a nice long recharge.   
  
 **Well done, Wheeljack,**  Prime added.  **Thank you. You have my personal gratitude. More than I can say.**  It took a weight of worry off Prime’s CPU that the smaller bots had managed the merge with no worse effects than Prime had endured himself. The Matrix was right. They could do this.   
  
 _No problem, Prime._  Wheeljack transmitted a complex glyph, tight-beamed to his leader. Everything he and Bee hoped for, and why, along with all the emotions they felt for Optimus. Not just any Prime, he was theirs as they were his. Links none of them would sever, not dependent on cables or electromagnetic carrier waves. Prime accepted this gift and returned it tenfold, and Wheeljack slipped back into recharge warmed by Prime’s regard.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
None of the Autobots were surprised when Bumblebee spent a lot of time in Wheeljack’s lab over the next two years. Sam and Mikaela were another matter.  
  
Bee hated the thought of continually lying to his humans about his own progeny. Yet even with Prime’s carefully considered permission, Bee hadn’t entirely looked forward to explaining what he and Wheeljack had accomplished. At the same time a part of him was so proud that this was the first successful merge that hadn’t involved Prime it had been difficult not to tell them everything immediately. The subject of reproduction was always weirdly touchy with humans. Even though Sam and Mikaela had been married for three years, they had not felt ready to have their own children.   
  
So he took refuge in the simplest truth. “Wheeljack and I made a new spark. I wish to visit her as she grows. Ratchet says this will aid her in forming a healthy personality.”  
  
“You and Wheeljack…wait, what?” Sam leaned back and didn’t even pretend to be driving.   
  
“We made a new person.”  
  
Mikaela rubbed the edge of the seat – an old nervous habit that Bee wasn’t sure was meant more to comfort him or herself. “Did it hurt?”   
  
Bee wondered if the pain of human childbirth had anything to do with Mikaela’s reluctance to become a mother. Or perhaps it was Sam who was squeamish. “Yes,” Bee said.   
  
“Oh. How did you…I mean, you’re not…” She bit her lips, feeling the awkward one for once.   
  
“Aaaagh!” Sam squawked, putting his hands over his ears. “Thank you for tuning in to WTMI! I’m not listening…la la la la la la la!...”  
  
“Sam!” Mikaela slapped his shoulder.  
  
“No. I absolutely do not want details of giant alien robot sex, pregnancy or labor, okay?”  
  
“Since when?” Mikaela gave him an arch look. As though plenty of kink hadn’t happened in and with this very alien, very giant, very sapient yellow Camaro.  
  
“That’s different,” Sam squeaked. He could still make his voice break to good effect, even at the ripe old age of 27.   
  
“Whatever. I want to see Bee’s baby, okay?”  
  
“Augh!”  
  
“Thank you, Mikaela. It would please Wheeljack and me if you were to visit her as often as is convenient for you.”  
  
“‘Her’? This is breaking my brain.”  
  
“Shut up, Sam. Thanks, Bee. I’d love to.”  
  
Once they reached the base and gingerly entered Wheeljack’s workshop, Mikaela approached the tank. Wheeljack was out with Jazz, Brawn and Cliffjumper testing some new gizmo out in the desert, so they had the place to themselves. The plex was transparent, and Mikaela gazed, fascinated, at the dark mass within. She’d never thought of growing robots before, but if their bodies were composed of things like nanomachines, she supposed it made sense. It was cocoon-like, ridged in complex whorls that weren’t quite like segments. It reminded her of Optimus’ comet mode, only smaller, and not quite that shape. More elongated, sort of like a three-dimensional comma. She pressed her hands against the plex.  
  
“She’s alive in there,” she murmured, watching faint lights flicker and pulse across the protoform’s body. Like a deep sea ctenophore or something. Strange and beautiful. “Is she…awake?” Human fetuses could hear and feel, maybe even see, at a certain point. She remembered noticing the tank Ratchet had said he was testing a few years ago. He’d lied, she realized, angry for a moment. That must have been another spark, another robot child. How many more were there that she and Sam hadn’t been told about? But if Ratchet had lied, had kept this hidden until now, he had a good reason. She’d yell at him about it later.  
  
“Hard to say,” Wheeljack said, coming in behind them. Sam jumped and clutched his chest dramatically. “We don’t think so, exactly. It’s like when we’re in recharge – it’s not sleep like you guys have; we literally shut down; but she can sense our transmissions and general activity in proximity to the workshop here.”  
  
“What’s her name?” Mikaela asked.   
  
“We don’t know yet,” Bumblebee said. “She will probably tell us after she’s decanted.”  
  
Sam was confused. “Wait, wait. You know it’s a ‘she’ but you haven’t picked out a name?”  
  
“She’ll select a name for herself,” Wheeljack said. “Probably.” Mostly people chose their own names, but sometimes they were given to them. Oratorio had known his name right away. Borealis had taken months to find hers. They’d just have to wait and see.   
  
“Ooookay,” Sam said. “I will probably wish I hadn’t asked, but how do you know it’s a ‘she’?”   
  
Bumblebee and Wheeljack stared at each other for a long moment. “It’s…complicated,” Bee said.  
  
Mikaela grinned, but patted Sam’s shoulder. “I bet. I can only tell Arcee and Borealis are both girls because of their voices.” Arcee did have something of a feminine look about her, but Borealis? Not so much.  
  
Wheeljack cocked his head at her. “Huh? Arcee and Borealis aren’t the same gender… Oh. Sorry, Bumblebee, I’ll let you handle that one.”   
  
“Thanks.” Bee approximated a sigh.  
  
Sam and Mikaela were both goggling now, though on Mikaela the expression contained a good deal of amusement.   
  
“We have seven basic genders,” Bee explained. “Except they are not precisely genders the way you use the term. And there are modifiers for minicons, Seekers, gestalts, AIs, symbionts and other things; and a peculiar pronoun just for the Prime, and… Oh dear. Sam? Sam, just pretend you didn’t hear what Wheeljack said, all right?”  
  
“Headache,” Sam moaned. “Very unhappy headache.”  
  
Mikaela chewed her lower lip, gazing at the protoform again. “Is this one a ‘she’ like Arcee or a ‘she’ like Borealis?” All this time she realized she’d just been assuming there weren’t many girl Autobots left because of the war. And she hadn’t wanted to ask about it, though she wouldn’t put it past Simmons to have done. Now she wondered how many ‘he’s were actually something else. She’d pin Ratchet down about it later. When Sam wasn’t around.  
  
“Like Borealis,” Wheeljack said.  
  
“How can you even  _tell_?” Sam wailed.  
  
Bumblebee considered the least traumatic route. “Because she’s big.”  
  
Sam hid his face in his hands for a moment, then squared his shoulders. “Good enough.”


	41. Splinched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mirage has an unfortunate run-in with Skywarp, Hound worries and seeks comfort in Prowl. :D

2018 - October  
  
They brought Mirage back to the base in stasis. At least his head and torso were still attached to each other, though part of one cheek flange was missing. Trailbreaker was carrying the legs, but they hadn’t found the arms yet. The repair bay filled up quickly, even with the mechs doing the carrying of wounded comrades hastily retreating in order to get out of the way. Wheeljack had used the battle as cover to launch another wave of Kuppies, but he would be returning soon to lend a servo. The extra work for Ratchet and Hoist would be worth it if the Kuppies fulfilled their mission. Perceptor – though also an accomplished mechanic/physician – had to remain in Oregon for the time being. Often perched atop the volcano, his keen and subtle senses honed to maintain the radius of whatever “safety” his presence afforded.   
  
Hound – dented, dirty and banged around but otherwise unhurt – haunted the entryway bravely. He couldn’t bring himself to go back out to look for Mirage’s arms. Several others were doing that and he had every confidence in them. If the Cons hadn’t kept the limbs as trophies, they ought to be around the battlefield somewhere, and it remained possible to distinguish between the native metals and Cybertronian alloys. Hopefully they could be found and reattached before their colonies of nanocells died. They could be salvaged even if that happened, but it would delay the time before Mirage had functional arms again.   
  
Ratchet and Hoist were working triage when Ratchet tossed a soft transmission Hound’s way.  _He’s safely in stasis, go get cleaned up and recharge, Hound. We’re going to have to repair Sunstreaker and Ironhide first anyway.  
  
I understand,_ Hound replied. But he hovered there for a few minutes more, before spinning away forcefully and heading for the oil baths.   
  
The basic mechanism of the baths was the same as they’d had on Cybertron, but the execution was of necessity rather more rustic. Hound liked this very much. Using Wheeljack’s terrifying mining device, two bubble-shaped chambers had been chewed out of the rock, one larger and lower than the other, connected by a slanting corridor which was, like most of the corridors and rooms of the embassy, large enough for bots the size of Borealis and Skyfire to walk through without having to more than bow their heads slightly. The upper chamber contained the controls for the filtration and heating systems, and access panels for the filters. Heavy tubing drilled through the rock brought dirty oil from the bathing chamber up to the filters, then clean oil from there went back down through overhead tubing to the heating unit which was just upstream of the outlet. The outlet was some distance up the far wall, in effect creating an oilfall for those who enjoyed a shower rather than a bath. Small lights like stars peppered the curve of the ceiling. Hound loved it. The irregularities in the stone were beautiful, and pockets between the sandstone layers – the sandstone itself was now sealed with a special epoxy to prevent the oil from leaking into lower strata and thence to the groundwater – served as shelves for whatever scrubbing tools or extra polishes a mech could want.  
  
Hound was a simple mech regarding such things. He took a long soak, scrubbing at stubborn grime with the oversized steel wool pads one of the humans had found somewhere. This was almost universally held to be more satisfying than the repeller-field shiver, which also got you clean, but wasn’t as pleasant and nothing limbered up the joints like a nice hot soak. Bluestreak and Smokescreen were already in there, stragglers really since most of those who hadn’t been injured had already been in and finished. These two were doing more than bathing.   
  
“Care to join us, Hound?” Blue purred, Smokescreen’s hands deep in his substructure. Smokescreen looked directly at Hound, optics glowing, and bit at Blue’s cheek guards. Hound revved his engine.  
  
“Mmmm. Very tempting. Not…this time, thanks though.” Hound, grinning, sent a politely declining glyph he’d learned from Mirage. Blue laughed, cut short as Smokescreen found a particularly sensitive bit of wiring.  
  
When Hound was finished, he walked slowly up the sloping floor of the pool, letting the oil drain from the intricacies of his body. A freshly repaired Windcharger sprinted down the incline from the control room just as Hound was exiting, and took a running jump into the center of the pool, thoroughly dousing Bluestreak and Smokescreen, who laughed and dove after Windcharger in good natured revenge. Hound chuckled but ambled on in search of different company. He had no objection to frolicking with those present, but there was someone he hadn’t seen face to face for a while, who might appreciate a little comfort now that the emergency was over.  
  
“He isn’t in here, Hound,” Red Alert told him, somewhat absently. The Security Director as usual stood amid the drifting screens, handling vast amounts of input so smoothly one would never guess it would fry the CPU of an unprepared mech. Red not only thrived on it, he required it. “Check the lookouts.”   
  
“Thanks, Red.” Hound strolled down the stem corridor, heading for the northernmost lookout first. Mikaela and Sam liked to make out there, and though they weren’t the only ones, the only humans at the base right now were a handful of military and ex-Sector 7 people, debriefing and being debriefed. Hound smiled to himself as he came around the final corner of the easily-defended switchback passage that led to the lookout. There he was.  
  
Prowl’s sensory chevron flicked in Hound’s direction, but he remained otherwise motionless as Hound entered. Without a word, Hound stepped up beside him and joined him in gazing out over the desert outside. Evening was falling, and as this sentry point was open to the northwest, they were being treated to a glorious sunset, the likes of which never occurred in Cybertron’s thin, very low-particulate atmosphere.   
  
“Tracks found Mirage’s arms,” Prowl said quietly, just as the last limb of the sun sank below the ridge of the mountain range that stood between them and Nellis AFB. Both of their optics brightened as the land before them darkened.   
  
Relieved, Hound leaned against him. Then slowly turned, positioning himself carefully – Prowl’s body still had rather a lot of pointy bits – to embrace Prowl in a tight hug.   
  
Prowl’s optics widened. More slowly still, Prowl returned the embrace. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Prowl said, not certain if words were necessary, though he suspected they helped.   
  
“I know he will,” Hound murmured, easing up on the pressure of his arms, but not relinquishing his hold. Oh no, he wasn’t letting go of this one for a while. “I just kind of hate seeing my friends dismembered like that.”  
  
It was meant as a somber joke, but Prowl merely nodded in agreement. Mirage had been fighting Skywarp hand to hand. It seemed at first like a suicidal way to attack a Seeker, but Prowl knew taking them on at close quarters actually negated a lot of their advantages. Seekers themselves didn’t like it, which added to the fun, as far as the Autobots were concerned. In this case it proved more hazardous than usual.  
  
Skywarp had tailored his warp field carefully, tightening it not just along the lines of his own body, but encompassing parts of Mirage’s as well – as much as he could do so, which fortunately for Mirage had not included anything vital; and teleported. Mirage, spewing energon like fountains from the cleanly severed stumps, had fallen into stasis instantly, falling to the ground several seconds later. Ratchet had reassured Hound on the battlefield that because of the cleanness of the separation, reattaching the limbs, once they were found, would be easy and heal quickly. It just  _looked_  awful.   
  
Slipping fingertips under the edge of Prowl’s lower pectoral armor, Hound rubbed his cheek flange slightly against Prowl’s chest. Like secret messages human children passed between themselves at school, Prowl and Hound gently, quietly exchanged cables; two pairs – more than Prowl typically initiated, allowing a deeper connection than usual with him. Hound hummed in pleasant surprise, spinning his spark up faster. Having Prowl all to himself was a rousing change.   
  
Hound settled into the link, wrapping Prowl around him like a cloak or a favorite chair. There was anxiety because their friend had been hurt, and a portion of regret that Mirage couldn’t join them, but there was also the buzz of post-battle joy-in-life, and satisfaction that they had suffered no permanent losses, yet prevented the Cons from completing their objective. Hound would have been content with basking in the warmth of this mélange, but Prowl sought something more. His beautiful hands danced inquisitive and clever in the intricate spaces beneath Hound’s armor. Deeper. Prowl drew Hound past firewalls only Prime had overtaken before.   
  
Unafraid, Hound accepted everything Prowl offered. Carefully hoarded impressions of beauty, both among the stars and on this young planet; admiration for and devotion to Prime, who was the core of everything they were and hoped to become; gratitude for the aid he had been given, the trust placed upon him, the panoply of friendships that had opened and enfolded him.   
  
 _Aw, dear Prowl._  Using his entire spectrum at full power, Hound launched an active scan. Prowl arched and leaned into it, dizzied by the remarkable play of the subtle fields through his body. Hound’s chest opened, illuminating the lookout in flickering young green.   
  
“Mmmm,” Prowl hummed, warming himself by Hound-light, stroking the edges of the chamber as Hound shivered into both touch and voice. A soft  _snik_ and  _wrrr_  gave Hound slight warning before polished silver light united with the green like a rain-jeweled forest at dawn.   
  
When they came online they were tangled – literally, and it took them some time to get unstuck, but they didn’t mind and simply remained where they were – in a corner, joined in the link. Hound made happy, sated, affectionate noises and nuzzled Prowl’s chin spars.  _I love you._    
  
Prowl lifted his head.  _What?  
  
I do. I really do love you. I think Mirage does too. I love you not the way I love Mirage. Or Prime…_ His harmonics carried no weight of expectation, no requirement of a return of the sentiment. None of that mattered because they had hundreds, thousands of years to enjoy numberless shifting alliances and friendships – or both could die tomorrow.   
  
 _No, I should think not. Prime is…  
  
Prime is Prime, never mind that. I haven’t forgotten how you were, when we found you on that moon. And to see, feel you now, what you’ve suffered to become what you are–_ Hound knew he didn’t comprehend the minutest fraction of what Prowl had toiled through; only Prime and Ratchet would understand that. And Prowl didn’t want Hound to know in any more intimate detail than he already did. It wasn’t pleasant.  _The point is, I’m impressed.  
  
I had help.   
  
Of course you did. And that you could accept that help is also impressive. I’ve known mechs who probably would never have…surrendered themselves like that, even to save themselves. You are, don’t laugh, you are one of the sanest people I’ve ever known. You have fought – more directly and literally than most – for kindness and friendship. And love. When you had none of these things. You worked until they emerged from yourself. It’s kind of amazing._  
  
Prowl didn’t know what to say.   
  
Hound traced the intricacies of Prowl’s chest with a forefinger.  _Your entire spectrum is gorgeous. I remember when I first saw you walk into that bar on Penta Sigma; it took a lot of courage, and, well, desperation – you’ll recall we five hadn’t seen any other bots for ages – to approach you back then. You were so on edge, like any second you expected someone to shoot you in the back, or between the eyes._  He stretched up, nuzzling Prowl’s face for a moment before sinking into an actual kiss. Hound, rather like Prime and Ratchet and Jazz, had mouthparts that were well suited for kissing.   
  
 _Now…now you’re still always alert, but not painfully so. It doesn’t hurt to look at you. You were in such pain all the time, before.  
  
I never realized it was that obvious._   
  
Through the cables, Hound could feel there was no resentment in that statement. Prowl was surprised but untroubled. His worry was for whatever suspicions the more observant among the battalion might have had.  _Maybe it was only obvious to Wheeljack, Mirage and I. For different reasons, I guess. Maybe your…fellows back in the battalion were used to you being like that and didn’t think anything of it._  Hound didn’t often bring up the battalion, he hoped it wouldn’t put Prowl off. Since he wasn’t using his mouth to speak, he kept it busy kissing Prowl instead.   
  
Prowl didn’t seem to mind.


	42. Monster Mash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Autobot jets fight giant machines, humans and mechs fight on the virtual field, more cities get the drone treatment, Prowl's awesome tactics are awesome, the Bullet Trains kick aft, Mirage has some difficulties, the Seekers have a major dust-up with Skyfire and then another with Perceptor, a trine is broken, and Lennox is glad he isn't Optimus Prime.

2018 – November 9th, Friday  
  
Sunset was a narrow red band across the curve of the horizon, tight lines of Morse code clouds etched brightly where the sky faded from teal to indigo. Farm and forest lay in a shadowy patchwork of crow’s wing and black, embroidered by lights from roads and small towns, and beneath everything the lacy layers of IR and UV and entire coral reefs of inputs she hadn’t even had words for, once. Borealis had come to feel at home with fleeting, flattened sunsets and sunrises, as she raced rotation around her home planet, soothed by the heat of the thin air across her armor, half intoxicated by the illusive nearness of the stars.   
  
She sifted through radio traffic idly, smiling to herself as pilots and tower crews maintained the casual-seeming threads of communication that kept the fliers alive. Above and below and through this drifted the Autobot cloud mind, full of gossip and snark and reassurance and bored monologues and virtual snuggles and routine status reports and sappy love notes and complaining and the occasional gentle rebuke when traded barbs got too sharp.   
  
“Boom de yada, boom de yada…” she sang happily. She’d had a bit of a fluff-up a few months after her decantation when she’d realized she could not hum or sing. Jazz had quickly installed a basic program for her – like Hound she could croon a little ditty without making Jazz and Rio and the Tower bots cringe, but she wasn’t up for opera. Jazz had tried the same thing with Prime eons ago; had tried every singing program at his disposal in fact, from the most basic to highly advanced multi-choral algorithms. None of them had worked. Prime’s CPU – net of CPUs, really – was  _different_ , unique. One of the programs had robbed Optimus of the ability to speak at all, which had disconcerted Prime, terrified Jazz and enraged Ratchet. Such experimentation had ceased abruptly and for good at that point. Borealis giggled as she replayed the clip of the scene Jazz had transmitted to her.  
  
Above her, a vast white shape descended, warming himself after a chilly dip into space. She watched him avidly, paying rather less attention to her own flying than she ought, as he coasted down to her, easing into the atmosphere, their wingtips not quite touching.   
  
 _Hi, Skyfi—Whoa!_  She almost flipped into a flat spin, avoiding the beam of energy scorching its way earthward from far above them. Down on the ground, something moved; something big.   
  
 _Holy crap! Did you see that?  
  
I see it,_ Skyfire answered grimly.  _I should have detected Galvatron’s movements. Soundwave must be shielding him._    
  
Below them an open strip mine yawned, whose tiered, serrated rows had been gnawed by the largest mining machine ever built by humans. A mining machine that had come alive and was crawling from the ruched landscape it had created.   
  
 _It's heading for the town to the north,_  Skyfire said. He tried to chirp data to Prime, Jazz, the Coalition forces, but couldn't get through. If Soundwave was involved at this distance, there was something big going on besides the animate Bagger 288. He and Borealis would have to deal with this thing themselves.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
In the observation shack at the mine's edge, Engineer Karl Woerner was first to sound the alarm when the blue lightning came. He paid attention to world news - he knew what that meant. Even so, he had just seen three of his coworkers die, smashed by the machine with no more awareness or deliberation than a human treading on an ant. Everyone else had gotten out. Karl knew he should follow.   
  
Blue and gold bolts of plasma struck from a clear sky. Any sound of planes would have been drowned out by the terrible din of the Bagger and muffled by state-of-the-art ear protection, but peering upward out the window he could see nothing. The Autobot jets, he recalled, could fire from great altitude.   
  
Unfortunately, even the massive golden beams, like focused solar flares, had only slight effect on the amok Bagger - the machine flinched and fired back with a projectile weapon it manifested from one of the rig’s arms. Karl did not imagine the rivets or improvised shells it was emitting could reach their targets at that distance. He wondered where they  _were_  hitting, as they hurtled back to earth. The town of Jüchen to the north was close.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Inferno took Oratorio aside. “Rio, you gotta stay here and guard Red. He and Jazz have cooked up something to keep our comms up despite Soundwave. We don’t know how long it’ll last, but you have to keep Red safe, understand?”  
  
“Yes, Inferno.” As Inferno ran for the hangar, Oratorio slipped into the Security office and took up station next to Red Alert. Jazz was aboard an E-3 Sentry AEW&C out of Nellis.   
  
“Hard link with Teletraan and Event Horizon,” Red said. “Maggie Madsen and Glen Whitmann are loading in now as well. I know Inferno told you to guard me, but I’m putting the embassy on lockdown as soon as Trailbreaker’s team clears…meaning now.”   
  
Dull clangs echoed down the corridors as blast shields dropped into place. Oratorio seated both arm cables into the console ports Red indicated, rolling his consciousness down and out into the world’s nets, settling himself beside/between/within the dry wit of Tel’s presence and the more focused and cool perception of Ven.   
  
 _Maggie/Chipchip locked and loaded. Initializing Protocol: Kaleidoscope._    
  
 _Glen/Icon locked and loaded. Initializing Protocol: Holdfast._  After raising the Graveyard Legion, Prime had rarely brought microbots to life by accident, swiftly accustoming himself to the sporadic, inquisitive bursts of power from within; but prior to that effort, after Chipchip, there had been a handful of incidents. One involved Glen leaving his LG “Monolith” palmtop up on the holo table not really by mistake. Icon was the result. Miles’ tiny green iPod was now named Scuffle.   
  
Both wetwired humans reclined in garage sale La-Z-Boys that Wheeljack and Ratchet had tinkered with after researching the human concept of the “favorite chair”. Oratorio briefly dipped into Ratchet’s feed as the CMO kept a close watch on their brain functions. Sensory inputs and simulated motor outputs were nominal, safe behind the firewalls Tel and Ven had up; but once Jazz gave the signal, they would leap out across wire and fiber and air, humans and machines enmeshed to fight the Decepticons in the virtual world.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Karl knew he should run. The shack provided worse than no protection – if anything, it and its contents would only become shrapnel. He stood at the window, staring as two strange jets descended out of the night and transformed, their bodies steaming eerily in the cold. One white, one dark – the white one twice the size of the other; the dark peculiarly hard to see in the twilight. Though both appeared small next to the excavator, Karl understood the scale completely. The larger robot was taller than the 70-foot diameter bucket wheel.   
  
White kept up a steady close-range barrage from multiple guns and cannons. Dark unfolded scythe-like blades from its arms, leaping about the Bagger to cut support cables and hack at major points of articulation. The way they ducked blows from behind and struck simultaneously, he was certain they were in constant communication at a level the human military would envy. They looked like small birds attacking a crocodile.   
  
Furious roars from the Bagger and the jet-robots pierced his protective earphones; he felt the tumultuous clash of the battle through his chest and neck, pounding through his skull. He wrapped his arms around his head but couldn’t bring himself to look away. For a moment he had a close-up view of the white jet’s back, shuddering and jerking with impacts. They know I’m here, Karl thought. They’re protecting me. I’m making it harder for them.   
  
The Bagger swatted the dark robot out of the air and rolled over it, moving impossibly fast on its vast treads. Karl almost laughed – the treads were so large they distributed the machine’s weight such that the ground pressure was only 24.8 psi – less pressure than was in the average automobile tire. After a stunned moment, with the white robot raining frenzied attacks from above, the dark robot came up spitting mad; shooting and slicing through the imprisoning tread, shredding into support structures, piercing the main body of the excavator from below. Like an enormous spider, the Bagger leapt away, flailing at the two robots with the four arms that still functioned, catching the white robot a glancing blow with the spinning bucket wheel.   
  
Three arms. The dark robot finally cut a last major cable as the white robot reeled away, recovering. Both now focused on the central body, dodging in close where the arms were less effective. Dark got its – his? her? – scythe-blades dug in deep, ripping open a ragged hole. White’s cannons rotated, coming to bear with nano-precision even while compensating for the robot’s own wheeling movements.   
  
Two, …three …four…five concentrated detonations rocked the Bagger, spewing blue-hot liquid. With a final roar, the Bagger collapsed, dead.   
  
The dark robot sat down abruptly in an undignified heap. After regarding its companion for a moment, the white robot leapt into the air, transforming again into the strangely voluptuous jet; gone in a heartbeat. The dark robot hauled itself to its feet and shambled up to the observation shack, leaning far down to peer in the window at Karl.   
  
“We breached its spark chamber,” it,  _she_  told him in unaccented German. “Go get yourself checked out for radiation.”  
  
“Ja, mein Dame,” Karl said, nodding wildly.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Borealis hurled herself skyward as the comms came back online.   
  
 _Here’s the algorithm,_  Jazz told everyone. Borealis set a subroutine in her communication systems to implement it. Now she could automatically follow the sliding set of frequencies Jazz and Rio and the others were keeping clear. Jazz switched to a more specific channel.  _Sky, Lissi, we got two more of those things like what you just nailed – in Brazil and Peru. The Peruvian one is closer to populated areas._  
  
 _Acknowledged,_  Skyfire replied. Slowing to allow Borealis to catch up, he tight-beamed,  _Come latch on to me, it’ll be faster._  
  
The two jets maneuvered closely, Skyfire pushing Borealis up until the atmosphere was too thin to hinder her transformation. With arms and legs and a set of docking clamps she had half-forgotten she had, she sprawled across his dorsal hull and hung on tight as Skyfire punched his in-system engines, hauling aft in a high arc that brought them down on the other side of the planet. Borealis let go and transformed as they nosed toward South America.   
  
Reports were coming in from across the globe. Big machines had sprung to life in more places than there were Autobots to send.  _Borealis, this is going to get tricky,_  Skyfire tight-beamed.  _Unlock the following safety protocols. The bypass should have been in the battle systems I gave you._  
  
 _But, Skyfire, that’s…never mind. Done. …Oof!_  Power surged through her systems. Normally a mech would fall into stasis long before they were in any danger of burning out their spark. She and Skyfire had just removed that precaution.   
  
 _Jazz, ETA Peru three minutes._  
  
 _Roger that, Skyfire. Be careful._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Maggie/Chipchip spun her avatar out, bright and hot, all iridescent lines and angles, forming a lacy, abstract shape, running through the information pipelines faster than an X-wing zeroing in on an exhaust port. Glen/Icon was her anchor, steadfast, unyielding. He was helping the AIs hold the firewalls strong – great bulwarks of virtual stone and steel.   
  
 _Ready?_  Teletraan asked her, though he knew she was.  
  
 _Ready._    
  
 _Ravage, Buzzsaw and Rumble are already hammering at the gates. Rumble will be particularly after you, Maggie/Chipchip, don’t forget._  
  
Following the echoes and ripples from the attacks already underway, Maggie/Chipchip zoomed faster.  _Still tweaking over Frenzy, huh?_  
  
 _As you say._  
  
She was fast, she could see everything at once, she would handle everything they threw at her. Down here deep in the v-world, everything was made of nets and tentacles and complex structures like molecules assembled by the mad, electron clouds assuming impossible shapes through more dimensions than her brain was capable of processing. Sound gave her signal strength and frequency; scent told her odd, intuitive things about intent and target and how close she was to entry and exit gates; and always through her center was the reassuring tug of Glen/Icon’s tether. The symbionts fought  _mean_.   
  
Ratchet had built in safeties, and safeties within the safeties – there shouldn’t be any physical component, her body, her mind  _should_  be safe. Would doubt alone kill her, or worse? No time for that, something else was coming, pushing so hard the fabric of the v-world compressed in a shockwave like the condensation of a sonic boom she could see but wouldn’t feel or hear until it hit her.  
  
Oh ho! That Seeker hacker, Strake, wanted to play too. Maggie/Chipchip grinned. The more the merrier. Tel and Ven and a set of three hackers in Mumbai took up the symbionts’ front while Maggie/Chipchip swerved to meet Strake head-on.   
  
Out of the corner of her perception, she half-saw the blow coming – arms full of fending off Strake, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to dodge Soundwave in time.   
  
The strike rang against a firewall Tel slammed down around her out of nowhere. She sagged for a moment in abject relief.   
  
 _Keep your CPU on **me** , Soundwave!_ Tel snarled. He stroked a tendril of attention over her – her heart rate had spiked – then narrowed the firewall.   
  
Maggie/Chipchip sprang from behind it, fierce and sharp, leaping at Strake once again.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
November 10th, Saturday  
  
Brisbane, Rabat, Kansas City, Delhi. Drowning under glittering waves of drones. Four -  _shi_  - the number of death. Unlucky.   
  
Bolo rolled up the dirt track along the ridge of the Carindale Hills on the outskirts of Brisbane and transformed to see over the trees. Tin Man, Hardshell, Diana and Kohaku River to his starboard; Nimbus, Orion, Enterprise and Cannonball to his port. Raze and his platoon had Kansas City, Penthesilea was poised outside Delhi, Jury in Rabat.   
  
As the Autobot teams approached, the drones broke off terrorizing the population and wheeled to face the greater threat. Data spread like a virus along their rudimentary communication network. With high-pitched electronic squeals and harsh screeches, the drones coursed through the four cities, intent as locusts on a wheat field.  
  
Prowl watched from the open cargo bay of a C-17 circling Kansas City. Over a narrow subspace link he was enmeshed with Jazz and Prime.  _Do you see?  
  
 **We do.**  
  
Bolo, Raze, Penthesilea, Jury: run in grids, draw them outside the cities._ Galvatron had hoped to overwhelm the Autobots with the drones; programming them to concentrate on Autobot energy signatures. The Legion tanks could wade in and be buried – or lure the drones into the open, away from civilians.   
  
Lodestones to steel, Raze and his platoon pulled them west, drones boiling across the Missouri and Kansas rivers to converge on snow-covered agricultural fields where the big tanks were waiting for them. Along with the US Army and National Guard. Plasma fire lit rising smoke from below, the snow was melted even before metal feet churned the fields to a muddy morass. A trio of Decepticons – Undercut, Dolor and Excoriation – unfolded themselves from construction machines and a diesel rail engine. Grinning and priming their weapons, they advanced at a leisurely pace, wading through the drones.  
  
Prowl and his team, battered from the day before, stepped off the edge of the C-17’s loading ramp. Popping chutes, they ran the equations for wind speed and momentum, landing precisely where they wanted to without interfering with the line of fire of either the Legion or the human troops. Prowl hit the ground running.  
  
“BARRED SPIRAL,” Prowl thundered, his voice clearly audible over the clamor of battle. “HUB TO ME.”  
  
“Oh  _slag_  yeah!” Sunstreaker and Sideswipe crowed. They pounded after him, taking up their positions at his sides as Bluestreak and Smokescreen joined them, forming the blades or arms of the spiral, then Arcee and Cliffjumper became the points, leading and trailing.   
  
They began to move. Slowly at first, the entire formation rotating faster and faster around Prowl at the center. As the forward “blade” bit into the mass of drones, the rotation sped up, leaving a wide trail of charred and mangled drone bodies behind. Prime and Ironhide watched via Jazz’s net, their sober consideration interrupted by Wheeljack’s laughter.  
  
 _It’s like a big, horizontal jet turbine,_  he said.  _They’re shredding right through the drones – and anything else that gets in their way!_    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Undercut saw the formation coming and laughed. Autobot freaks, playing soldier. Just couldn’t get it through their stubborn processors that it was best to leave the fighting to the professionals. The smaller mechs were probably slaved to the middle one; take the big white-armored one out and they’d be easy pickings. He ran directly at them.  
  
The central mech's forearm blurred, firing with pinpoint accuracy, hammering his shields like needles, always in the same handful of spots, making the dynamic software work hard. Undercut grinned and kept coming. He was going to rip the arms off that mech and beat his helm in with them. He didn't consider that approaching Prowl closely might be dangerous. He should have, because it meant that Arcee was now behind him.   
  
She fired two explosive rounds into the base of Undercut's helm, shearing off the dorsal two thirds, slicing his CPU in half. Undercut's chassis dropped and Prowl core-shot it as they passed.   
  
Prime and Ironhide exchanged a virtual look over the net. Ironhide cackled.   
  
 **Hub to me!**  Prime called out, and two more spirals in two different cities spun out to wreak havoc among the mad little machines.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Shame about the trees, Wheeljack thought as he positioned himself ventral surface down on the hilltop. But this was the closest, largest sparsely populated area to Brisbane. Bolo and his group were near their chosen perimeter, facing inward, moving inward slowly as the city emptied of drones attracted to the small Autobot presence.   
  
Wheeljack aimed for the center of the teeming mass and fired the special missile he’d cooked up for just this sort of situation. It struck precisely the drone he’d been aiming for, although that didn’t matter too much. As that one exploded, the charge spread to every drone within a set distance of the first. They exploded and the chain reaction continued until there were no more drones within three meters of each other.   
  
It was kind of a fiendish device, and when Ratchet had pointed out the missile couldn’t differentiate friend from foe, Wheeljack had felt bad for inventing it. But now Bolo’s team was mopping up the stragglers already, and Wheeljack could get back to the embassy to help Ratchet with the incoming Cybertronian casualties. He patted his shoulder-mount launcher. Weapon like this, you just had to pick your targets very, very carefully.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Also dealing with trees, Penthesilea’s team had lured the drones in Delhi into the Central Ridge Reserve Forest, where Ironhide’s spiral could keep them away from the ancient and new cities and their many architectural treasures.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
In Rabat they had pulled the drones into a triangular area bordered on the north by the N6 highway, on the east/southeast by the Bou Regreg river, and on the west/southwest by Rabat’s small twin city of Salé.  
  
“LENNOX!” Epps bellowed. “Guess who outta repair, coming in high and hot!”  
  
Lennox nodded. “FALL BACK! FALL BACK!” The Coalition forces pulled back to the edge of Salé, keeping watch for stragglers, trying not to look toward where the incoming fire was going to be laid down. Jury and her platoon were already maneuvering into a curved line, spreading out southwest across the river into more dry fields, the screaming tide of drones following.   
  
“Baby, this never gets old,” Epps said. “Little Bird, bring the rain.”  
  
They never heard the jet, but a peculiar, angry-teakettle hissing presaged each barrage. Line by line, the drones fell to sleek curtains of blue plasma, shriveling and melting into glowing pools of unstable alloy.  
  
“Looks like Jack and Ironhide got those new cannons working for her,” Lennox said, a grin fleeting across his face. “Watch perimeter, people! Keep it tight!”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
November 11th, Sunday  
  
“Oh no,” Beachcomber said. “No.”  
  
Oil rigs along coastlines pulled themselves free, deliberately yanking off the automatic wellhead caps, vast arms swinging, bending to fling the bodies of living whales into the midst of seaside towns and cities.   
  
 _Tracks, Powerglide, Borealis,_  Skyfire groaned.  _Can you fly?_  
  
There was a bruised pause, but the answers came back in the affirmative.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They hurled themselves up out of the Shin-Kiba station in Koutou, detaching nevertheless with care from their passenger cars. There being only three of them, they could combine swiftly; Railspike, Rapid Run and Midnight Express, fitting bodies and minds together with a seamlessness and coherence not seen since the time of the Firstforged.  
  
“ _ZETTAI!_ ” Rail Racer thundered, sprinting toward the Stunticons. “ _Yurusenai!_ ” Despite the popular culture, Tokyo was not a good city to fight in. Rail Racer was very definite on this point. Motormaster scrambled to get his team combined before Rail Racer was on them, bashing with shield and firing at point blank with cannon, harrying Menasor south, past the heliport, across a bridge, onto Wakasu island. Half industrial, half a popular camping park and golf course, it was swiftly evacuated.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The fast drop to the cold, dark depths seemed to take forever. Hound held Mirage close, their chests pressed together, conserving energy for the task ahead. Swarms of Kuppies already swirled toward the base in the abyss. They were five miles out. Mirage would have to cross the ocean floor cloaked going in, but they hoped Hound could move in closer to retrieve him on the way out.   
  
With their traditional, private transmission of affectionate cautions completed, Mirage stepped away, fading from all sensors but Hound’s. Only the disturbed sediment gave clues to his position, and there were rockier areas closer to the base.   
  
Just like on Cybertron, Hound thought. Get in, place the charges, get out. Simple.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Groaning, Rail Racer uprooted the wind power turbine and slammed Menasor into the shallow reservoir beside it. The water wasn’t deep enough for the Decepticon to sink, but neither was he moving. Rail Racer dropped to his knees, letting his arms at last fall to his sides. Kneeling but upright, his optics flickered and went dark.   
  
“They’ve fought each other into stasis,” Captain Tanaka said quietly. He nodded at his lieutenant and the order was given. The Japanese Ground and Naval SDFs – much expanded with the recent modification of Article 9 – pounced on the fallen Menasor.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Click. Click-click._  Every minute sound seemed deafening to Mirage as he extracted each small charge from his cache and pressed it, sticky-side down, to the bases of structural columns, shadowy niches beneath the manual controls of the defensive auto-cannons, and if he was lucky and the radiation didn’t fry his stealth systems the moment he got in there, the secondary power conduits from the main reactor. If Perceptor’s guess was correct, this last would cause the reactor to shut down rather than blow up. No one wanted a thermonuclear explosion down here.   
  
So far the base seemed deserted, but Mirage did not trust that. The Cons’ AI, whatever it might be called – most likely a bud-program of Nemesis, Teletraan’s opposite number – had been quiet so far. Galvatron and Soundwave were in space. The Constructicons should have been here, if past patterns held true, but Mirage hadn’t detected any sign of their presence.   
  
Outside, the Kuppies gnawed at the hull, unaffected by shielding calibrated to fend off much larger organisms.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _All right, people, you know the drill!_  Tracks said as the four jets homed in on the next animate oil rig. The other three fliers transmitted groans or rude electronic noises. Borealis suspected Tracks – with his high rate of energy consumption per unit of body mass – was getting a wee bit punchy.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
November 12th, Monday  
  
 _Who the frag is that dark jet?_  Thundercracker snarled.  _I don’t know him, Starscream, who is he? Some kind of Seeker-build but not like us and not a deep-Seeker._  
  
 _Who cares? Just kill him,_  Starscream ordered. Six Seekers wheeled and spun, adjusting course to intercept the brazen intruder. They stalked the foreign jet with their usual canniness, intending to catch him before he could reach the safety of Perceptor’s firing range. The race was on.  
  
Strangely, once they had closed to the point where the odd jet  _had_  to know they were after him, he made no bid for space, instead diving for the thicker layers of atmosphere, where the physics of fluid dynamics would force all of them to slower speeds.   
  
 _Let me have first crack!_  Ramjet shouted, circling around, lining up with the stranger head-on, increasing closing speed.   
  
 _Whatever,_  Starscream said.  _Idiot._    
  
The dark jet deployed long, tapering blades from either side of his nose and slammed into a tight roll. With a yelp of static, Ramjet scrambled to get out of the way, transforming to make the turn. Even someone as CPU-damaged as he was could well imagine what those blades would have done to him at that speed.   
  
Thundercracker laughed. Ramjet deserved whatever he got for being caught by a rookie move like that. No one had used blades in jet mode for two million years.   
  
 _Quit screwing around,_  Starscream ordered, and fired off a volley of missiles. At this range he could hardly miss.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“And what do you think you’re doing, little pretty?” a voice asked, seeming to come from nowhere as the voices of AIs often did.   
  
Mirage didn’t freeze – he knew better. When his position was compromised he nearly always  _moved_ ; even if it was in the wrong direction, it usually bought him time.   
  
The base’s internal defense systems – as elaborate as Decepticon paranoia could make them – came alive.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Starscream’s missiles failed to strike their target. They, along with Thrust, Dirge and Ramjet, suddenly bloomed orange and black with explosive impacts. The Second Trine tumbled, out of control for thousands of meters.  
  
“ _YOU!_ ” Screaming in rage, the Air Commander drove at the big white jet who had silently descended to defend the smaller Autobot.   
  
Ignoring him for the moment, Skyfire transformed and backhanded ‘Warp hard enough to rattle his CPU, jarring his ‘porting capability. Thundercracker snarled, but also transformed to catch Skywarp. The dark jet was getting away.   
  
 _Come on,_  Thundercracker told Skywarp, transmitting the coordinates of their most secure aerie as the latter regained full consciousness.  _We’re done for today. Screamer won’t want any help._    
  
Hurtling through the thin, outermost fringes of the atmosphere, Starscream’s fierce cries and Skyfire’s roars were silenced, but this did not lessen their savagery.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Hooyah!” The young soldier next to Epps grinned as the last of the Decepticon ground troops fell beneath Ironhide’s cannons, but he, like the rest of the human forces, was too tired to put a fist in the air as an expression of triumph. Epps laid a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.  
  
“Watch ‘em, man,” Epps said. “When you think it’s over, you watch  _them_.” Every Autobot around them was staring upward, tracking something across the sky. Something in orbit, Epps guessed, from the speed.  
  
 _Prime?_  Jazz tight-beamed.  _Have you seen this?_    
  
Taking the feed from Jazz, Prime set up a holo so everyone could observe, human and bot. Skyfire and Starscream were at the tenuous edge of the atmosphere, beating the slag out of each other.   
  
“Like cesium and water, those two,” Ratchet said, completing a weld on Inferno’s arm with greater heat than necessary. Inferno winced but made no sound, as intent as the rest of them on the fight going on far above.  
  
Over the years, Epps had seen a lot of robots fighting, in groups and one-on-one. This? Looked bad. No matter what anyone said about Screamer, this wasn't a catfight. This wasn’t Sparta either – no cool, professional singularity of purpose. They tore out great handfuls of wire and cable, ripping through armor and component panels, gouging at optics and engines; and every firing of their weapons was aimed at vital spots at point blank range. "They're gonna kill each other."   
  
"Hm. This time they might," Prime agreed. Wearily, Epps thought.  **Perceptor?**    
  
Shuttering his optics for a moment, poised on the rim of the base’s volcano, Perceptor altered his consciousness. Atoms slowed to a leisurely twirl, stars and planets paused in their stately dances, and the combatants streaking by at 18,000 mph in low orbit seemed to hold perfectly still. Perceptor's light cannon punched a narrow hole through Starscream's chest, deliberately missing the spark chamber by a centimeter. The edge of the beam grazed Skyfire's left forearm.   
  
 _ **SKYFIRE.**_  Prime boosted his signal almost to maximum, holding back just enough to prevent causing actual damage. Skyfire's guttural cough of surprise came at the same time as Starscream's shriek of pain.  **Come down. Everyone else has stopped fighting.**    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The Autobots fought as though this slimy mudhole was their homeworld. Hook signaled his gestalt-mates.  _It’s time._  Their agreement was silent but unanimous over the link. Long-considered plans and preparations were put into motion.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
November 13th, Tuesday  
  
Perceptor crouched on the mountain peak, not fully in his old tank mode, but hunkered down, meticulously braced and ready to fire in any direction. He was an accomplished mechanic/medic but he had to remain in Oregon for the time being, his keen and subtle senses alert to maintain the “safe” radius his presence afforded.  
  
Skywarp was shot in the face the instant he materialized.   
  
Directly behind him, Thundercracker had only half an astrosecond to be glad Perceptor had used his hand pistol, rather than the light cannon. He caught the falling body of his trinemate. They should abort this mission now, before—  
  
Starscream, flying up the steep slopes of the mountain while his wingmates distracted Perceptor, pounced, pinning the Autobot against the crater’s rim. "I know you spared my life, 'Seekerbane'," Starscream purred, slowly tightening his grip. "Do you think that means I shall spare yours now?"   
  
Perceptor appeared to have frozen in the Air Commander's grasp. Such was not the case. "As per usual," he said calmly, "you talk too much." The tiny manipulator he had deployed delivered a jolt of code that overrode Starscream's voluntary motor controls. The resultant convulsion caused his hands to clench on Perceptor's throat, but like Ratchet, Perceptor had an array of cutting tools at his disposal.   
  
Hissing, sensory fins flared, Thundercracker approached slowly, hovering on his jets, reaching for Starscream’s body, optics never leaving Perceptor’s face. Nor did the light cannon waver, tracking his slightest movement, steady at full power; but the Autobot lowered his pistol. He could have killed them, yet he hadn’t – and he was letting Thundercracker escape with his fallen trinemates. The Autobots had been accepting retreats a lot lately. It was disconcerting. Thundercracker wanted to ask why, wanted to ask a lot of things. What he wanted had been put aside for so long he merely accepted his desire and let it pass unvoiced.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mikaela didn't need the rad suit any more - she wasn't even physically in the med-bay. She controlled her waldoes from a different chamber within the embassy, reclining in a padded chaise, but working separate gripping arms with her legs and feet as well as the fine manipulators and welders she moved with her arms and hands. An AV feed to lightweight VR glasses completed the kit. Like Sam, Miles and a lot of the military personnel, she had the occipital comm unit - under the skin but sitting on the outside of her skull; but she was not, did not want to be, wetwired like Maggie and Glen and a handful of others.  
  
Ratchet was afraid they might lose Windcharger.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
November 14th, Wednesday  
  
Strake fled while Galvatron was eating Hone. Enraged at the failure of the humans to capitulate immediately as they should have, the Decepticons' leader had snatched the nearest Seeker out of the sky, breaking him in half. Skyquake – already gone beyond the atmosphere – transmitted a glyph of relinquishment.  _You can do what you want, Strake, but I’m leaving. This is insane._  
  
 _Wait! Skyquake, wait for me! You can’t just leave me!_  Engines laboring, he tried to push for orbit. The drip of hot blue-white liquid increased, spattering from rents in his hull.   
  
 _Hone is dead. We’re no longer a trine. Do what you want._  
  
 _Skyquake!_  There was no answer. Skyquake was heading directly for the wormhole that would take him back to their native galaxy.   
  
Falling, then flying close to the surface, heedless of the trail of first spray then debris kicked up by his passage as he went from ocean to island, he was only mindful that should he crash from this height it would do less damage. He zigzagged across the green, organic-infested landscape, looking for a place to hide. Hook and the other Structies were gone, not even Soundwave could find them. Strake knew he would recover on his own, but without a mechanic’s aid it would take a long time. He needed someplace high, hard to get to from the ground; better yet, someplace that would mask his energy signature.   
  
There. Mountains, and in mountains were caves – like the one he spied hollowed behind a waterfall. He crashed more than landed, but the white plume of liquid only registered the interruption for a moment. Crawling until his triangular shoulders struck stone and held him fast, systems shutting down by tens, Strake escaped into merciful darkness.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It wasn’t one of her better landings. Falling into recharge before her nose-wheels had touched the ground was a practice Borealis would try to avoid in future. She rolled to a stop on pure momentum, the irregularity of the road only spilling her off into the sagebrush once she had passed Wheeljack’s tower.  
  
Skyfire, landing with more grace behind her, transformed and transfused a small jolt of energy, just enough to get her into robot mode, whereupon he tucked her under his arm and carried her back toward the hangar entrance. He didn’t make it either, dropping to his knees, then pitching forward, Borealis’ inert form still under his arm.   
  
It would take more mechs than they had on their feet to haul the two big jets inside, so there they stayed, partially blocking the broad driveway. Later, a squad of airmen from Nellis came out in jeeps with a bunch of tarps and erected a makeshift shelter, shielding the offline bots from unfriendly surveillance.  
  
(A day later, Skyfire came online for a moment, pushing himself up on his arms, looking about wildly with the tent half-obscuring his face. Prime hastily gave him the all-clear. Without a word, Skyfire fell offline again, collapsing with a ground-shaking crash.)  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Reviewing the casualty reports, Lennox wondered what it was like for Optimus, who knew every Cybertronian and could feel every fatality. Ironhide, Bumblebee, both Twins, Trailbreaker, Cliffjumper, Windcharger, Prowl, Arcee - in repair bays under the care of Ratchet or Wheeljack, both of whom were themselves injured but functional. Hound and Mirage were MIA, though Prime had said not to panic about them yet. Red Alert, Oratorio and Jazz were in an exhausted recharge close to stasis. Beachcomber, Huffer, Gears, Grapple and Brawn, and all four of the Autobot jets - including Tracks in his second alt mode - were also down. They had lost 103 of the Graveyard Legion, mostly tanks, but Evac and Topspin were now the only remaining helis. Evac had charge of the handful of GL wounded - only a handful because they were usually either only lightly damaged or dead.   
  
The GL weren't berserkers. They were very tough, and they fought smart and hard, mostly deployed in defensive positions. This far and no farther. None sold their spark cheaply or carelessly. To have lost a sixth of their original number in five days was staggering. Of the 600, there were 437 left, 60 having been lost to previous battles.   
  
There were more dead among the human forces in those five days than during both the Iraqi wars spanning the turn of the 21st century. The number of wounded was huge, but if you got as far as triage with brainwaves and a pulse the docs and their new techie toys could almost always pull you through. Lennox was old enough to find this both reassuring and creepy.   
  
Sometimes Lennox thought he knew how Prime felt, why he wanted this war  _over_ , why the Autobot leader had asked everyone he could communicate with for ideas and then thought long and hard about the answers. After a few beers, however, Lennox knew he had no idea really, that the true scale of the alien war was so far beyond anything he'd seen he ultimately could not wrap his head around it - and he didn't want to.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Prime stood outside the UN building in New York, head bowed in thought, waiting.   
  
The humans had a look to them their grandparents and great-grandparents would have recognized. The look of a people who knew with calm certainty that they must fight, must unite or be wiped from the face of their own world.   
  
Galvatron had miscalculated badly.


	43. Monster Mash: Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mirage has some difficulty, the Kuppies gorge themselves, Hound and Mirage get a submarine ride, and there are brief glimpses of aftermath.

2018 - November 12th, Monday  
  
Mirage had danced this dance before. Instead of fleeing directly for any of his chosen exits, he leapt and spun and dodged inward, toward the reactor. The lattice of high-powered lasers that sprang up around the room burned through his left foot. He automatically shut down the pain sensors.  
  
Where were the Constructicons? Evading plasma fire, he found himself in a vortex-eye of calm for just long enough to slip a data chip into an I/O port. The AI now had something else to think about, though much of the defensive weaponry was truly autonomous.   
  
Outside, the Kuppies worked their way down to major structural supports on the base’s south side; splitting off new copies of themselves whenever they had eaten enough.   
  
Hound waited in the cold and dark, sensors alert, passive scans only. A handful of recon Kuppies swam idly around him, programmed to obey his personal comm in case he needed extra eyes. There were many reasons Cybertronians shivered, but cold was not one of them. Mirage had many times explained to others that Hound had by far the harder task during their missions together, and that Mirage had no desire to trade positions.   
  
A sudden wind gusted through the corridors. To sensors using certain wavelengths, Mirage could be given away by air currents; he had thus learned to move in such a way as to disturb the air as little as possible, or to set up turbulence that deceived. He ran with the winds, burying himself in their chaotic flow.   
  
The Kuppies had broken through somewhere and the base was flooding. Flooding wasn't enough, though. Flooding wasn't a problem, it could be fixed too easily and air wasn't a necessity. Air was nice, it was a convenience. Most people had lived the largest part of if not their entire lives within an atmosphere. Other than deep-Seekers, who existed out in the void for millions of years at a time. Mirage had come to appreciate the luxury of atmosphere when Wheeljack's first ship, or the first version of his ship had been half-slagged in battle near the Oontaran supernova. It had taken them ten years to patch the hull enough to be airtight - the ship had been quite large originally.   
  
Inward, inward – he found the ring corridor around the reactor, diving and rolling inside just as the flood doors slammed down. Now for the coolant pipes. Which, when he found them, were configured in an unfamiliar way. Mirage processed rapidly. There were three main types of fusion reactors, and he had at one time or another, sabotaged all of them. This was something new – the Structies loved to experiment as much as Wheeljack or Perceptor – but it seemed to be set up similarly enough to things Mirage had dealt with before. He placed his last charge and sprinted outward, heading for the sump outlet a quarter of a circumference away from the one where he’d gained entrance.   
  
“I dunno, Vortex,” Swindle’s voice echoed down the corridor accompanied by running footsteps. “Maybe Starscream is right.”  
  
Mirage ducked into a side-hall, dashing silently through stacks of alloy and composite beams, plates, pre-cast shapes, spools of various kinds of cable and other components, towering over his head. There didn’t appear to be an exit at the further end, so he turned back, winding through rows and rows of materiel toward the doorway.   
  
The first blast shook the entire base. The Kuppies must have destabilized it more than Mirage had thought. Ominous groaning and creaking and clattering surrounded him. He didn’t look up, just poured on the speed, wishing the aisle was wide enough for him to transform.   
  
He didn’t make it to the door, though perhaps that was just as well, since Swindle and Vortex stood at the entry, staring inside at the enormous mess they were already thinking of ways to get out of cleaning up. Mirage was buried and dared not struggle. Not until the two Decepticons had passed.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
November 14th, Wednesday  
  
Hound waited. He would never stop until he got word one way or another from Mirage. Or, in the worst case, Prime.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
If the Constructicons had been there, Mirage would have been found by now. Even as deeply buried as he was. They were efficient about clearing debris – they had to be. Fortunately, he had discovered that the irregularly-shaped structural trusses that had fallen on him weren’t packed tightly. Bit by bit he’d been able to work his way free of the tangle. The lights had gone out about halfway through his struggle – the reactor going through an emergency shutdown just as he’d hoped. The flooding had been stopped, the water already being pumped back out.  
  
He’d already taken longer about this than they’d planned, and he knew Hound would be worried. While he was in here, though, it was too good a chance to let slip, and he still had three small chemical bombs.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"WHERE ARE THEY?!"   
  
Mirage knelt and flattened himself against a wall.   
  
"WHAT? IMPOSSIBLE. DON'T BOTHER ME WITH THAT NONSENSE - I WANT SCRAPPER AND THE REST OF THEM FOUND  **NOW!** "   
  
Galvatron rounded the corner, flanked by Starscream and Onslaught. Mirage had been in the presence of Megatron on a number of occasions, both before and after the start of the war, but he'd never been this close to Galvatron. Words from human literature raced through Mirage's CPU. "...Beautiful and terrible... All shall love me and despair..." Megatron's presence had always been commanding, charismatic. Gazing up at Galvatron now, Mirage fleetingly wished he had the strength to plunge his hand into his own chest and tear out his spark.   
  
The first of the charges would go off very soon. He had programmed them to enable at seemingly random times. His path could not thus be traced by their timing, and the overlapping activations would reinforce each other, drastically increasing the damage done. He needed to get out. Just beyond Mirage’s position, Galvatron paused, head lifted.   
  
 _Chufff CRASH!_ There went the first charge, at the base of a column in Galvatron's throne room. The little chemical bombs were an old industrial etching catalyst Perceptor had weaponized. External alarms blared - the kind a mech couldn't close the channel on and ignore. A long, low metallic groan and thud that shook the entire base signaled the next charge's activation.   
  
With a bellow of rage, Galvatron raked the wall centimeters above Mirage's head and trampled toward the throne room, sending Starscream and Onslaught to investigate the second, more serious problem.   
  
Once they were out of auditory range, Mirage bolted for his intended exit site. Everything was dripping in the pump room, but this level was otherwise clear. He opened the inner hatch and climbed through.   
  
His arms shook with irregular energy surges as he climbed down the inclined pipe to the outer hatch. This was going to be interesting. If the air pressure inside the base was insufficient, the ocean would rush in, blasting him back inside. Using his main grapple and both backups to anchor himself, he dug his pedal flanges and the fingers of one hand as much as possible into the metal of the pipe, for of course there were no seams. Mixmaster had extruded it in one piece. Aiming for the center of the iris, he fired.   
  
There was a bang and tumult and a frothing spiral wave rushed upward through the breach, but it only reached his shoulders. Disengaging his grapples, he dove through, rolling as he hit the seafloor, letting momentum bring him to his feet because for a moment he wasn't sure he could get there under his own power. The stealth system was draining him into the red. He left it on until he was well clear of the base security perimeter. There were still five miles to run.   
  
At three and a half miles, Mirage sent the blip of random noise that contained no embedded code, no surface message, yet told Hound he needed extraction. Enemies had wasted precious hours trying to decrypt this transmission on the rare occasions it had been intercepted - which made Jazz laugh and laugh.   
  
Hound found him facedown in the silty mud, stealth net thankfully offline. Mirage managed a weak smile before tumbling into recharge.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Conn, Sonar, we got a contact bearing 310, On the bottom. Small, metallic. Think it's what we've been keeping an eye out for, Captain."  
  
"Change heading to intercept. Make our depth 6000 meters." They had observed Galvatron and his minions descend - it was a great relief after two days to see the small sonar pings and receive a signal from their allies.   
  
"Hey there, fellas. Can you give a couple of tired bots a lift?"  
  
"You won't fit through the hatch, Hound," the captain said, grinning. "Can you attach a tether to our sail?"  
  
"Affirmative. Gimme a sec here and..." Mild clangs and clunks echoed through the sub's hull. "We're secure up here, Captain."  
  
"Very well. Make our course for Groton."  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A young human, new to the embassy, poked her head into the war room. "Your Excellency? We have a message from the USS  _Dallas_  - they say they've found your lost sheep."  
  
"Good news indeed," Prime said. "Thank you, Master Sergeant."  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They were met at the dock in Connecticut by Hound and Mirage's usual Coalition team for the drive to the air base and flight to Nellis. This platoon knew that, unless Hound indicated otherwise, Mirage was just in recharge; and that Hound would carry him most of the way rather than lay him on a truck or call for a crane; and that Hound's cheery demeanor was no indicator of the depth of his concern for his friend. They knew not to ask about the current mission, or any others on Earth, but that old exploits on Cybertron were fair game, and why it was better to ask Hound than Mirage.   
  
“Have a nice swim?” Captain Sanchez asked, as Hound carried Mirage aboard the C-17. The Autobot jets were all out of commission.   
  
Hound laughed. “You betcha!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2018 – late November, early December  
  
Ratchet skirted around Trailbreaker, patting the big mech on the back as he passed. Trailbreaker spent some part of every day in front of Windcharger's CR tank, quietly transmitting the day's gossip, even knowing Windcharger's receiver was damaged and shut down.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mirage came online in one of his favorite positions. Draped over Wheeljack’s chest, with Hound and Prowl beside them and Tracks like a cherry on top. One by one their optics lit around him, glowing soft and fond.  
  
“Hey, kiddo,” Wheeljack said. “Operating within normal parameters again?”   
  
Mirage revved his engine.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Optics he’d rarely seen, usually hidden as they were by the mother-of-pearl silvery visor, lit a steady blue. Miles jumped up and hit the button Perceptor had shown him. Fluid drained, plex tube lowered and Beachcomber stepped down, gleaming like brand new. Miles hugged him, not caring what the CR fluid might do to his clothes.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Hey, Prowl, we're out!" Sideswipe caroled, leaning into the security office. Red snorted. The twins had been released from their CR chambers at the same time, though Sunstreaker had been more seriously damaged. Even Ratchet hadn’t grumbled anything about Sideswipe being a shirker, though. Ratchet had enough to do already, and if both twins were tanked that at least meant they were keeping out of trouble.   
  
"So I notice," Prowl said, part of a smile quirking the corner of his mouth-parts.   
  
"Dah!" Sides cringed and ducked out hurriedly. Prowl had totally slagged his voice again. You could pretty much tell how bad or good the war was going by Prowl's voice. If things went well for long enough, you wanted to listen to him read the phone book, as the humans said. If the opposite, well, his voice broke your spark with every syllable.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
In Norway, the grandparents and great-grandparents were talking. It seemed there were Frost Giants once again living in the mountains, building cities underground.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Borealis?_  Skyfire tight-beamed.  _I’m going to the Moon, would you like to come with me?_  
  
 _Would I… ASDFGHJKLKHJGFDSA!!! Uh. YES!_  
  
 _Heh. Meet me at these coordinates, then, and I’ll give you a ride up._  
  
Skyfire had contacted a number of lunar scientists and asked them to provide him with a list of samples desired. If it seemed like a frivolous errand, given the circumstances, Prime had pointed out that life must continue, unbowed, unshaken; and it was never frivolous to give people something positive to do when things looked bleak.   
  
"Flyyy me to the moon," Borealis sang when she caught up with him over Guam. "And let me sing among the stars. Let me see what Spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words, hold my hand. In other words, darling, kiss me." Maneuvering above him, she carefully lowered and clamped onto Skyfire’s dorsal hull.  
  
 _Hang on,_  he told her, aiming his nose sharply upward.  _Tightly. Tighter than that. Don’t make me have to pick you up on my way back. …OOF! That’s better._  
  
It was a short flight once Skyfire got up to speed. Borealis was silent, watching Earth shrink behind them. Once they reached the Moon’s surface, she tumbled off Skyfire in a heap, staring at the pale grey dust between her fingers.   
  
 _I’m on the Moon,_  she said finally.  _The Moon – I am on it. Moooooon. Moony McMoonykins!_  She bounced around, dancing, tossing handfuls of dust up to watch it fall so slowly, tripping over crater rims on purpose just to see how long it took to hit the ground.  _I am. On. The. MOON!_  
  
 _Yes,_  said Skyfire, amused.  _And when you’ve finished frolicking about perhaps you could assist me with these core samples._  
  
 _Oooh!_  She bounded over.  
  
 _They want them to be “sterile” so set the shielding on your hands to…yes, like that._  Ratchet and Perceptor could channel heat from their sparks to their hands in order to attain sterility. Skyfire, Hoist, Evac and Borealis had to use an alternate method.   
  
They worked on in relative silence, Borealis occasionally beeping and humming and giggling to herself, which Skyfire couldn't hear unless their armor touched.   
  
After some time, he tapped her shoulder.  _Earthrise,_  he said, pointing.   
  
Borealis stood.  _Oooohhh._  The little blue-white globe peeked over the horizon.   
  
Skyfire watched it for a moment, then looked at Borealis. He remembered; he'd watched people before, getting their first look at Cybertron from one of the moons. Prime himself, in fact; the great orator, stricken wordless by their shining homeworld. Smiling, Skyfire reached even further back. His own earliest flights, 1.2 billion years ago. He'd been swept up, seized in the grip of this very same awe and wonder. Enraptured - as though taken by a raptor. Skyfire understood that etymology very well.


	44. Quotidiana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Perce and Ratch get to visit, and Miles gets a new job - with random bits of day-in-the-life of the Oregon base.

2019 – May  
  
 _Ratchet?_  
  
The call came through softly, unobtrusive, meant to be ignored if more pressing things required the recipient’s attention. Ratchet answered at once. _Perceptor? Are you well?_    
  
 _Oh certainly, certainly. I was merely wondering if there was anything I could help you with, regarding the new-kindled ones._    
  
Perceptor’s tone was not simply wistful. An edge of longing, almost of desperation cut across the lower harmonics despite the scientist’s obvious effort to hide it. That he had failed to do so entirely was telling. Ratchet wished he could instantaneously close the physical distance between them and take his friend in his arms.  _Looking for more ways to overwork yourself as usual, I see. Re-inventing the Wells wasn’t enough?_    
  
 _Nonsense. You and Wheeljack had already laid the groundwork. All you needed was a fresh perspective, you said so yourself._  
  
 _Ah yes, now I recall why arguing with you is so irritating. You remember_  everything.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There was a charfuckingtreuse Hummer parked at the curb in front of his parents’ house. Miles squinted, holding up a hand as if to fend off the eye-searing rays. “Hey, Ratchet,” he said as the passenger door opened so he could toss his duffel inside. His iPod microbot, Scuffle, peeked out at the big Autobot for a moment, squeaked, and snuggled back down into Miles’ shirt pocket. “You’re my ride? How’d I rate the VIP treatment?”  
  
“Hello, Miles,” Ratchet said, approximating a sigh. “You’re doing me a favor. Perceptor and I have been in contact since his team landed, but we have had little time to meet face-to-face. Besides, Prime recommended you for this position. I rather doubt Beachcomber will ever get too corporate for you.”  
  
“Wow. You’re never gonna let that one go, are you.”  
  
“No.” They drove in silence for several miles, Ratchet opening up to near 100 mph once they were outside Tranquility and the long Nevada highways stretched ahead. “Seriously, Miles -  _World Wildlife Fund_?”  
  
“Total cubicle farm, man.” Miles was nervous. The Oregon base already had a team of human scientists working closely with the Bots. He wasn’t used to having the lowest IQ in the room.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Even at the speeds Ratchet could travel on open roads, it took the better part of a day to reach the Oregon base. Miles dozed through much of it, and Ratchet let him.  
  
“Are you sure this is the right place?” They were pulling off 101 onto what appeared to be a set of dirt tracks in the middle of the forest. There was no fence, no sign.   
  
“Yes, Miles.”   
  
Attributing the weirdly smooth ride to Ratchet’s rather advanced suspension, Miles didn’t learn until later that the new Autobots had buried slabs of rock from their excavation beneath only the paired wheel-trails. Their heaviest cohorts could drive thus without getting bogged down and without disturbing any more of the landscape than absolutely necessary. Second growth forest – the trees old enough to be big (though not huge) and mossy – filtered hazy sunlight to shadowy green as the little road wound between steep hills. Ratchet rolled down the windows without being asked, and Miles breathed deep.  
  
When they reached the last turn and came out into a clearing, Miles almost didn’t realize they had arrived. “Whoa,” he said. “Where are the Ewoks?”  
  
From the robots’ point of view, it would take little time for the trees destroyed in the crash to regrow, but guided by human foresters, they had planted seedlings and encouraged the natural succession of plant life. Only the protruding hull of the ship, the downward-sloping ramp into the newly expanded hangar beneath it and the road would betray the base’s location in a decade or three.   
  
Perceptor and Beachcomber emerged at the top of the ramp as Miles got out so Ratchet could transform.   
  
“Hello!” Beachcomber called, waving.   
  
“Welcome, Miles. Ratchet.” Perceptor said. He bowed forward, peering at Miles intently. Or rather at Scuffle, still hiding in Mile’s pocket, firmly in iPod mode.   
  
Miles poked it gently. “I don’t know why he’s so shy,” he said, embarrassed.   
  
“Hmm,” Perceptor said. He straightened, palpably withdrawing his high-beam attention, refocusing on Ratchet.   
  
The approach wasn’t the wild tackle Miles had come to expect among the younger bots, but Ratchet and Perceptor’s embrace was no less fervent. He wondered if they ever got parts caught in each other, but then supposed that if you had lived for millions of years as a complex-bodied robot, you probably got the hugging without snagging thing figured out.   
  
“You and I shouldn’t remain geographically proximate,” Perceptor said into Ratchet’s shoulder. “We make a ‘high value target’, as the humans put it.”  
  
Ratchet chuckled. “Perhaps, but most of the Cons are scared lubeless of you, so I think we’re all right.”  
  
“Yes,” Perceptor said softly, disengaging the embrace and looking away. “I suppose they are.”  
  
 _Oh, Perceptor._  Ratchet felt like a thoughtless old clinker.   
  
“Hey, Miles, want to head out to the beach?” Beachcomber asked, leaning toward him and making a show of not really whispering. Perceptor and Ratchet didn’t seem to notice, though.   
  
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”   
  
Beachcomber transformed and Miles, at a loss as to what else to do with his duffle, tossed it in the passenger seat and got in.   
  
“So. You’re a geologist, huh?”  
  
“Yep,” Beachcomber said easily. “Never met a feldspar I didn’t like.” His engine was quiet, like an electric motor; despite his appearance, not even trying to sound like a normal dune buggy. He drove along slowly, giving Miles ample time to take in the ecosystems that would soon grow familiar. Cloud forest and small ferny meadows, giving way to brushy dune grasses and the cool grayish sand heavily laced with local serpentine in a crescent-shaped beach cradled between rocky crags. There were only a few puffy clouds in the sky and the sunlight took the sting out of the maritime wind.   
  
Once Miles was clear, Beachcomber transformed and stretched out on the sand with his hands behind his head.   
  
“Doesn’t it suck to get sand in your joints?” Miles asked, pretty sure he’d heard Ironhide or someone complaining about it.   
  
“Shiiiiiielding,” Beachcomber sang, letting a flux shimmer across his armor.   
  
“Nice.” Bird crap probably slid right off, too. A few gulls wheeled above them, but not like the mobs at fishing wharfs, and they were being relatively quiet. Miles tossed his duffel onto a rock and plopped down on the sand nearby. Not against him, not yet, but near. Watching ocean waves was always mesmerizing. He wondered how it seemed to the robots, whose world had had no water oceans. The Rust Sea, Wheeljack had once explained, was more like a red, sandy desert, and though semi-liquid in places, that liquidity had nothing to do with H2O. Except they’d visited a lot of other planets, hadn’t they. Probably nothing on backwater Earth surprised them.   
  
“There are some tide-pools at the foot of the cliffs to the south, there,” Beachcomber said, with the air of someone revealing the location of a secret hideout – though he showed no inclination to move from his comfortable nest on the sand. “And there are a couple of sea caves around the point. Do you snorkel? I guess we’ll have to find you a wetsuit, first, hm?”   
  
As far as job interviews went, this wasn’t what Miles had been expecting.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Forehelm to forehelm, Perceptor and Ratchet stood leaning heavily on one another, linked by several pairs of cables, transferring eons of experiential and scientific data back and forth.   
  
At least they’d come down into the base rather than stand outside waiting to get shot at, Hoist thought as he skirted around them. The events of late last year were riding hard in his CPU. Hard work would take care of that, he told himself crisply as he transformed, heading out to 101 to meet Grapple and Huffer. There was plenty of rebuilding still to do, and they were just the bots to do it.  
  
 _How many tanks do you want to build up here?_  Ratchet asked.   
  
 _Only two, for now,_  Perceptor said.  _None of the others here seem sanguine. I suppose we can hold the overflow from your lot._    
  
Ratchet traced the refined curve of Perceptor’s jaw.  _Give them time._  
  
 _I know. We had scarcely accustomed ourselves to the loss of the Allspark. Now this…_  He slipped fingertips into Ratchet’s chassis, under the heavy structures of his chest. The data flow over the cables slowed, altered, became more emotional feed than intel exchange.   
  
 _You haven’t even asked Beachcomber, yet, have you._  Ratchet leaned into the link, basking in the quicksilver labyrinths of Perceptor’s mind.  _Not that I blame you. It’s doable, even as small as he is, but hazardous. And not fun._  
  
 _Hm. Just because you and Prime thought you were going to end up a radioactive crater. Consider! The Firstforged did this. Think of the permutations! We could create entirely new subsets of—_    
  
 _I should have known something so radical would flip your switches._  
  
Perceptor laughed, and drew Ratchet further into the cool dimness of the base, kissing him soundly.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2019 - June  
  
“So, what were you, before?” Dr. Yasmina Abizaid asked over the low, rumbling whir of the big centrifuge. Perceptor had been explaining how they used their alt modes not only to blend in with other planets’ intelligent life forms, but as tools and transportation. On Earth, the Cybertronian scientist was an older model Land Cruiser, stuffed with unrecognizable junk in the back, painted primer red for the most part but for the front fenders, which were still the original turquoise and somewhat shiny.   
  
Perceptor didn’t look up from the cultures in his hands. Even out of the incubator he could maintain their optimal temperature by channeling excess heat from his spark to his hands. “I was…artillery,” he said softly.   
  
Yasmina looked at him. It was hard to tell if he’d hesitated over that last word. A long hesitation to the robots might be several nanoseconds, and undetectable to their human listeners. On the other hand, a human-detectable hesitation might only mean that their attention was engaged with another conversation or twelve, somewhere else. Dr. Frank Wilhaggin, the human contingent’s leader, had said, rather sanctimoniously, back when they were new to the base, that it didn’t really matter from a human perspective which it was. You had to decide for yourself and act accordingly. One couldn’t expect the finer considerations from aliens, after all. Yasmina still felt there was a difference, even if humans might never have the sensory capacity to distinguish between them without asking the robot directly.  
  
“So that thing on your back isn’t just a scope,” she ventured. Given the extent of the fighting late last year, she wasn’t too surprised not to have seen any footage of him on the news. As far as she knew, Perceptor had stayed on-base, taking in casualties. “It’s a cannon?”  
  
“Yes.” No hesitation. No elaboration. Maybe it was tech he wasn’t supposed to talk about.   
  
“Did you like being artillery?”  
  
Perceptor looked at her this time. “It wasn’t a matter of liking or disliking. It was simply necessity.”  
  
She wasn’t getting anything from his tone. He was being careful. Too careful? She had already talked to Beachcomber enough to know that not all the robots liked being soldiers. Not all of them had Warpath’s enthusiasm for the war that had killed their homeworld. She tried a slightly different tack. “Is the Land Cruiser more comfortable, then? Is that possible? Might one be more comfortable in one alt mode than another?”  
  
Perceptor laughed, thinking of Tracks and Sunstreaker. “Some of us are more in love with our vehicle modes than others.” He considered, not just what she asked, but what she didn’t. “We are constrained by mass, to begin with, though I have known some people to test those limits.”  
  
Yasmina thought of Arcee and Beachcomber. In robot mode they were near the same height. Arcee was a tough, muscular motorcycle, and a rather attenuated biped.  
  
Beachcomber was a cute but lightly built sand buggy. As a biped, his body was rather cobby and more solid than many of the smaller bots tended to be. He was blue and white; sky and waves, she thought, whatever those colors might symbolize back on his homeworld. Maybe. He seemed forthright, but was kind of quiet, she’d noticed.   
  
“I like the Land Cruiser for its utility,” Perceptor said. “For a non-tracked vehicle it handles rough terrain – which is in abundance on this planet, though I’ve seen worse - with remarkable agility. So, yes, I am pleased with this alt mode. Pleased to not be so explicitly a weapon, though perhaps that is merely self-delusion. Would it be better to maintain one’s honesty about such a thing? I still wield the cannon, among other things.”  
  
“Yes, but Prime said you could reprioritize your scientific pursuits, right? You remain a cannon, but not just a cannon.”  
  
“Indeed,” said Perceptor, and Yasmina thought there was a smile on his long, avian-piscine face.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Dr. Joey Sutherland looked up at Beachcomber, his hands pausing in their task of sorting rock samples, and grinned. “I have that same…well, I hate to call it a problem.” Walking the streets of his home city, San Francisco - and one had to admit this would be more likely there than elsewhere – Joey had on more than one occasion been stopped by a stranger who wanted to kiss him.   
  
Beachcomber, it seemed, had just had this happen to him, in Ashland.   
  
“Oh?” Beachcomber asked, grinning back. Joey could see why someone would want to kiss him. He had the closest things to lips that he’d seen on anyone but Prime.  
  
“Maybe it’s because you’re…not huge,” Joey said, suddenly wondering if the robots ever had neuroses about their size. Beachcomber was only about nine feet tall – within the realm of possible human heights, if you counted hormonal abnormalities. He could look down at Yau Ming, which Ming would find unusual. But the scale of affection with Beachcomber didn’t seem quite so insurmountable as that with, say, Prime. Or Skyfire. Joey shook his head mentally. Good grief. What could a human do with Skyfire besides ride inside him with about three platoons of friends?   
  
Beachcomber chuckled. “Scale issues can always be overcome,” he said. Joey was pretty sure the jovial lasciviousness in the robot’s tone wasn’t just his imagination. He was glad he hadn’t been drinking anything.   
  
“Yeah,” Joey said, when he’d recovered. “But we’re…squishy.”  
  
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, dude,” Beachcomber said. “No, wait, Primrose,” he said suddenly to one of the little crablike drones they’d built out of parts of their spaceship. “That goes  _here_ , this goes there.” He pointed, to keep the boxes of samples in proper geological order. The drone, careful without being mindful, set the box down as directed. Joey wondered how fine a line it was between a drone and a person, and whether it creeped any of the Autobots out. He suspected the Decepticons didn’t give a rat’s ass, either way.   
  
“I guess I shouldn’t ask for any further details,” Joey said hopefully. Beachcomber laughed.   
  
The sky outside had turned to pewter. It had been raining on and off all day. Beachcomber and Seaspray were the only two who didn’t seem to mind. What humans called acid rain wasn’t strong enough to affect the Cybertronians’ shielding, let alone the armor beneath. There was still a lot of complaining, though. Frank – whose tolerance for whingeing was small - had once said, “Well, you shouldn’t have landed in bloody Oregon, then!” Temperate rainforest was no climate for dry-loving robots. Perceptor hadn’t seemed affronted, merely nodding, but Yasmina and Joey and Marcus and Juan had glared daggers at Frank. Perceptor had worked a practical miracle bringing their heavily damaged ship down in more or less one piece. He hadn’t had the luxury of being picky about the landing site.   
  
“You probably shouldn’t ask Skyfire,” Beachcomber said, and Joey could have sworn he winked somehow, behind the silvery visor. “He’s kinda shy about that sort of thing. As shy as we get, anyway.”  
  
Joey was once again glad not to have been drinking anything. He gazed into Beachcomber’s visor, seeking a glint of the optics behind. A lot of information seemed to pass between them. Joey dusted off his hands and stood up. Beachcomber remained seated, carefully setting his samples aside.   
  
Wondering if he was about to cause an intergalactic incident, Joey leaned in, putting his hands on the robot’s shoulders, and kissed him.   
  
Beachcomber was warm. Joey had noted that before, when a steadying hand had kept him from stumbling on the trails around the mountain. These weren’t cold, heartless, unfeeling robots like the madmen of science fiction liked to imagine. And Beachcomber’s lips, made of many small plates, were hard but responsive against Joey’s. The robot’s hand lightly touching his back felt huge across his shoulders, but not threatening. It was comforting, a surety of care, safety, protection. Joey was glad he had shaved off his habitual mustache and goatee, though. He didn’t fancy getting hair caught in metal lip components.   
  
“See?” Beachcomber said as they parted, both warmer than before. “Scale is not a problem.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Teddy-bear sized housekeeping drones scuttled about, keeping the place clean and discouraging various forms of terrestrial wildlife from taking up unwanted residence. The base doors were always open, except in the worst weather or during Decepticon attack. The robots were unaffected by the range of temperatures prevalent in this area, climate muted as it was by the ocean nearby. The human quarters were therefore father in, behind a double set of automatic not-glass doors.   
  
The restriction on wildlife didn’t apply to domesticated pets, though the definition of “domesticated” was stretched a little. Beachcomber seemed to have an odd effect on organic life – there was an entire clowder of cats and a pack of dogs, small birds, large birds, fish, herptiles, and Marcus, who was a licensed falconer, had a one-legged red-tailed hawk who spent as much time as she was allowed perched on Beachcomber’s head.   
  
Drones and animals and humans and robots and the AIs whose presence was more or less ubiquitous in both Autobot bases. All living in a peculiar muddle of work and happy arguments and swirl of cultures. Seven human languages were spoken, and at least three humans were trying to learn Cybertronian, despite the lack of necessary vocal equipment. A kind of pidgin was evolving, though, of sounds they could make and still be understandable.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Perceptor paused suddenly in his bustling. His shoulders slumped and he shook his head.   
  
"What is it? What happened?" Miles asked. One of the other bots was giggling, so it couldn't be very terrible.   
  
"Bother," Perceptor said, taking up the task again with his usual aplomb. "Beachcomber's fallen off the continental shelf."   
  
"Again," the giggling bot, Seaspray, added.   
  
"Ah, yes. Now he's claiming he didn't fall, since his balance, as I well know, is quite good." Perceptor seemed to address the ceiling, his volume increasing dramatically. "As though having JUMPED off makes it BETTER!"   
  
Miles laughed. Perceptor was fun to watch. He had first struck Miles as a cute, if somewhat elderly (whatever that meant, in this case), absent-minded professor type. He talked to his experiments. So far the experiments didn’t talk back, but anything was possible when Perceptor was involved, according to Wheeljack.   
  
The scary thing was, Perceptor wasn't really absent-minded. At all. He might seem to have lost track of the conversation or something he was doing, or something Wheeljack was doing - but in reality he knew perfectly well and was only prioritizing something else for a moment.   
  
Thinking about Perceptor naturally led to thinking about Beachcomber. Beachcomber, Miles told himself, wasn’t really a guy robot. Yeah, his voice was pleasantly deep, and he was nine feet tall and everyone used the masculine pronoun for him. But his forging was  _ae_ , and besides, of the two Autobots that appeared “female” to most humans, Arcee was scary as shit, and Borealis was freaking ginormous. How do you go about kissing someone who could probably fit your entire body in her mouth? It didn’t really bear thinking about.   
  
Miles didn’t consider himself to be a Captain Jack Harkness exactly. It had more to do with Beachcomber. Beachcomber was distracting; and apparently pretty much everyone found him so. Miles had noticed how even Skyfire leaned down to be close when Beachcomber was talking, or humming, or singing or smiling. Ironically, the only one who seemed able to resist Beachcomber’s “distraction field” was Perceptor, although Miles wondered if Perceptor was really immune or just reacted in an atypical fashion; getting more tetchy instead of mellowing out. Despite this, Beachcomber was the only mech Miles had caught Perceptor getting snuggly with.  
  
"Want me to go get him?" Seaspray asked.   
  
Perceptor waved his hands about vaguely. Miles had increasingly gotten the feeling that Perceptor had once been accustomed to having more than two arms. "Oh, give him a week. As long as he stays in contact." He regarded Miles with a long-suffering expression. "He'd be down there all century if we let him. "


	45. Gestalt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein a new combiner team joins the Autobots, and Sam and Mikaela become parents. :D

2019 – September  
  
Ratchet checked the tanks. The plex on all five was dimly translucent, the forms within well-grown and properly differentiated. One was notably larger than the others, and one was smaller. Even though the merges had taken place over the course of a full year, the readings on these five had synchronized.   
  
“That’s the twelfth time you’ve looked at those today,” Tracks scolded, ignoring the implication that he’d been watching, too. “You’re giving me the surges. Are they all right or aren’t they?”  
  
“They’re fine,” Ratchet said, and followed Tracks out of the med-lab to stem the temptation to run one more diagnostic.  _Prime?_  he tight-beamed.  _I think we may have a new gestalt on our hands._  
  
 **Ah?**  Prime conveyed intense interest. It would be good news – there hadn’t been a new combiner team for eons.  
  
 _Primus help us when they hit integration,_  Ratchet replied, bursting the bubble.   
  
 **Oh. My.**  There was a pause.  **So you think they’ll decant soon?**    
  
 _Within the week unless something goes hinky. We’ve never had a batch synch up like this before, so your guess is as good as mine._    
  
 **Hinky?**  
  
Ratchet transmitted the equivalent of a huff. Prime knew perfectly well what it meant, he just liked to tease him about picking up slang from Mikaela. Who was, speaking of, expecting her and Sam’s own child in about a month. A little sister for this lot, Ratchet caught himself thinking. Sam and Mikaela hadn’t let him or any of the other Bots reveal the sex of the child, though it was clear enough to anyone with half an optic. They, for some incomprehensible reason, wanted it to be a surprise. If they were going to place such importance on the distinction between their rather limiting and paltry two genders, didn’t it make more sense to prepare for the arrival as early as possible? Painting the nesting site pink or blue?   
  
Actually, the young couple had opted for green. Sam had held up a fan of paint chips from the hardware store against Ratchet’s leg, until the medic threatened to use his spot-welder on both the cards and Sam. The color they had chosen was almost as saturated, but of a far more soothing, bluer hue.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>   
  
 _Inferno, Tracks, Smokescreen, Bluestreak and Prowl, I suggest you get your afts in here now. Prime, since you’re here, you too. All five are decanting at once!_  Ratchet’s broad-beamed transmission caused five kinds of havoc as the mechs involved plus a gaggle of interested onlookers rushed to the inner chamber of the med-lab.   
  
Colloid drained, plex rose, five shiny new robots stepped down from their tanks in unison. Their optics were first and foremost on each other, small grins lighting their faces. Hands brushed hands, or knees. Shoulders bumped in gentle recognition. The largest touched each of them in turn, verifying their shared reality. Like Oratorio, they had been accessing the internet for some time prior to decantation.   
  
Even in protoform, their faces were unusually smooth; fine-textured nanomesh and crystalline optical shields giving them a strangely human appearance and expressiveness without venturing too far down either side of the Uncanny Valley.   
  
Finally the largest stepped forward, hugging Inferno, then taking Prime’s hand, shaking it with great earnestness. Prime smiled, thinking it a fine and comfortable thing to look another mech directly optic-to-optic. “Optimus Prime, I am Hot Spot. I will be an American LaFrance Eagle mid-mount ladder truck.”   
  
“Nice choice!” Inferno enthused, bumping fists with Hot Spot and grinning. Hot Spot released Prime’s hand and moved back a little into a space created by a quietly delighted Red Alert and Inferno for him, giving the others room.  
  
The smallest climbed and embraced Smokescreen, then looked up and up at Prime, a cheeky smile on his face. “I’m Groove, and I’ll be a BMW police motorcycle.” Smokescreen said nothing, but didn’t appear to be in any hurry to let Groove down.  
  
“Heya, I’m Streetwise.” He sauntered up to Tracks and slipped an arm around his waist. “I’m going to be a Dodge Charger police car. Maybe not as fast as you, Tracks, or as pretty, but it’ll do.”  
  
“Good heavens,” said Tracks, but he put his arm around Streetwise’s waist in return.   
  
“I’m Blades. Eurocopter Dauphin rescue helicopter.” Blades approached Prowl, slow but resolute. He smiled and took Prowl’s hands. “I imagine you’re sensing a theme here.”   
  
Prowl stood completely motionless, his optics at their widest aperture. “A flier,” he managed to say, rather faintly. “That’s good.”   
  
“Thought it might be,” Blades said, grinning.  
  
“Go on,” Hot Spot said, his hand on the last one’s shoulder, not pushing, just lending tactile support.  
  
“Hello, I’m First Aid,” he said, opening his arms and leaning in as Bluestreak – vibrating with joy and unable to contain himself any longer – ran forward to hug him. “I will be a Road Rescue Duramedic ambulance.” He looked hopefully at Ratchet.   
  
“Are you a gestalt?” Ratchet asked. He patted First Aid’s hand where it rested on Bluestreak’s shoulder. He would start uploading Cybertronian medical treatises to First Aid as soon as possible. Having another medic at the embassy would ease his mind greatly.   
  
First Aid glanced up at Hot Spot, but answered, “Yes.”  
  
Hot Spot nodded. “Our combined form will be called – in English – ‘Defensor’. I know it’s a little silly, but we thought the humans would find it reassuring.” He grinned up at Borealis, who was peering over the heads of the crowd, bouncing on her toes, beaming at her new little brothers.   
  
“Well done,” Prime said, his harmonics thrumming with happiness and pride. “All of you. We can surely use your help. Thank you and welcome to Earth.”  
  
“Decantation party!” Oratorio crowed, as the cloud mind went incandescent and everyone reached out to touch and greet the new people.  
  
Ratchet shooed them out into the hangar before the party could get started there in the med-lab. Except for Prowl and Blades, who were still holding hands, gazing solemnly into each other’s optics as though there were vast tracts of deeply important information they needed to convey to each other. A single arm cable joined them. Ratchet smiled and left them to it – Wheeljack was going to need help carting out the high-grade.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ratchet stumped wearily into the repair bay. Most of the time, the slow pace of human communications didn't bother him. Quite the reverse; it was relaxing, and gave the Cybertronians time to consider their words, as well as devote more attention to any number of other tasks and conversations. Today, however, Ratchet felt his patience wearing thin. Prime's remorse whenever they lost members of the Graveyard Legion was infectious, though no-one wanted to tell their leader so. Let Prime lean on  _us_  for once, Ratchet thought testily.   
  
He saw her feet first. Not surprising, given their size. That Oratorio was draped over Borealis' starboard hock and stifle wasn't unusual either, as the first two spark-merge offspring regarded each other as siblings. As he came further around the curve of stone that separated the main repair bay from the recharge bay, Ratchet found that Hot Spot and his team were piled on top of their eldest sibling as well. Hot Spot sprawled across her chest, with Streetwise cheekily atop him, king of the mountain, with the other three curled up in oddly boneless-seeming heaps on and around their larger cohorts. All the Earth-built Cybertronians, (save the microbots… no, wait, there was Chipchip, tucked beside the antenna of Streetwise’s helm, its four spindly legs tucked in – Maggie must be around somewhere) in one place, deeply in recharge.   
  
Or so he thought until Streetwise lit a single optic at him. That was a neat trick. Most mechs winked with their optical shutters - standard wiring dictating that if both (or all) optics were functional, they lit or doused in unison. The spark-merge progeny apparently did not always have standard wiring. Ratchet winked back in the usual way, laughing softly.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There were no interviews, no big press conferences, but Prime quietly informed various agencies of the arrival of a new team. A team whose primary function was disaster relief and rescue – to protect and assist humankind. They could defend themselves, but were to enter combat only in extreme emergencies.   
  
Hot Spot and his team knew they were another cable in the bridge between their species.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“What are you two gaping a—? Oh. Hmm.” Across the hangar, Oratorio and Streetwise were snogging. Jazz and Tracks kept looking at them, then looking at each other, then looking back at their progeny. After about three rounds of this, Ratchet wasn’t sure if he should smack both of them or laugh.   
  
“Should we…tell them not to…?” Tracks asked, turning to Ratchet, somewhat worried but unsure if that concern was justified.   
  
Clacking his fingers together decisively, Jazz strode over to the obliviously kissing pair. “Rio.  _Rio!_  Cut it out, man. Streets ain’t been through integration yet, remember?”  
  
“Oops,” Tracks and Rio said.   
  
“Hey, no prob,” Streetwise said, grinning, (rakishly; Tracks clapped a hand over his optics, shaking his head) giving Rio’s hand a squeeze. “It was nice. We can come back to it later, ‘kay?”  
  
Ratchet chuckled. “Gestalts often take longer to fall into integration,” he explained, “because they tend to stabilize each other.” He pointed a finger at Rio. “However, once they go, they  _all_  go.”  
  
“That’s what Aid said,” Streetwise agreed. “We’ll get through it okay, Ratchet, don’t worry.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Bluestreak poked his head into the war room. “First Aid? Recharge.”  
  
Prime, Blades, First Aid and Hot Spot looked at him, Hot Spot’s finger poised on something in the holo-table’s display.   
  
“But,” Hot Spot said. They were in the middle of a meeting about plans for emergency evacuations of Tranquility, Las Vegas and other outlying towns, in the event such became necessary. Weren’t meetings with Prime supposed to be sacrosanct?  
  
“ _Now_ , First Aid,” Bluestreak said, hands on hips. “You too, Hot Spot, Blades.”  
  
“Oh, I’m with you,” Blades said, doing a remarkable facsimile of a yawn.  
  
“We can resume our discussion – remotely if necessary – once you’re fully recharged,” Prime said, not quite making shooing motions with his hands, but conveying the idea by posture and a twinkle of his optics.  
  
“Come on,” Blades said, taking Hot Spot’s hand. “You can help me bully Prowl into resting, too. He’s been awake 61 hours straight.”  
  
“Much obliged,” Prime said, nodding. Which also sort of made it an order.  
  
They found Prowl with Red Alert in Red’s office, as usual.   
  
“Prowl,” said Blades, going up to his progenitor and leaning on him. “Recharge.”  
  
“Yes,” Prowl said absently. One of the mist-screens zoomed in on a mean-looking muscle car that was aggressively cruising the streets of Detroit. “Later.”  
  
“Now,” said Blades. “You’re tired. And when you’re this tired, you might miss something important. Yes, even you.”  
  
Prowl stared at him.  
  
Blades leaned harder. “I’ll have Hot Spot carry you to the recharge bay if you still need persuading.” Hot Spot looked rather alarmed at this idea and held up his hands when Prowl regarded him speculatively.  
  
“Um,” said Bluestreak.  
  
“Oh, just go,” Red Alert told Prowl. “I don’t like so many people cluttering up my office.”  
  
“Very well.”  
  
They trooped into the recharge bay, Bluestreak and First Aid chattering about a remarkable treatment for jellyfish stings, Blades and Prowl discussing strategies for coping with turbulence in narrow canyons, with Hot Spot bringing up the rear. They were met by Smokescreen, Groove, Tracks and Streetwise, who had already gotten word of the roundup from Red and decided to forestall any desperate measures.   
  
Blades clasped Prowl’s hand briefly as they moved through the curve of the chamber, Groove and Smokescreen and Streetwise pretending to squabble over who got to recharge next to Bluestreak. Bluestreak, glowing somewhat, chose a berth in the middle and let the others sort themselves out. Meaning to take the berth on the end nearest the door, Prowl found Hot Spot already there, meeting his optics steadily with a determined look on his face. Prowl smiled and settled himself on the next berth in, not discontented to find himself thus between Hot Spot and Blades, and not so far from the door that he couldn’t defend it.   
  
 _He smiled at me, Blades!_  Hot Spot tight-beamed, half pleased half disconcerted.  
  
 _He does that sometimes,_  Blades replied, a little smug.  _Try not to let it worry you._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2019 – October  
  
It wasn’t worth the effort to stand. Mikaela put down the welding torch and stretched where she sat, pressing her fists into the ache in the small of her back. Maybe she’d been sitting too long after all. Ratchet finished a minor adjustment to Windcharger’s CR tank and looked up at her.  
  
“You’re in latent phase,” he said. “Your Braxton Hicks contractions have intensified and your cervix—”  
  
Mikaela hefted the servomechanism from her waldos that she’d been working on. “How badly do you want to finish that sentence?”  
  
“Not very.”  
  
First Aid ran into the med-lab, immediately homing in on Mikaela. He curled his fingers over the edge of her gantry, resting his chin on them and gazing at Mikaela with open admiration. “Have you changed your mind? Do you think you might have the baby here?”   
  
“No.” She’d meant to shout, but it was irritatingly difficult to get mad at First Aid when he looked at her like that. She sighed. Her entire pregnancy had been fraught with intense Autobot attention. They stared at goings on she couldn’t even feel, they hunkered down to touch her belly with exaggerated care – at least they unfailingly asked permission for that. Bumblebee was always hovering, more than ready to kick the tailpipe of anyone who got too fresh. And not one of them had blabbed regarding the baby’s sex, not even Bluestreak. Bless them. “Dr. Shima promised they’d put me in a second storey room with a window, and you and Ratchet can take turns looking in if you promise not to mangle the landscaping. And keep a feed open for Bee, or he’ll blow a gasket or something. Fair enough?”  
  
First Aid beamed at her. “Fair enough!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Two days later.  
  
“Sam!” Ratchet bellowed.  
  
Sam pelted out of Prime’s office, Bumblebee hot on his heels, crossing the hangar in record time to find his wife leaning heavily on Ratchet’s leg, a puddle of amniotic fluid spreading beneath her feet. Ratchet had noted the impending rupture and alerted Mikaela, but they hadn’t made it quite to the main hangar door.   
  
“Okay, okay, ew, wow, okay I got you.” Sam took Mikaela’s hands and drew her to his side. Her face was pinched and drawn in concentration. “Where’s…there you are, Aid. Hurry!”  
  
First Aid transformed, opening his rear compartment, complete with gurney and functional life-support equipment, so the young couple could board. Ratchet would have preferred to convey them to the hospital himself, but the rear of his vehicle mode was full of parts of his robot mode. Bumblebee transformed and cut in front of Ratchet so he could ride First Aid’s bumper – even more upset than Ratchet that he couldn’t transport his humans himself.  
  
“Hey, Prowl!” Sam called. “Police escort!”  
  
“That would be an abuse of—” Prowl began.   
  
Mikaela glared at him.  
  
“Right,” he said, wincing under a tight-beamed barrage from Bee, and transformed. “Lights and sirens.”   
  
“Heheh. Females are definitely the more aggressive of the species,” Red snickered, behind him.   
  
Prowl blared his siren at him, and the little convoy rolled out.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Danaela Jayne Banes-Witwicky was born with no complications – even from enthusiastic robotic “helpers” – on October 27th, 2019.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Good morning, Mikaela,” Prime whispered as his head cleared the top of the mesa. She hadn’t heard him climbing up, but, accustomed to such stealth even from the biggest of the bots, Mikaela didn’t even flinch. Bumblebee was certainly around somewhere and would have flung himself into action if there had been anything amiss. Smiling, she continued to rock Dani in her sling.   
  
“Morning, Prime. You don’t have to whisper, she’ll sleep through anything. How was Moscow?”  
  
“Cold, but otherwise satisfactory.” Prime levered himself over the edge, neatly attaining a half-reclined position near mother and child. Mikaela laughed. The robots could waltz around in space without so much as a tinfoil blanket, and came from a planet that by their own accounts had had a chilly, thin atmosphere; yet the bitching was endless the second the ambient temperature dropped below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. “How are you?” he asked, watching the baby dream. “I’m sorry I missed Danaela’s arrival.”  
  
“I’m fine, thanks,” Mikaela said. “And hey, I missed the ‘arrival’ of all your kids, too, so…” She hoped she hadn’t sounded too snarky – the omission of humans from the decantations so far had been deliberate. She couldn’t fault them for their caution.   
  
“Ah. My apologies,” he began, but she waved it away, shaking her head.  
  
“No, no, sorry. I don’t blame you.” She looked sideways at him. “I envy you a little. Maybe. Your kids come out fully programmed and ready to go.”  
  
“My species does have it easier in that regard.”   
  
“Huh. I don’t know about easier. Bee showed us the vid of you bringing the Graveyard Legion to life. 600 kids at once I am so not even going to contemplate. Not doing it your way. Ever.”   
  
“You risk your life giving birth, too.”  
  
“Don’t remind me.”  
  
“And we do not carry our young within our bodies.” Symbionts didn’t count.  
  
“But you build them with matter from your own bodies. Or you were for a while there.” Ratchet had shown her a holo of the mass donation process. Using what looked to her like the mother of all giant-ass needles, Ratchet had poked a solid column in the back of Prime’s thigh, which sent a signal to the nanocells, reverting them to their base configuration. Kind of like stem cells. Then he had wound big ropy strands of fluid metal onto the needle, dumping the resultant 500-pound coil into a growth tank. It made Mikaela think of how the Mayans used to skin people alive.   
  
“And you have merge-scars. Bee showed us his. Told us yours were much more extensive.”   
  
The chameleon mesh across Prime’s thorax rippled aside, baring the blue-grey armor plates beneath. If the Grand Canyon had sprung in many branches from a central source, and was carved in metal rather than stone, it might have looked like Prime’s chest.   
  
“Oh my  _god_!” Mikaela hissed, despite her earlier assertion trying to keep her voice down. “ _Optimus!_  HOLY SHIT! And those are MELTED into you? Okay, yeah, I'm never complaining about stretch marks.”   
  
Prime laughed gently, letting the chameleon mesh reform. He leaned down and down, touching his forehelm crest to her forehead. Mikaela wrapped her arms around as far as she could reach and kissed him.   
  
“Hey!” Sam had climbed up in time to see this. “Are you mackin' on my wife? Mack truck, get it?”   
  
Optimus and Mikaela groaned.


	46. The Autobot Symphony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the new gestalt team hits integration, the humans take an unexpected camping trip, Perceptor is very happy, and Annabelle Lennox tries to figure out what to get a giant alien robot for Christmas. ;D

2019 – December  
  
First Aid stared at his hands. Five slender fingers, so exquisitely jointed, sheathed in a smooth layer of nanometallic silicon. Examining the fingertips, he realized the gripping surfaces resembled human fingerprints. Everything about him had been designed to be reassuring. "Even my voice," he said, listening to the subtle, gentle harmonics of his youthful tenor echo off the med-bay ceiling. So much care and love had gone into every part of him. He began to shake.  
  
A strong, four-fingered hand took both of his. "First Aid?" Ratchet peered into his optics, and Aid felt a mid-level scan wash through him.   
  
 _Everyone! Get the humans outside._  Ratchet had been waiting for this. The timing was unfortunate for there was a light dusting of snow outside, and the Cybertronian Embassy was playing host to quite a number of visitors preparing for the winter holidays.   
  
Prowl came in, carrying Streetwise, who had been trying to catch and eat the mist screens and was now shivering and whimpering, petting the delicate sensory nets in Prowl's door-wings.   
  
"Bring him over here," Ratchet said. He had reconfigured one of the repair tables and First Aid was already there, curled up tightly. "We're going to have to put them all together until they calm down. Smokescreen and Hound are out looking for Groove. Where's Blades?"   
  
Prowl set Streetwise next to First Aid. The two reached out and drew each other close, though their optics were unfocused. It was a sort of automatic reflex action.   
  
"Blades is at Nellis, picking up Lennox," Prowl said. His door-wings shuddered, standing sharply upward then relaxing. "He hasn't crashed. Ironhide is on his way to get them both."   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Oh frag," Inferno said as Hot Spot plunged into the burning strip-mall office, moaning something about poetry and braided fire.   
  
"Uh." The fire chief looked up at him. "I thought you guys were fireproof?"  
  
"Aw, we are, he's just...going through an awkward stage. Let's get this puppy put out." Inferno redoubled his efforts, churning out another tankful of retardant foam. Once the immediate danger to human life was taken care of, he'd go in and retrieve his progeny. He could hear Hot Spot in there babbling, but he wasn't crashing around or anything.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Everyone knew when Hound and Smokescreen arrived with Groove. Groove, wide open to the world nets and every other form of communication known to mech and man, was digging his fingers into his helm and screaming. Smokescreen crooned soothingly to him.  
  
They settled him next to First Aid and Streetwise and the screaming immediately ceased.   
  
"They're stabilizing each other," Ratchet said, nodding in satisfaction. "I hoped they would go this way." Sometimes gestalt integrations unfolded far worse than for individuals - the team's panic or insecurities reinforcing and reflecting from each to the others. Ratchet privately felt that First Aid was exerting a good deal of influence over his brothers and the process. Aid understood better than most mechs what was happening.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Please pardon the interruption," Prime said, as he ushered the French and British ambassadors toward the main hangar entrance.  
  
"Of course," the French ambassador said. "But what kind of medical emergency is it? There has been no sign of Decepticon activity for some weeks."  
  
"It is difficult to explain," Prime said. Mirage appeared, bowing, and handed the two men their coats and scarves, though the British ambassador didn't consider it very cold out. The sun was shining.   
  
"What's going on?" Sam asked as he - carrying Dani - and Mikaela climbed inside Bumblebee's vehicle mode. Maggie and Glen were similarly being escorted out of the embassy by Tracks. They'd been decorating the forty-foot Christmas tree that stood on the border between the hangar and the human-scaled area. (Beachcomber and Groove wouldn't let them cut down a live tree, even one grown for the purpose, so part of that forty feet was taken up by a painstakingly wrapped and crated root ball.) Mikaela still had tinsel in her hair.   
  
"The Protectobots are going through integration," Bee said, driving outside without the usual revving of his engine.   
  
"And that is?" Mikaela asked.   
  
"A brief but generally unpleasant period in a newly-forged mech's life when their emotional systems become fully integrated with the rest of the components of their CPU." Bee stopped only a few meters beyond the hangar door, turning south to where the mesa would shelter them from the occasionally gusty wind. Tracks and his passengers had followed them, as had Mirage with the ambassadors, and Trailbreaker. The latter was carrying a load of mysterious-seeming equipment.   
  
“I thought you guys came out of the tank or off the kindling platform all programmed and ready to go," Mikaela said, watching from Bee's warm interior as Trailbreaker set up four large, military-grade tents with heaters and a small but efficient generator. More humans, mostly Coalition personnel, were jogging outside to join them. "Why go through this extra process?”  
  
Bee paused, conferring briefly with Ratchet. "Our most ancient history is as nebulous as yours, but we think at first it was as you say. All our parameters determined from the moment of ensparking. Over time, however, our emotional algorithms became so complex, at some point we found it better to allow mechs to live and experience the world directly for a time first, and then integrate the emotional systems. It made our personalities more dynamic and adaptable."   
  
Trailbreaker paused, broad, blunt head turning unerringly toward the med-lab, but he quickly resumed his task. The Camaro, the Corvette and the Veyron opened their doors. Their passengers and the rest of the human contingent found that the insides of the tents had been sparsely but adequately furnished with camp chairs and cots as well as small electric lanterns. The heaters were already going full bore. Sam with Dani, Mikaela, Maggie and Glen took to one tent and let the others sort themselves. The British and French ambassadors were bickering with each other but seemed untroubled by the prospect of spending an unspecified amount of time in an enclosed space with lowlier civilians and assorted military types. The war had wreaked some interesting changes.   
  
Bumblebee crawled in behind his humans and sat down, taking up one half the available space, but he could provide another source of heat should the generator for some bizarre reason fail.   
  
Glen and Maggie set up their laptops, grinning at Sam and Mikaela.   
  
"Aw, man," Sam moaned, having forgotten his inside. Well, he had his palmtop, and the wire jack in his head. "Anybody bring marshmallows?"   
  
It was Glen's turn to groan at that.  
  
Mikaela had her small laptop out but didn't open it right away. "Bee? If new mechs have to go through this, what about the Graveyard Legion? I think we'd have noticed six hundred tanks all freaking out at once."  
  
"None of them were new sparks," Bee said. He rubbed at the part of his helm that on a human would correspond to the bridge of the nose. "Like Jazz. Although his body wasn't new, either. I don't really understand it myself."  
  
"So wait," Maggie said, holding up a hand. "The Graveyard Legion. They weren't called that just because Prime used the tank graveyard outside White Sands for the raw materials. They're actually like..."  
  
"Zombie robots!" Glen finished for her, eyes very wide.   
  
"Augh!" cried Sam.   
  
"No," said Maggie, looking at Glen. "More like...Paths of the Dead!"  
  
"Ooooh!"  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Hey, Ironhide," Lennox said, raising a hand in casual salute. "What's going on? Blades won't let me board and now you show up. Change in plans?"  
  
"Yes." Ironhide opened his cab door so Lennox could toss his duffel inside. "I'm taking the young one here to the embassy, and I'll be your ride home, Colonel. Get in." He closed the door firmly once the human was safely inside. "Blades, can you transform?"  
  
The process was halting and slow, but at last Blades managed to crawl into Ironhide's bed, curling tightly to fit. Lennox watched this with concern. He'd heard sounds like that before, when he'd seen Bumblebee for the first time.   
  
Aside from violent waves of trembling, Blades was fairly subdued, so Ironhide dropped Lennox off first, giving Sarah and Anna only brief greetings before peeling out of their driveway and breaking a number of speeding laws getting back to the embassy. He knew Will would explain and the ladies would forgive him his abrupt departure.   
  
Blades clambered out of Ironhide's pickup bed, mostly falling into Prowl's arms. "Falling," he said, in a voice unlike his usual confident burr. "Everyone else is falling, can't they feel it? I can't catch them, can't catch..."  
  
"I know," Prowl said quietly. "It's just the planet spinning, Blades, they're all right." Wheeljack appeared to help Prowl guide Blades into the med bay. Once he was safely ensconced with his brothers, Prowl returned to the hangar, meaning to resume his station in the security office. He paused on the threshold, listening to Blades' shrill babble fade.   
  
There was a light touch on Prowl's shoulder, but when he turned, Ironhide was already stumping across the hangar.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Wheeljack dodged as Red Alert came rocketing out of the stem corridor and across the hangar. Inferno was coming in with Hot Spot leaning heavily on his shoulders.   
  
"Ooh, lemme give you a hand with him," Jack said, hustling over. Red was trying to take Spot's other side, with somewhat limited success.   
  
"Oh, Red," Hot Spot whispered, "you have a broken link..."  
  
"And don't I know it," Red answered crisply. "Come on, young one."   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"I know it's chancy to transport them, but I think we should send them up to the Oregon base. There's going to be too much activity around here for the next several weeks."  
  
Prime nodded in agreement.   
  
 _Oh yes, please!_  Perceptor replied to Ratchet's query.  _I mean, we are most certainly able and willing to accommodate them for whatever span of time is required._  
  
Ratchet chuckled.  _I thought you wouldn't mind._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A very large head poked through the flap of their tent. To their credit, none of the humans so much as jumped. "Hey, guys," Borealis said, optics twinkling at Bee. "How's it hanging?"  
  
"Uh, fine, I guess," Sam said. He'd had to spend some time with the other ambassadors earlier, but was glad of the late hour's reprieve from his more official duties.   
  
"We're shipping the P-bots up to Oregon tonight, so your camping adventure's over in an hour or two. Unless you all wanna stay out here."  
  
"Why Oregon?" Mikaela asked. There were still any number of secret bases that had been set up to house and conceal the Autobots during the brief time when their presence on Earth had been kept a state secret. Several of which were a lot closer than Oregon. That one outbuilding at Nellis sprang immediately to mind.   
  
"They have medical facilities almost as good as Ratchet's up there," Borealis said. "And it'll make Perceptor very happy."   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Emotional robots, Sam thought. Without hormones, yet were they as much slaves to their feelings as humans were? Prowl for one appeared almost Vulcan in his quiet reserve, but from late night conversations with Bee, Sam knew the opposite was true.   
  
Prime, too - ever the calm, considerate, wise leader. What did that composure cost him? Sam remembered Optimus at the first performance of the Autobot Symphony in 2011. Great composers from around the world had gotten together to create music in honor of the Autobots. Sam leaned back against Bee's chest, with his arms behind his head, looking up as though he could see the clouds through the roof of the tent. Mikaela joined him, snugging Dani in between them.   
  
"What are you thinking about?" she asked softly. Maggie and Glen were absorbed in whatever they were doing on their computers.  
  
Sam told her.   
  
“We got those special seats front and center, remember? At the Branson Amphitheater in New Mexico out by the Spaceport?” His hands made swooping gestures, evoking silver, manta-like domes. Mikaela nodded.   
  
Glen looked up from his screen. "Huh? I think I missed that one."  
  
“Oh man," Sam said, happily elaborating. "It was really good music, especially live. Real heroic and everything, but also sad. They really got it, what the guys have been through and what their situation is on Earth. Lots of mixing of electronic music and acoustic instruments, really cool stuff.  
  
“I think all the Bots were there, but they were outside in vehicle mode, most of them. Well, not Jazz, he was perched up on a support beam from the beginning. Everybody loved that. Jazz is so awesome. Anyway, they could hear the whole thing perfectly of course. So then there comes this one major piece, dedicated to...well, about, really, Optimus. And as that opens up, here comes Optimus himself over the berm, in robot form, standing there behind the seats where the conductor – same guy as composed it, actually – couldn’t see him, didn’t know he was right there, see? The musicians could though, and you could tell. They were playing  _to_  Optimus then, everyone watching him. It was the most incredible vibe.   
  
“About, I dunno, three minutes in, Optimus moves closer, right to the edge of the berm, looking at all these people. And he kneels down, you know, like he does to talk to humans on the ground. So he’s down on one knee, and he’s got his arms wrapped around his middle, and he goes totally still, just listening like you’ve never seen anyone listening to anything before in your entire life. By the end he was actually shaking, which is pretty scary in a guy his size. He looked like he was trying to speak, but couldn’t do it. All the other Bots came in then, in robot mode, and surrounded him, just touching him like a comfort thing or something.” He made a sweeping gesture with both hands. “Not a dry eye in the house, I tell you. The composer/conductor guy, he just about had a heart attack when he turned around.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Six pairs of optics flickered on. (Streetwise had an auxiliary pair on the sides of his helm.)   
  
"Easy," Optimus murmured to them, moving closer once he had determined they would not find his presence alarming. "You're doing beautifully." Tangled as they were, they sat up, fixed upon him, upon every word. The complexities of his voice were soothing and fascinating. "We're going to move you up north tonight, is that all right? It will be quieter there, easier for you."  
  
"Yes," First Aid said.   
  
"Outside," said Groove.  
  
"In the dark," said Hot Spot.  
  
"In the cold," said Streetwise, pitch and intensity rising.  
  
"Yes!" cried Blades, completing the round.   
  
Ratchet came in behind Prime.  _You've got them stirred up._  They were focused outward, which was a good thing. Ratchet didn't want them coming suddenly online in transit either. The road in front of the embassy doubled as a runway - if Skyfire could land and take off from there, certainly a C-17 had no trouble. "The plane's ready to go when you are," Ratchet said.   
  
The short flight north didn't seem to bother the young gestalt, though Blades had a bad moment or three when he again felt the distress of being unable to catch his falling brothers.   
  
There was a new Air Force Base outside Banks, Oregon, closer to the Autobot base than the Portland airport. They took the 26 west toward the coast.   
  
Moonlight speckled the road through the tall conifers. Ratchet - and Perceptor, who had driven out to meet them - were careful to closely observe the young mechs during the trip.   
  
 _Oh the moonlight,_  Groove thought.  _Oh the sweet black road humming under our tires._  
  
 _Hang on,_  First Aid told all of them.  _Hang on. Don't think, don't scan, just follow, follow, follow Ratchet green that's not green and so much new metal in him now, so much lost before, hang on, hang on we'll be there soon._  
  
Streetwise tried not to scan, but the stars peeked down at him through the fringey needles of the trees, piercing his spark with their songs,  _Oh the stars,_ he said, trembling.  
  
 _Hang on,_  Hot Spot said. First Aid had tried to keep the lighthouse beam of his medical scan under control but Hot Spot had caught part of it.  _Perceptor has two main memory cores?_    
  
 _Skyfire said Perceptor saved the University Library before Megatron destroyed it,_  said Blades.  _Hang on, don't fall, hang on, we're almost there._  
  
Keening softly, the gestalt team allowed themselves to be herded down the ramp and into the volcano base, into warm dimness and quiet.  
  
The resident humans had been warned of the impending arrival and most had chosen to evacuate. Yasmina and Marcus had instead opted to remain in the protected human quarters farther in, and take their chances on emerging now and then with emotionally volatile giant robots about.   
  
"Come," Perceptor said, holding out his hands. Streetwise and First Aid took them, and their brothers formed a chain between them, forming a circle with Perceptor. He led them slowly, speaking quietly the while, telling them of the little day-to-day affairs of the outpost, geologic, botanical, zoological and anthropological, shooing the little household drones out of the way as they meandered into the repair bay. Hoist had a large table already configured for them.   
  
 _Thank you, Ratchet,_  Perceptor said, pulling Ratchet into a close embrace. Nuzzling Ratchet's helm, stroking cheek flange to cheek flange, nibbling on Ratchet's jaw spars.   
  
The Protectobots watched this avidly, despite Hoist's entreaty to them to go into recharge - it was late, they'd had a long journey. Well, long-ish. As long as they'd experienced so far.   
  
Ratchet grabbed one of the big struts that supported Perceptor's scope and dragged him off to one of the auxiliary labs that wasn't currently in use. He was surprised that Perceptor hadn't already constructed a whole row of growth tanks. And filled them all, too. They would certainly be safe here, after Perceptor had so thoroughly trounced the Command Trine last year. Ratchet wasn't about to bring that up, though. Perceptor had clearly been enchanted by the notion of exploring a living, organic world without the burden of the war resting so heavily on his shoulders. Prime had promised as much. Prime meant it, too; Ratchet didn't question that at all. It was just that praising Perceptor's warrior prowess was hardly conducive to a "romantic" interface.   
  
Ratchet schooled his thoughts. Perceptor was seating cables - for a second Ratchet thought he might propose spark-merging right then and there. But Perceptor's heated hands and wandering mouth made it rapidly clear that his intent was less dangerous and more simply overclocked.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A few days later. Grapple made his usual round of the base before recharge. Checking the CR tank where Warpath was recovering. Making certain Hoist wasn't still working. He didn't check Perceptor since he'd long ago given that up. Tearing Perceptor away from his work was beyond Grapple's skill. One was usually better off sending Beachcomber in for that.   
  
Hoist had indeed gone in to rest, but the medical bay remained occupied.   
  
Taken as a whole, the scene of Perceptor tucked in amongst the pile of new bots put Grapple in mind of the "Vector Beta at K'Veer" memorial statue in the Crystal City back home. Narrowing one's focus to Perceptor cradling Groove, there emerged a passing resemblance to  _La Pieta_.   
  
"Recharging peacefully?" Grapple inquired.  
  
Perceptor activated his optics briefly, then shut them down again. "Indeed. I had them reciting all the iterations of the 17-dimensional quarternary equation. Blasted thing puts even me into stasis."  
  
"The what...?" Grapple shook his head. Perceptor was always talking about things no-one else had heard of, or were supposed to have been lost when the Universities were destroyed. "Good night, Perceptor."  
  
"Good night, Grapple."  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"But, Moooom, I don't  _want_  to make them another tosky old vase or wall plaque," Anna Lennox sighed.   
  
"You don't have to, then, Honey," Sarah patiently explained. Misshapen clay animals or cups or handprint disks had always been satisfactory gifts before; in fact Ironhide had a special shelf of Annabelle's offerings to him especially, and the Autobots had made a huge display niche in the embassy just for things human children sent them. It was near the entrance to the stem corridor, visible from the hangar door and proudly lit. Optimus could point to anything on the teeming shelves and tell you exactly who had given it and when. But this year Anna was thirteen and Everything was Different.   
  
"I want to get them something  _good_ ," Anna said. She put her legs up over the back of the couch as though that would shake the most groshing, shiniest idea down into her brain. What on Earth could a thirteen-year-old buy for a bunch of giant robots who didn't even breathe? In astronomy class her teacher had gone off on this hurlsome tangent about how if the robots had come specifically to steal our resources, they could have disassembled all the other planets and left Earth as a kind of wildlife preserve. The robots didn't  _need_  anything from humans. She chewed at a hangnail on her thumb. "Isn't great-grandpa Halloway's rock collection up in the attic? Maybe there's some rare mineral specimen Ratchet could use for...some...tiny piece of a part of...something." Another gusty sigh emerged from beneath the embroidered pillow Anna plumped over her face. "Slag."  
  
"Annabelle Jenine," Sarah said, looking up from the stack of paperwork she'd brought home from the office. It wasn't really paper these days, but smart plastic, with "ink" that scrolled down the page like an old computer screen. "Feet off the furniture, young lady."   
  
Anna scrunched herself up the couch so that her feet stuck out beyond the back, the great unwashed no longer touching any part of the precious upholstery.   
  
"They lost almost all their art in the war," Sarah said quietly. "Things we make with our own hands mean so much to them, they really do. 'Hide'll be disappointed if he doesn't get another handprint from you this year. You aren't done growing yet, you know."  
  
"Yeah, but..."  
  
"Or we could drive out to the embassy and you can ask Optimus himself what he wants for Christmas."  
  
"Uh. No thanks, Mom." Asking Optimus something like that would only get her a philosophical speech about peace and harmony and understanding. Mirage would start talking about incomprehensible gibberish. Ironhide, if pressed, wanted her to get good grades in school and beat up all the bullies. Bee would challenge her to a game of tag. Grownups could be amazingly nonhelpful sometimes.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
In the end, Anna made the traditional handprint for Ironhide, but she painted it in her own favorite colors, with little symbols representing things that were important in her life right now - including of course the Autobot sigil.   
  
Her parents wouldn't let her get implants until she was 18, so she had to use her tosky old desktop to chat. "Ironhide? Are you there?"  
  
 _Always,_  came his rough old voice from the speakers.   
  
"What should I get Optimus for Christmas? And don't say another tosky paper maché zoo animal either, Mom already suggested that."  
  
 _What do you_  want  _to give him?_  
  
"I don't knooooow, Ironhide. That's why I'm asking you." Hide was so weak at talking-type stuff sometimes. But sometimes he could come up with something smarter than you'd expect from a great big cannon-geek.   
  
 _What would you give him if you could give him anything?_  
  
"Urgh. I don't know. A new sun for Cybertron maybe. Or Cybertron itself, all nice and fixed up like it was before."  
  
 _Hn. Then make something to represent that. And write a note telling him about it. A nice long note. Optimus loves words._  
  
Anna's face lit up with a wide grin. Good old Ironhide. "Thanks, Hide!" Maybe paper maché wasn't so weak after all.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2020 - January  
  
“Prowl,” said Blades. “Recharge.”  
  
It was the third time this week, and Prowl wondered if this was going to continue forever. Or for as long as they were both on the same planet. Or for as long as they were within communications range.  
  
Blades looked at Prime as though he was considering telling the Autobot leader the same thing. But Prime rarely needed recharge these days. Usually only after a battle, in fact. Blades had only ever known Prime as he was now, so this didn’t seem weird.  
  
 **They're through,**  Prime tight-beamed to Ratchet.  
  
 _Feels like it, yes,_  Ratchet replied.  _Happy New Year._


	47. Reforging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Borealis is shot down and has to be rebuilt.

  
_Faster than the speeding light she's flying  
Trying to remember where it all began  
She's got herself a little piece of heaven  
Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one  
_\-- Madonna,  _Ray of Light_  


  
  
2020 - May  
  
How dare they!  **How dare they**  drive him from his rightful prey? Galvatron whirled even as he flung himself back into the starry black, Soundwave at his side. At the edge of the awareness buried beneath his rage, he caught sight of a fleck of darkness against the clouds below. He laughed, powering up his cannon – in that instant comprehending the scale of this gift that he would send his brother. Galvatron knew what Prime perhaps had not yet realized, so busy playing this revolting game of progenitors and progeny. There was a price on such sparks’ existence. Prime would pay it now – Prime and whomever had been foolish enough to help him create that young one below. He fired.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Two explosive rounds took her through the engines. She spun, engulfed in black smoke, helpless, secondary explosions racing beneath her armor; in too much pain to scream aloud. Yet because of a peculiarity of the way she transformed, Galvatron had missed her spark chamber.   
  
 _ **Borealis!**_  several voices shouted across the cloud mind.   
  
There was no answer for several seconds, several tens of thousands of feet. Her transmission, when it came, was staticky and weak.  _Both engines are gone – can’t brake!_  
  
 _Skyfire’s too far away. I’ll get her!_  Powerglide said, pushing his jets to the max. He was fast. He was awesome. He could do this.   
  
 _Wait, Powerglide._  Ratchet looked skyward, though of course he couldn’t see her at such a distance.  _Borealis? Listen to me. Lock on to this frequency tight as you can.  
  
Uhhh…I – I have you. Go ahead.  
  
Good. You have to transform into your cometary protoform, do you understand? It’s there in your core programming._ She might have to rescan her vehicle mode if she was panicky enough to dump the data along with the chameleon mesh’s physical form, but at least she stood a better chance of being alive to do so.  _If you can refrain from landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that would be helpful._  Ratchet pressed his lip components into a tight line. Seven metric tons, travelling at over 4000 mph. If she couldn’t transform, the impact would kill her.  
  
 _Tee-riffic. I’ll try._  She closed the channel. Transforming at this speed was bad – but she wasn’t going to get any slower. She found the procedure…well, she was going to get parts stripped off anyway, might as well hope the autonomic systems got her curled up tight enough on the way. Tattered armor and molten alloy shrieked and buckled, becoming an unintentional ablative heat shield as her body jerked and twisted, in the throes of an ancient process she was too frightened to control.  
  
 _Powerglide,_  Perceptor tight-beamed softly.  _She’s too big. You cannot stop her descent. You would be torn apart. Wait._  There was a pause.  _She has attained cometary mode. Let us know where she lands, please?_  
  
 _Sure thing, boss!_  The little red aerobatic Giles 202 sighted the descending ball of fire and followed. Mountains. That wasn’t going to be a soft landing.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _I’m… in North America, I think.  
  
You’re in Canada. Hold still, we’re asking the Mounties to cordon off the area until one of us can get to you._ Ratchet kept the line open in reassurance, even as he attended to the wounded on the battlefield. She would know that he was there, that she wasn’t forgotten and abandoned to the snow and stone.   
  
 _Okay._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Two hours later.  
  
Corporal Fraser Benison broke ranks, deaf to the swearing of the Inspector off to his right somewhere in the swirling snow. He couldn’t listen to the sounds the robot was making and not try to help somehow. He approached the smoking crater gingerly, surprised that his horse was offering no objection. He peered through the mist and falling snow, moving closer until he could see the robot more clearly. “Are you all r-? Oh.” He’d seen photographs and video of the robots of course, and they were pretty weird. But he was rather certain this one was in bad shape. The sounds it was making should have told him that, but he hadn’t wanted to assume anything. They were aliens, after all, what if it had just been bored and was singing to itself? How would he have known? Except he did know. He could tell. This robot was weeping in pain. “Is there…anything I can do?” Mister? Ma’am?   
  
The low wailing ceased, and now Fraser could see a blue light pointed at him. No, an eye. Ah, yes there would be two, but the right one was smashed. Inwardly he cringed.   
  
“I’m afraid not, but thanks anyway,” the robot said. And Fraser thought – possibly – this one was a ‘she’. Of some kind. The voice was inhumanly deep like one would expect from something this size, so it was hard to be certain.   
  
“What’s your name? I’m Fraser, by the way.”   
  
“Borealis. Nnnice to meet you.”   
  
“Would it offend you if I used a feminine pronoun in referring to you?” A little blunt, but better to make sure. It seemed only polite.  
  
The robot’s voice hitched a little in what he thought might be an agonized sort of laughter. “Nope. ‘She’ is close enough.”  
  
“Is there another pronoun in any human language that would be closer?” Fraser didn’t want to impose any limitations in his own thinking on the nice alien robot. Especially one with several gaping, smoking holes through her body that were dripping a hot-looking blue fluid of some kind onto the rocks. The fluid hissed as it made contact, and the heat of the robot’s arrival had melted the snow for a considerable distance around the impact site. He could still feel heat coming off it in a solid front.   
  
“Uh. Hm. Ow.” The robot was trying to reposition herself, but seemed to be having difficulty. “No, not really. I’m technically of ‘ _de_ ’ forging, but I can’t explain that very well in human terms.”  
  
“Ah. Thank you. Is my conversing with you hindering you in any way?”  
  
“Nnnnnnnnn. No. Keep on.”  
  
Fraser wished he could do more, but his experience with human field medicine was probably worse than useless here. “I’ve read that your people turn into vehicles of various kinds?” At least she seemed to be taking comfort, as humans did when trapped or badly injured, in the sound of a friendly voice nearby.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Was her voice getting weaker? Would it be dangerous for her to lose consciousness? “Remarkable. What sort of vehicle do you become?”  
  
“Jet,” she said, definitely sounding a little fuzzy, or staticky was a better term. “Modified SR-90 Aurora. Re…con.”   
  
“Borealis? Stay with me here, all right? How fast can you fly?”   
  
“Mach… 10. Ish.”   
  
“Wow.”   
  
“Engines destroyed. Had to land in…protoform.”   
  
“What’s protoform?”   
  
“Endostructure. Base mode, kinda. Re…re-format. Ratchet, others, will rebuild me. Bigger.”  
  
She was already quite large. He wondered why they would make her bigger and asked her about it.   
  
“New vehicle mode. Mmmm. Cybertronian jet…interstellar.”  
  
Fraser considered this. “You’re going to be a spaceship.” He stopped himself from adding,  _when you grow up._  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Wow.”   
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do? I can see there’s a…a fluid line right there. Kind of a big one, and it’s leaking.”  
  
Borealis tried to move again, and grinding, grating noises accompanied her moans this time. Fraser put out a hand, wishing she’d keep still. “No, don’t!” she cried. “Energon …caustic, hot.”  
  
“Oh. Radioactive, aren’t you.” He thought he remembered reading about that, now that she brought it up. Close proximity to the robots imparted small doses of radiation – nothing lethal, although prolonged exposure wasn’t recommended. The robots themselves had worked out ways to dampen their emissions, and also treat any humans who’d gotten a larger dose than was good for them.   
  
“Yeah. Sorry. You …don’t have to stay.”  
  
“No! I won’t leave you. We’ll keep talking until your people get here, how’s that?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
He kept talking, kept her talking, for the handful of hours it took for a rescue team to reach them. He paced his horse to keep both of them warm as the heat from Borealis dissipated. He wondered if that, too, was a bad sign. (He learned later it wasn’t. She flew very hot, and had landed hard. The heat her spark generated was well-shielded and conserved in the cold.)  
  
“Starting… to shut down,” she said to his query near the end. She roused herself to coherence to make sure he understood. “Fraser, listen. Stasis …lock. Can be …revived. Mem…ory core …non…volatile. Don’t …wor…ry. ”  
  
“Understood. It’s been an honor to meet you, Borealis.”  
  
“Like…wise… Fra…serrr.” Her undamaged eye flickered and went out.   
  
Fraser swallowed hard. He stayed with her inert body, determined, despite his superior officer fussing at him. Fraser was Fraser, unmovable once he’d made up his mind to do something. Everyone was used to it, even if it was irritating.   
  
After some hours, he heard the faint rumble of truck engines, echoing through the mountains. The wind had died completely, snow falling in heavy silence. The engine sounds changed, became immense, slow footfalls that made the ground under his horse’s hooves shake, more as they approached.   
  
“There she is!” someone shouted, from far overhead. A helicopter appeared as if from out of nowhere (a common phenomenon in these sharp-ridged mountains that hid much of the sky from view) and dove for the mountainside and Fraser gasped, expecting a collision – another one. But before it could strike the side of the mountain, the helicopter stopped…and transformed. Landing neatly on the other side of Borealis from Fraser. “Hi,” the new robot said. “I’m Blades. She slip into stasis?”  
  
“Hello, Blades, my name’s Fraser. Yes. She said she would do so, that it is a reversible condition.”  
  
Blades, still a large robot but much smaller than Borealis, knelt next to her, putting a hand on what Fraser thought was her shoulder, though her form was so badly crumpled it was hard to tell. “Yeah. I’m not the medic – First Aid is on his way with the rest of our team. We’re gonna have to combine to lift her. Anyway, yeah, stasis lock is a reaction to shock and overwhelming stress. She’ll be all right once we get her back to the base and Aid and Ratchet can get to work. Hey.” Blades looked at him, the robot’s face more human-like than any of the others Fraser had seen images of. Perhaps, if they could change their appearance at will, it had been done on purpose, to put humans more at ease. “Thanks for sticking by her.”  
  
“I couldn’t have done otherwise for a fellow sapient.”  
  
Blades chuckled. “You sound like Prime. Corporal Fraser, meet Hot Spot, our team leader.” Blades nodded upward and Fraser turned, starting to explain that Fraser was his given name not his surname – and trailing off because Hot Spot was another very large robot.   
  
This one was shiny and mostly red, like a fire truck. And like Blades, knelt by Borealis and touched her to see how she was. Or maybe the contact meant something else. Fraser didn’t want to assume. “Thank you, Corporal Benison,” Hot Spot said, as three more robots pelted up the valley, converging on their fallen comrade.   
  
The smallest, who introduced himself as Groove, put a hand on Fraser’s shoulder, meeting his gaze eye to eye, or eye to optic, as the case may be. Groove was the same height as Fraser on horseback, which was somehow weirder than all the others who were such giants. “We won’t forget you stayed by her, Corporal. Thanks.”  
  
Fraser wondered what the gratitude of alien robots meant. And then he forgot to wonder about anything else as the five robots combined.  
  
Hot Spot leaned down and sort of stretched his limbs out, almost like a cat. At each extension, one of his teammates rolled or wound themselves about or simply engulfed his hands or feet, their bodies changing, roiling in ways Fraser couldn’t describe until the five were one, truly immense robot.   
  
It crouched beside Borealis, gently lifted her, and then Fraser could really see the damage. It placed her over its shoulders – a fireman’s carry, naturally enough – and began the long walk back to where there were roads.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Greater than the pain, fear silenced her when she was conscious. She knew her body was shattered, even after Ratchet had turned her pain centers off. She trusted them, but she had never been rebuilt before.  
  
Then Prime was beside her, holding her unmangled hand, softly linking via arm cable. He had been broken and remade several times, though not as often as Wheeljack, he admitted, smiling. At the beginning of the war he had thought he could stop it entirely if he went unarmed to Megatron, offering his life for peace. Thirty-one Autobots had died rescuing what had been left of him. It had taken almost a vorn to rebuild his body. (After that, he had swiftly learned shrewder, harder tactics from Ironhide, Kup and Ultra Magnus. Indeed Ultra Magnus had once been Megatron’s Ground Commander, on par with Starscream – and thus the one mech Megatron hated almost as much and as personally as he hated Optimus.) He shared his memories not happily but willingly, to give her whatever comfort they afforded; or at least distraction.   
  
 **It’s very rare for a mech to live an entire lifetime in one body, in any case,**  Prime explained. This was sooner than usual, but Borealis had been an experiment from the beginning.  **You’ll be well, Little Bird. You’ll fly among the stars.**  
  
The engineers at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA were not simply eager to help. Actual drooling might have been involved. Stan Etterbeek, program manager, addressed the human team soberly.   
  
“This isn’t a piece of equipment,” he told them. “This is a living being. Never forget that. Broadly, we will be disassembling her almost completely and reassembling her into a form more than twice as large. Raw materials of necessity will come mostly from this planet, though Skyfire will be donating nanocultures and mass, as well as bringing unusual elements in from other planets. Ratchet and Perceptor have provided us with complete designs and specs in holo.”  
  
A young engineer raised her hand. “Are we gonna get dead tree copies?”  
  
Stan almost didn’t dignify that with a reply. “You ask Ratchet that yourself, phrased exactly like that. See what kind of answer you get.” Frankly, designs of this nature would be insane to try to render in two dimensions. You’d need whole forests of paper, even at 1:100 scale. “I might also add that Event Horizon is handling the computer security.  _Don’t._  Be. Rude.”   
  
"At any rate, I've looked them over and have no trouble admitting I don't understand nine-tenths of it. I think someday we  _will_ , but not yet. Ratchet and his apprentice, First Aid, will of course be directing the work and doing much of it themselves, aided by Perceptor, Wheeljack and Skyfire.  
  
“The Autobots have never asked us to help with repairs or refitting of this magnitude before. Make your homeworld proud, people.”   
  
As they filed out of the conference room, one of the older machinists solemnly intoned, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild her. We have the technology. We can make her better than she was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.” During the next several months, he repeated this performance more often than his colleagues found amusing, but Borealis, upon hearing him during brief periods of consciousness, giggled every time.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Ratchet?_  The Skunk Works hangar had become a familiar sight during the rigorous testing sessions between lengthy bouts of stasis. Now her CPU was finally telling her the reforging was complete. All systems operational, including the proprioceptive assimilation soft- and hardware. There would be little clumsiness in this new body, though testing its limits to the fullest was yet before her.   
  
 _I’m right here._  Standing on the massive work table beside her helm, he moved slightly to put himself within her field of view.   
  
 **Borealis. How do you feel?**  Prime stood at her left hand, gazing at her with affection and approval.   
  
 _Hi, Prime._  She sat up. “I feel…fanTAStic!” The human team laughed and applauded, some of them scooting back to a safe distance as she swung her legs over the edge of the table and stood. (The roof had been raised to 120 feet; not the greatest challenge of the project by a long shot. By contrast, the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida is 525 feet tall – still the tallest one story building in the world.)   
  
Her hands were of the same design as before, only proportional to her new size. She stretched up and tapped the supports in the ceiling because she could and it made some of the humans below whistle and laugh. Ratchet opened the hangar doors.   
  
She stepped out into the bright metallic southern California sunlight. The scale of the world had changed again. There were more places she would not fit, except virtually. That distinction was blurring – it mattered less and less whose optics she was looking through. She felt tall and light and strong. The lightness was because she weighed less per unit of volume than she had, though slightly. The difference was enough, even factoring the change in scale. She was now Skyfire's... not twin exactly; that term referred to twinned sparks. Bodies, forgings, were commonly repeated if the design worked well. She wondered that the changes weren't bothering her at all. Had Ratchet tuned her emotional algorithms down until she accommodated? She ran a diagnostic. No. Perhaps she was borrowing Wheeljack's equanimity.   
  
There was a sense in Cybertronian culture, she felt, that anyone who had rebuilt you was a kind of parent. Wheeljack, therefore, had rather an enormous "family". Who were her "parents" really, anyway? Michael and Maria Chase? Ratchet and Prime? Uncle Wheeljack? Uncle Percep- ack! No! She found she didn't want to pursue that line of thinking. Among humans it wasn't quite kosher to fall in love with your doctor or patient. To Cybertronians, that would be a very odd and impractical restriction.   
  
"Feel like trying out the transformation?" Ratchet asked.   
  
The first time took almost a full fifteen seconds. The smaller you were, the faster you could fling yourself into your other shape; but she would rapidly get faster with each go. The Skunk Works crew murmured happily at the dark blue starship gleaming on the tarmac.   
  
 _"Star Trekkin' across the universe/Boldly going forward 'cause we can't find reverse!"_  Jazz tossed at her. Borealis replied with a virtual raspberry and rude gesture, but also giggled. She loved that song.   
  
"When do we get space rides?!" the humans clamored.   
  
"As soon as Skyfire clears her for orbital maneuvers," Ratchet said firmly. "How many of you really want to be test subjects? I thought not."   
  
Better than a mirror, she could see herself through Ratchet's optics. Ratchet obligingly walked around her, scanning. He nodded with satisfaction. Using Skyfire's specs so closely, he'd been confident of the results on that account; and he was pleased by the humans' progress in understanding - in however limited a fashion - the metallurgy and complex mechanics, geometry and astrodynamics involved.   
  
Prime emerged and knelt to speak with the project manager. "As we have learned to appreciate the advantages of our alliance on the battlefield, we now find the same in the repair bay. You match us in dedication to the task at hand, and impress us with your courage and willingness to learn. Thank you."   
  
A big white jet swooped down, transformed and landed beside Borealis. “Ready?”  
  
Borealis tipped her head back, looking up through the sky. “Oh, yes.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2022 - June   
  
As usual, his inbox was virtually overflowing. The computer kept asking if it could compress the folder, so Fraser finally realized he once again needed to go through it all. He wasn’t a technophobe, but his job kept him busy in the real world; he didn’t have that much time to spend online like a lot of his peers. About halfway down, one email made him sit up straight in his chair, blinking to make sure he was seeing the sender’s name right. It had been sent a month ago. With an odd feeling coursing almost unnoticed over his skin, he opened it.   
  
 _Dear Sergeant Benison,_  it said.  _Neither I nor my friends have forgotten your kindness and help to me in the mountains after I crashed._  Crashed nothing, Fraser thought. He had read up on the incident afterwards. She had been shot down.  _I have been repaired, and reformatted in the way we discussed back then. If you would like, I would like to take you on a very special tour. You can bring about twenty friends, too. Thanks again, Borealis._  
  
Twenty friends. Did he know that many people outside of work?   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Victor Raymondson stared as the dark blue starship landed vertically on the tarmac at the Yellowknife Airport. “You were for real. You weren’t kidding.”  
  
“No, Vic. Meet Borealis.” Vic was an old friend of Fraser’s from an exchange stint he’d done in the States. Convincing him to take a vacation, even for such a reason, and come so far north had been difficult at first; but Fraser had found images of Borealis and emailed them, reminding Vic that his chances of going to “outer space” were pretty slim otherwise. Chance of a lifetime. Vic’s sister had finally threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t go.   
  
An entry ramp extended. “Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” Borealis said.   
  
Sequentially winking light strips led them to the cockpit, though neither man could distinguish which seat was meant to be pilot or copilot. Well, Borealis was doing the driving. They secured their five-point harnesses without being told.   
  
“Ready?” she asked, though she knew they were. Their hearts beat fast but they were grinning like boys.   
  
“Oh, yes,” said Fraser.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 - January  
  
Stranded on the side of an icy road, his rented truck broken down so completely even his unusually pronounced repair skills were of no use, Fraser shivered and hugged himself and leaned out from the side of the road as he heard an engine approaching. It was a motorcycle, he could tell, but that was better than nothing – even his cell phone got no reception out here.   
  
He squinted as the motorcycle came into view around the bend. The air was clear and cold; he couldn’t blame what he saw on mist or blizzard. It was easy to forget, when you didn’t see them every day, so the riderless bike gave him a start at first.   
  
“Where can I take you, Master Sergeant Benison?” the bike – Groove, Fraser remembered now – asked him. Not one to look a gift ride in the mouth, Fraser got on, setting his feet on the pegs with a mixture of wonder and trust. The bike kept itself, himself, upright.  
  
“Just into town, thank you, Groove,” he said, a little unsteadily. The engine revved, warmth rising up through him from metal that should have been cold in this weather, but wasn’t. “No problem,” Groove said, and accelerated carefully so as not to dislodge his distracted rider. After a while, a few miles, he spoke again. “Told you, we wouldn’t forget.”  
  
Fraser smiled, though his face was more or less numb. “I guess I knew you wouldn’t. Thank you kindly.”


	48. Cruelty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Bots follow the Cons to Mars, Prowl nearly gets himself slagged, Prime has a few choice words, and Ironhide has changed his mind.

2020 - May  
  
It was his last round until his body had a chance to regenerate, and it took that nasty little slagger Ransack’s head clean off. Good. Ironhide let himself fall back against the rock. He looked over at Prowl. What was left of him. “Come on,” he said, heaving himself upright again. “You’ve still got one functional leg. Lean on me.” Prowl cried out as Ironhide lifted him, but his optics stayed lit.   
  
The Cons’ undersea headquarters had been left a ruin without the Constructicons to repair it. Galvatron had apparently deemed it wiser to try to reestablish their foothold on Mars, where Starscream had initiated the building of a space bridge terminal. Rather than allow this unhindered, the Autobots went on the offensive. Optimus would prefer the Cons not to have any bases within the Solar system if they could help it.   
  
It was like the old days. The humans – busy rebuilding their world – could not assist them to the extent they had on Earth. Ironhide reveled in it.   
  
However, even with Raze and his platoon, they’d been outgunned. Galvatron had sent Blitzwing, Astrotrain, Soundwave, Octane, Onslaught’s team and a handful of others, hoping to crush the Weapons Specialist and Tactician in one strike. Prowl had suddenly leapt from cover, sprinting at the enemy line, using that rapid-fire, precision shooting trick of his. Incensed at the affront, Astrotrain and Blitzwing had taken the bait, focusing on Prowl while Raze and Ironhide moved their troops to a better position – and the rest of the Cons took precious seconds trying to figure out what Prowl’s elaborate plan must really be. Even badly damaged, Prowl had managed to rejoin them on a higher rim of one of the canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthus, west of the Valles Marineris. The Seekers were at a disadvantage for once. The canyons were treacherous to fly in, with many spaces for snipers to hide, and extensive overhangs foiled attempts to find and attack targets from the air. Both factions could spend centuries down there gunning for each other amid the morning mists from sublimated frost.   
  
It had become a contest of endurance. A contest Ironhide was pleased to have won today, though they’d paid for it with two more of the Graveyard Legion.   
  
Something inside Prowl exploded, sending oily smoke up through his joints and mouth, sparks and energon dripping from the hole in his midsection that was wider now. “Don’t you dare offline on me,” Ironhide snarled.   
  
“N-not…kkkzt…aaaaaaaaaaaallowed…kk…to die,” Prowl reminded him.   
  
“That’s right,” Ironhide said. “And you’re heavy as slag, so stay with me, here.”   
  
Raze and the rest of his platoon followed them closely back to their Field Ops cavern.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“You, my friend,” said Ratchet, pulling an extra strut from his back to serve as a splint, “are pushing it.” The energon lines and efferent/afferent wires had been capped, and a temporary patch applied to the hole in Prowl’s chassis. More complete repairs could wait until after Skyfire ferried them back to Earth.  
  
“Cccalcula…ted risk,” Prowl rasped.   
  
 **Nevertheless, please don’t do such a thing again.**  Prime transmitted, relayed via satellite and Jazz.  
  
 _Nnnnnno. Wouldn’t…workkkk second…time._  
  
Ratchet shook his head as Ironhide and Raze exchanged a look and snickered.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Back at the embassy in Nevada, Ironhide leaned against a wall in the war room, not looking at Optimus. “That’s a heavy sentence you handed him, Prime.”  
  
“Yes. It is.” Prime schooled his expression carefully. It wouldn’t do to let Ironhide see him smile.   
  
“Sure you couldn’t take twenty years off? Forty maybe? For good behavior.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Ironhide spun and glared at him. “Never known you to be cruel before, Optimus. What difference would fifty years make? The Coryxii and the Auberans he killed won’t be any more dead, and an extra half-century of torment for him won’t bring them back.”   
  
“Did it not occur to you that my sentence upon him was the only thing that kept him alive until you could get him to Ratchet?”   
  
“Slag.” Ironhide shoved himself off the wall and stomped away down the corridor.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“You? You of all people want Prowl’s sentence reduced?” Ratchet was practically giggling. Ironhide wanted to blast Teletraan’s main screen to slag for all the good it would do. Fragging nosy AI. Unless it had been Optimus. Oh it had definitely been Optimus.   
  
 _PRIME!_  
  
 **Hehm. Ratchet is your oldest friend, he has deduced the alteration in your opinion already.**  
  
 _Rrrgh! Prowl’s earned his place, that’s all!_    
  
 _Of course it is,_  Ratchet purred, backed up by giggles from Jazz and Smokescreen.   
  
“Getting soft in your old age, there, Hide?” Lennox was one of a very few humans who knew the full story behind Prowl’s sentence. He was also one of the few who would tease Ironhide fearlessly.   
  
 _Frag off, all of you._  Ironhide stumped out to the road and transformed.  _Rusty, CPU-damaged, slagging…_  He could drive out to White Sands. They’d let him shoot up the test range until his ammo ran out. Which wouldn’t be as long as he’d like; his body hadn’t regenerated enough yet. He was craving molybdenum, too, but wasn’t about to ask Ratchet for supplements.   
  
 _I can see why you like him,_  Perceptor commented, meaning Ironhide, aimed at Ratchet, but like the rest of the amused byplay, on the open channel.  _He’s such a dear!_  Ratchet was probably going to short circuit something, laughing like that.   
  
“Oh, dearie Ironhide!” Sideswipe gibed from the mesa top.   
  
“Come in for a nice spot of tea, wot?” Sunstreaker offered. Ironhide transformed again and spun out both cannons. Hooting with laughter, the Twins scampered off, out of range.   
  
It was probably too much to hope that no one would tell Prowl. At least Prowl wouldn’t get all soppy and embarrassing about it.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The teasing continued on and off for a handful of days, even after Prowl was out of the CR chamber, though a long, cool look from Prowl made even the Twins more circumspect.   
  
Ironhide threw himself into the preparations for the next sortie to Mars. They were working on getting a couple of Coalition platoons ready to join them. (Not the first humans on Mars – Skyfire had taken Stephen Hawking and his assistants and family up shortly before the physicist’s death in 2019.)  _Can’t a mech be wrong about someone without the whole world jumping on his head once he admits it?_  
  
 _You weren’t wrong,_  Prowl said.   
  
 **And THAT’S why,**  Prime tight-beamed,  **his sentence must remain in full. The anguish of his spark has not lessened; it is only more deeply buried, and tempered by other things. Until those other things gain ascendance, his unthinking reflex is still towards atonement. He still _feels_  that his own death might somehow make up for all the others. And it won’t, it  _can’t._**  
  
 _I understand_  Ironhide said heavily.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Introspection was not Ironhide’s strong suit. He either knew a thing or he didn’t, liked a thing or not. He left the whys and the wherefores to Ratchet or Smokescreen. Keep telling yourself that, old mech. Maybe someday you’ll believe it.   
  
Though it was dawn elsewhere in the world, as the sun fell here, Optimus joined him on the mesa top, stretching into the rising breeze, taking pleasure in the movement of air masses through his body. “They’ll lay off soon, I think,” he said. “Hopefully before you blow a hole in one of them.”  
  
“Hn.”  
  
Trying to maintain a grump when Optimus was determined to cheer you up was useless. Prime had a way of expanding the components of his torso, then folding himself around you, making himself another layer of your armor. These days you could hear and feel the thrum of his spark all the way through, right down to your own spark, which always tried to match spins with his. Like calling to like.  _Bah! I'll be reciting poetry next._    
  
 **Heh. That would be something.**    
  
Ironhide curled forward and threw him - getting under Optimus' center of gravity was easy - continuing the somersault, landing on top. Cables snapped sharply between them, Ironhide bowing as much as his unyielding body would allow, head tossing, optics fierce. Optimus rolled them over, one hand cradling Ironhide's head, the other plunging beneath Ironhide's chest armor like a talon, fine manipulators snaking from the tips of his fingers, driving right for deep wires and conduits, making Ironhide shout. Primus, sometimes it was such a relief to simply take, and be taken.   
  
Heat billowed and rushed through the cables, more fervid than thermal. Optimus growled and clawed the mesa top, Ironhide’s hands deep and rough in his undercarriage. If Optimus must be denied his brother, Ironhide would willingly provide an outlet. Of all ruling twins, that those two should have gone so wrong was a hard fate. They grappled and bit at each other, gouging ungentle marks in the stone. Cables hindered them now, having served the purpose of winding them up; supple, iridescent black lines whipped back into their housings, the sting only a goad to further play.   
  
Mouthparts clamping down on a spar of Optimus’ throat, Ironhide pushed fingertips past armor high in Optimus’ chest, past structural trusses of his underlying form, to the core and anchor of his complicated vocal system. Optimus shuddered over him, mouth wide but shocked soundless for a moment. A low, low field warp; tiny, circular strokes – core vents blew superheated steam condensed from the air, Ironhide’s other hand gripped hard the half-open edge of Optimus’ chest armor above the spark chamber, while Optimus went into Ironhide from the sides, under the arms where feeds for the cannons slipped past big plates of armor and sensitive bundles of wire. They rocked against each other, tumbling, forgetting the edge and the drop nearby, shouts echoing off the mountains; until the internal feedback, so close to his main CPU, took Optimus too far to pull back and he opened himself/his voice to the fullest till Ironhide could  _see_  the air falling over itself to bear the force of it streaming all the way out to Lake Mead and back.   
  
Ironhide laughed, a broad, rolling sound. Hearing Optimus roar like that felt good, a good thing to feel and hear as the last thing before the blue-white wave smashed into him, taking him down and through overload and offline.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Optimus rested atop him, not offline, but powered down, optics dim. A fathomless bloom of contentment and satisfaction spread throughout the cloud mind.


	49. Wrath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Perceptor has a bad day and Swindle gets to stay alive.

2020 – September  
  
Holding up a hand, Perceptor forestalled whatever else Professor Ramachandran was going to say. “Pardon me,” Perceptor murmured, his attention focused elsewhere. The array of sensors on his head fanned out like a multicolored, iridescent lionfish. A second later his expression changed radically. “Evacuate the campus! NOW!”  
  
Two other universities had been attacked that month, both within the state. Professor Ramachandran slapped the nearest fire alarm and was on the phone to the university’s president directly afterward. Alarms spread from the Radiation Center across the sprawling Oregon State University campus. But the timing was such that the students were between classes, and as they were mostly outside already, few of them had any idea where to go.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Thundercracker and Skywarp were right, this was a lot of fun, Swindle admitted to himself. Jumping around in dense concentrations of fleshies was terrific for target practice, and felt kind of nice if you liked warm goo in your pedal components. Which Swindle did. He liked mud, too, come to think of it. He skated around in the mess he’d made in one of the quads, idly picking off anything that moved around the edges. Even Blastoff and Vortex were in robot mode, stomping around and giggling in a rather embarrassing fashion. Onslaught was hunting, taking the target practice bit seriously, seeing how many little screaming insects he could bag with one shot. They clumped together so nicely, it was really quite accommodating of them.   
  
As chance had it – and Swindle believed Chance was on his side more often than not – Swindle was looking in just the right direction at just the right time to see what happened. It saved his life.   
  
The beam gave off no scatter, collimated with frightening efficiency. It couldn’t be perceived from the side in the usual ranges of scanning frequencies. And perceiving it from the receiving end generally was the last thing the target did. Therefore, all Swindle saw were holes. Perfectly round, glowing at the edges, appearing in rapid succession through the chests of his three companions. The spark chambers were breached as though they were made of aluminum. It was very quiet, suddenly. The air itself vibrated in shock.  
  
Well, the fun had to end some time.   
  
“Leave now and harm none,” someone said from the rooftop of the building to the south. He looked up, having already fished through his databases to pinpoint which Autobot this had to be. It was a little surprising, but no-one else had quite this kind of artillery any more.   
  
“Well, hi there, Perceptor,” Swindle called, waving cheerily. “Could I by any chance interest you in…”   
  
The power levels on the light cannon hadn’t fallen, and Swindle had no doubts about where it was aimed right now. “I guess not, huh?” The look on the Autobot’s face was interesting. Some of those goody-goodies were easy to provoke, but his data indicated this one, while gung-ho, was rarely ignitable to actual rage. A lot of the delicate-looking, presumably sensory instruments on his head were glowing. How very fascinating. Probably one little concussion grenade going off anywhere near his head would blind him, but that cannon wasn’t wavering, was, if anything, getting hotter. If he dallied too long, Perceptor would shoot him anyway. Swindle understood perfectly the human phrase, “the better part of valor,” so he scrambled out of the quad until he reached 26th Street and transformed.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Perceptor watched the wine red Cobalt speed away amid squealing tires and acrid smoke. The heat from his fury had dissipated enough to allow his sensors full range again. He kept his light cannon trained on the Decepticon until he exited the campus, and then maintained sensor contact in case Swindle doubled back. Perceptor’s vocoder made an unconscious, agonized little noise as he surveyed the campus. There were no living humans in his immediate vicinity. He ran, nimble for a bot his size, placing survey markers next to each survivor he found – the glowing tips would alert the human rescuers who were already nearly there, having been summoned soon after Perceptor had detected the attack. Warpath and Huffer were en route as well. Powerglide was tracking Swindle.   
  
 _Are you sure I can’t just pick him off?_  Powerglide kept wanting to know. Perceptor shook his head in irritation.   
  
 _Ask Prime. Swindle withdrew of his own free will._  They both knew Prime would rather they didn’t kill the Cons unless absolutely necessary. But this incident – and the attacks on Portland State and University of Oregon, Eugene, especially if they could establish that Swindle and his friends had perpetrated those also – might prove unforgivable. Certainly the humans wanted heads, and Perceptor didn’t blame them. He was considering purging his own memory – truly an action of last resort – because the scenes of slaughter, so vividly dark with human blood, were going to haunt him forever. They never should have come to this fragile world. It wasn’t fair.   
  
 **Perceptor!**    
  
 _I am unharmed, Prime._  He chirped a report, though Optimus would have felt the sparks of Blastoff, Vortex and Onslaught return to the Allspark.  _I estimate 137 young adult humans dead. Oh_  Prime…  
  
 **I’m sorry, Perceptor. I’m so sorry.**  Prime maintained a tender openness of link, not enough to distract, but a kind of baseline reassurance. Sirens approached. The rescue teams were arriving. Perceptor continued his race to find and mark the living.   
  
 _Are you all right?_  came distant thought-caresses from Beachcomber, Seaspray, Ratchet, Wheeljack, Skyfire and Prowl, while the Autobot cloud mind pulsed and swarmed, trying to buffer him.   
  
 _I’m fine,_  he replied, his harmonics rather clipped and sharp.  _They weren’t shooting at me._    
  
 _Don’t close up, Perce,_  Smokescreen reminded him gently.  _Let us in._  
  
 _I know._  So many young minds, so much potential – extinguished in less than five minutes. Perceptor couldn’t remember when he’d been this angry. Yet he held on to his anger; there was no other way to bear the searing intensity of Prowl’s empathy. Perceptor had his own coping mechanisms, but the knowledge that Prowl’s fell voice would blaze through the canyons for him tonight made him want to curl up into protoform and lock himself in stasis for a century.   
  
There. He had quartered the campus, and all the non-mobile survivors would be easy to find. Perceptor unlimbered a special set of tools he’d been working on. He had of course downloaded the contents of the humans’ Deep Web, including every scrap of medical information. The humans, he felt, were simply machines of a different nature. There were structural repairs that he could make – setting broken bones, ligating severed arteries, even stapling tears in the epidermis, though that last was perhaps better left until the wounds could be properly cleaned.   
  
He was relieving the pressure in the skull of a badly concussed young male when the paramedics caught up with him. Fortunately the university president and many of the faculty had warned them that there was a robot who was helping rather than harming. From the wary looks on the medics’ faces, not all of them believed in Perceptor’s good intentions. He backed away from the injured youth as soon as the danger of immediate damage to his brain was ameliorated. He wished there was a way he could print out the results of his own scans for each of the victims – that way treatment could begin immediately and the doctors would not have to waste valuable time in diagnostics. Later he would work on something…something small that he could carry with him, attached to his shoulder out of the way of the cannon mechanisms perhaps. As it was, he was transmitting the data to the local hospitals, matching scans with the identities of the victims as often as he could, providing still images from his optics when he couldn’t. It was all he could do.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The next morning, Professor Ramachandran found him, sitting in a grove of trees just off campus, outside the police line. The robot’s knees were drawn up, forearms resting across their tops, face hidden behind them. The professor felt that over the past year he had gotten to know the alien scientist fairly well. Perceptor’s body might be still, but his mind would be working furiously.  
  
“What happened was tragic, horrible,” Ramachandran said quietly, touching Perceptor’s right foot, pressing his hand flat against the warm metal. “But it would have been much worse, without you.”  
  
Perceptor lifted his complicated head and looked down at him. “Good morning, Professor,” he said, nodding to acknowledge the sentiment.. The strange fins and horns and antennae were in motion again. Ramachandran desperately wanted to know what they were for, but Perceptor would only give tantalizing hints now and then, parceling out information at a rate the humans could integrate properly. “I’m sorry. I expect our project will have to be postponed.”  
  
“Only for a short while,” Ramachandran said. “We will not bow to this any more than we do to bombings from our own people.”  
  
Perceptor nodded. The light slid along his sensor arrays, silky and iridescent, as though they were feathers. “I understand.”


	50. Interlewd: Endangered Species

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime expresses his appreciation of Perceptor's beauty, Perceptor has one of his ideas, Beachcomber's fears are proved accurate, Streetwise puts the moves on Tracks and Tracks likes it, Bumblebee has been reading fanfic again, and the Autobots have a discussion.

2020 - October  
  
Perceptor scurried about, collecting the scattered paper notes, cups and napkins left behind by the human delegates. Careless or accustomed to having others clean up after them. Sitting on the curved, variable-height bench that ran around the edge of the chamber after the meeting had adjourned, Prime rested with his elbows on his knees, seemingly lost in thought.  
  
Not lost, though, Perceptor knew. He estimated that Prime could be inquiring of the Matrix on the current issue, sustaining at least twenty thought cascades, participating in several dozen conversations with other Autobots and at least that many with various humans. Yet for some reason, Prime’s optics were still tracking Perceptor. Completing the circuit, he cached the detritus for proper recycling later. Prime straightened but did not rise.  
  
 **I’d almost forgotten** , he tight-beamed,  **how pleasing you are to the optic sensors, Perceptor.**  
  
Glad he had nothing in his hands for surely he would have dropped it, Perceptor gaped at him. “I...you... Oh!” Prime’s transmissions rarely left any room for uncertainty.   
  
 **Mm-hmm. C’mere.**  Prime leaned forward again and beckoned with a forefinger, his expression intent. Perceptor’s coolant pumps kicked into high gear. He maintained enough composure to approach Prime slowly, but that didn’t last. Left to his own devices, Perceptor always waited too long to defrag – Beachcomber and Miles had been in Sri Lanka for a month.   
  
Unusually nimble for his mass, Perceptor leapt into Prime’s arms, wrapping himself around the massive chest and shoulders, stroking the glyphs deeply graven into Prime’s helm with certain sensory fins. Prime laughed softly and returned the nuzzle, humming into the iridescent array, mouthing the sturdier appendages. Perceptor shivered, his vocoder emitting sounds unrelated to speech in any language, optics cycling uncoordinatedly through several spectra, the iris-like shutters twitching. His chest armor jerked, trying to open though he’d forgotten to reconfigure his scope properly to allow it. Enjoying all this squirming immensely, Prime did it again.  
  
No amount of quick and clever reallocation of static charge could save Perceptor from overload, but he regained consciousness quickly, CPU running on the raggedy edge. Prime’s hands were playing with his scope.   
  
 **Hello, beauty. Shall we try that again?**  
  
 _Ha. Give me a moment…_  Vocoder still glitching, Perceptor yet managed to shift his scope out of the way and their chests opened in unison.   
  
Their coronae whirled fiercely together, blue-white and a turquoise greener than Wheeljack’s – no two sparks alike and Prime savored them all. Cables slipped and slithered, the entire thoracic complement, opening their link like a newborn galaxy, glittering with coalescing ideas and the desire of ignition. It would be frighteningly easy for them to merge right here and now. It took an effort to circumvent the process, Prime had grown so accustomed to it.   
  
Perceptor smiled at the delightful strangeness of this new intimacy. There were so few of them on Earth, they all knew each other now, minds reaching out across the atmosphere. The thought crossed cables to Prime, gathering associations, and returned, with as full a tally as Prime could muster from the Allspark itself. So few on Earth, so few in either galaxy. Perceptor stiffened, staring into Prime's optics. So few! They were a first generation civilization, with history and legends dating back billions of years, when the first suns appeared, and now there were less than five thousand individuals left in the vast universe, including the minicons and other neutrals who had emigrated at the beginning of the war and remained hidden from the dwindling Con forces.   
  
 **We can rebuild,**  Prime assured him.  **But not in the way we imagined, and not soon.**    
  
Perceptor huddled against him, forehelm pressed to Prime's shoulder. So few.  _This …this is not knowledge you have shared widely, I take it?_    
  
 **No. The human John Keller also knows.**    
  
 _I understand._  He looked up into Prime's face again.  _I'm sorry. I knew our losses were terrible, but I didn't realize the full extent._    
  
Prime nodded, moving his thumbs slowly over Perceptor's dorsal armor.  **Every life is precious. Any individual that we can turn rather than kill is an asset.**    
  
 _Would that the Decepticons felt the same way._    
  
 **Indeed.**  Prime leaned against the wall, extending one leg along the bench. Perceptor shifted, straddling Prime’s hip to keep their chests in proximity, sparks again spinning faster.   
  
In a moment of laser-like decision, Perceptor dropped all but the last, most basic firewalls. He had made a full accounting to Prime upon landing on Earth, and kept up a steady barrage of further progress reports, but warmed by the link and Prime’s alloyed spark, he knew this was the one being from whom nothing need be kept secret.   
  
The Allspark made an interested lunge at him. Optimus held on, mildly alarmed, as Perceptor's consciousness leaned at it in return, intrigued.  _Oh you don't fool me for a moment, you great cubey thing. You can't have existed for so long, behaving as you do, without having or acquiring some species of sapience or other._    
  
Optimus half expected it to answer.  **It's never acted like this toward anyone before,**  he said.  **Not even to Jazz.**    
  
 _It could be because I contain a large part of the University’s backup archive,_  Perceptor confessed.  _I downloaded it early in the war – most of it is in the portable shards I brought with me. Always meant to build another to upload the third that’s in my head, but I'm afraid I've rather gotten used to having it. Ready to hand, so to speak._    
  
 **Aw, Perceptor.**  Prime thrummed, caressing him.  **I'm glad – that means we have lost less than I feared. But how about you and Wheeljack set up another archive here on Earth? You can copy out the data; make a couple of copies, perhaps? And stash them wherever your devious CPUs think is best. I think Teletraan and Event Horizon would like access, particularly.**  
  
 _Yes, I expect they would._  He hesitated, but this deep Prime could deduce his reason even if it was not explicitly stated.  _Optimus. Please, don’t tell Beachcomber. Let everyone think Wheeljack had that part of the archive perhaps. His workshop is so cluttered anyone would believe he could have such large shards lying about, forgotten amongst so many other projects._  
  
 **If that’s what you really want.**  It wasn’t Prime’s policy to get involved with domestic matters. He also understood the risk to Perceptor should the Decepticons find out how much was really stuffed in the mech’s cores. If he was ever captured, Perceptor would be taken apart quark by quark. Optimus held him close.   
  
 _For now._  He pushed himself upward for a kiss, sensory array waving languidly.  _While we’re on the subject of secrets; I've been thinking. The fundamental theories of space bridge technology have no upper limits regarding the mass of the object or objects to be transported. Mass itself is a negligible quantity in all the equations, the limiting factor is actually—_    
  
 **Perceptor.**  The room was heating up with their sparks exposed for so long – it felt good but Ratchet was going to complain about the level of scrubbing they’d need to do to make the place habitable for humans again.   
  
 _Right. Sorry. What I mean to say is that it should be possible to move Cybertron. There is a suitably barren trinary star system very close to Sol; I have already prepared preliminary calculations and I believe Cybertron's existing inertia can be used for orbital insertion, thus saving a considerable expenditure of energy on—_    
  
 **This isn't going to break the universe, is it?**  Prime’s CPU was reeling but he rode it out. It was a common enough feeling when dealing with Perceptor.  
  
 _The rumors about that particular device were entirely unfounded! As I have explained to Wheeljack and others on at least 735 separate occasions…_    
  
 **Just checking.**    
  
Perceptor laughed.  _However I must emphasize that we would need to implement this plan within 12,957 years. Based on Cybertron's current trajectory, taking into consideration the close pass to Qu'i Proxima IV, assuming the Qu'ians refrain from launching planet-buster class warheads, our homeworld will move beyond the accepted limits of our galaxy, making travel to and from there somewhat more problematic than currently appertains, as there are no known stable wormholes in that vicinity, and certainly there are no space bridges. Unless Shockwave has succeeded in repairing one of those on the planet itself, which is highly doubtful since we would certainly have gotten word of such an event from one source or another._    
  
 **Indeed.**  Prime neglected to mention that he knew Shockwave had in fact nearly succeeded in that endeavor - but that Elita's group had sabotaged both the bridge and Shockwave's lab, setting centuries of work at naught. The fewer who even knew Elita was still functional the better, and Perceptor already carried more than his share of volatile data.  **I'm only asking out of curiosity, since I know you already have everything worked out; but how do you intend to power this massive space bridge of yours?**    
  
 _Yes. Before it leaves our galaxy, Cybertron will conveniently encounter five stars suitable for nova induction and energy harvest - we would only need three, actually, but it doesn't hurt to have secondary contingency plans. In any case, all the stars in question have only rudimentary planetary disks or unquestionably lifeless planets, and none are currently being used by any other civilization for energy or other resources. We would of course do further surveys to make certain. How many... that is, do you have any ...feel... for how many deep-Seekers there might be left?_  
  
 **Mmm. Silverbolt doesn't count since he's part of a gestalt. I'm not sure, but I think there are a few, besides Skyfire and Borealis. Less than seven would be my guess, of any faction.**    
  
 _Silverbolt's still alive!_    
  
 **He is, and his team.**    
  
 _Good!_  Perceptor pressed for no more detail than that, sensing the covert nature of the aerial gestalt's overall mission.  _So. What do you think?_  He wriggled on Optimus’ lap.  
  
 **Really, Perceptor, it’s not like you to concoct such a conventional plan. Moving an entire planet, plus moons. You must be losing your touch.**  
  
Perceptor laughed again, though his vocoder hitched, their sparks throbbing and his body not much longer able to contain the ache. He swayed as though suspended from Optimus’ fingers delicately playing in his fins and plumes, little shocks racing over their armor. Caught in the torrent, they let go this time, sheet lightning and electric hail, crashing collapsing in string-twined symmetry released into the blessed dark.   
  
…  
  
He came online sprawled against Optimus’ chest, Prime’s big hands moving gently, soothingly over his body.   
  
 **I don’t know what I’d do without you, Perceptor. Every choice I’ve made since the beginning of the war has gone amiss. I’ve led us from one existential disaster to another. I’m glad you’re here to offer us hope unimagined.**    
  
 _Nonsense! Stuff!_  Perceptor’s body stirred sluggishly as he rebooted several systems twice.  _That there are any of us left alive to hope is because of you. Prowl has run some interesting, if horrifying, simulations. If Megatron had had his way unopposed he would have been the death of us entirely, in addition to a dismaying number of other species. To speculate that he might have destroyed the universe is not, I fear, much of an overstatement. If they were still accessible, I’d have a few choice words with whomever designed and built him._    
  
 **I bet you would at that.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Sam and Mikaela were up at the Oregon base, visiting Miles, and Dani was going through a phase where she didn't want to watch anything except  _Babe_. Over and over and over. "Baa Ram Ewe!" she recited. "To your breed, your fleece, your lamb be true, sheep be true. Baa Ram Ewe." Her speech, at nearly one year old, wasn’t that clear; but she was advanced for her age and had the rhythm of it.   
  
Perceptor halted in mid-stride, optics widening then narrowing to pinpoints. "Sheep be true," he murmured. "Be true. Spark be true."   
  
Grabbing his hand, Beachcomber pulled him close.  _What are you remembering?_    
  
Perceptor looked at him, refocusing his optics. "Hm? Oh, nothing. I merely noted it is an odd turn of phrase."   
  
“It isn’t that,” Beachcomber said. “Why won’t you tell me?”  
  
“There’s nothing to be gained in discussing it when you’re already angry,” Perceptor said, resuming his path toward the laboratory. Beachcomber refused to release his hand and he stopped.   
  
“I’m not angry. I just wish you’d…tell me things sometimes. Instead of trying to spare me one more modicum of pain. And then one more, and another, until you’ve stored up so many things you won’t tell me that—”  
  
“Very well!” Perceptor snapped. He shuttered his optics, calming himself. “I am sorry.” He knelt and embraced Beachcomber tenderly for a long time.  
  
“You’re still not going to tell me, are you,” Beachcomber said.  
  
“Then you truly would be angry with me.”  
  
“Perceptor.”  
  
"I remember the winds and quakes; and then the morning that never came, when we knew there would only be night for us forever. I remember the terror sweeping across the planet like a firestorm, unstoppable, rising so sharp and hard it would have broken all of us. Until Prime stopped it. Isn’t that more than enough?”  
  
Beachcomber shuddered. He knew then his old suspicions were correct. Perceptor remembered almost nothing from before the war. “Why do you have two memory cores?”   
  
“To make myself ever so much cleverer, of course. Like everyone says.”   
  
“At least tell me why you won’t tell me.”  
  
“Because you and Flare retrieved my backups.”   
  
“You remember Flare?”   
  
“And that Flare became Red Alert,” Perceptor said with some satisfaction.   
  
“That happened later,” Beachcomber said absently. “So you think because we went to all that trouble we’d be angry at you for losing... Infusion said there weren’t any personal memories on those backups anyway. Do you remember that?”  
  
“...Oh.”   
  
“Oh, Perceptor.”  
  
Perceptor laughed. But he kept laughing, and the laughter grew strange. Beachcomber watched in alarm, grasping his friend’s shoulders. Seeing the worry in Beachcomber’s expression, Perceptor controlled himself. “You know, it really is appalling the things I am unable to keep from you.” He leaned in and kissed Beachcomber for a long moment then stood, briskly resuming his original course.  
  
“It isn’t what you won’t say, it’s that you won’t say it,” Beachcomber whispered, transforming and rolling for the forest with an uncharacteristic screech of tires.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Good heavens, Streetwise, what happened to you?” Tracks was on his way – finally – out of the bath when he passed an exhausted and filthy Streetwise on his way in.   
  
“I fell in the La Brea tar pits.”  
  
“The—you did not, they’re enclosed. You can’t fall in them!”  
  
“Yes but it’s funnier to tell it that way,” Streetwise countered, grinning. Wildfires seethed across southern California, though the long summer was at last waning. The Protectobots had been helping to contain the largest blaze when Streetwise had had an unfortunate encounter with a section of freeway that had melted in the heat.   
  
“All right. You’re certainly covered with tar. And gravel. And…do you want help scrubbing?”   
  
“I’d appreciate it, yeah,” Streetwise said, almost stumbling with relief.   
  
“Mmhmm.” Tracks caught him anyway and kept an arm around his waist as they walked down the ramp into the hot oil. “The sooner we get you cleaned up the sooner you can recharge with your brothers. Where’s that solvent…aha!”   
  
The organic solvent Perceptor had come up with was amazingly effective even on ground-in tar, (Streetwise had had his personal shielding down in order to enjoy the feel of the flames tickling his armor) but it nevertheless took the better part of an hour to get it and the attendant gravel and other debris off. Tracks was more or less holding him up, Streetwise’s head resting on his shoulder.   
  
“Mmmm. That’s nice,” Streetwise murmured as Tracks used a large dipper to sluice oil across his shoulders. He nuzzled the elegant line of Tracks’ jaw. Nuzzling became delicate kissing. Tracks kissed back.   
  
Streetwise’s engine roared and he roused himself to embrace Tracks fervently, his mouth roving hungrily over Tracks’ face and neck.   
  
“Easy there,” Tracks said, nevertheless leaning into the caresses. “You and Oratorio are determined to make yourselves irresistible, I see.”   
  
 _Oh, Tracks,_  Streetwise whispered.  _Oratorio was right. You’re so lovely. You feel good, you smell good, the purr of your voice, the rumble of your engine…_  
  
Tracks laughed, but hugged him.  _I appreciate the assessment. I was designed and built to exacting aesthetic standards, after all. I’m not surprised you and Oratorio have the highly evolved refinement necessary to discern that._  Streetwise was clearly giddy and low on fuel. Getting him to overload and thus to recharge wasn’t a bad idea. Tracks slipped his hands down Streetwise’s body, touching him just so, here and there, pressing firmly or brushing so lightly it seemed hardly to register.   
  
Towers mechs  _knew_  things, or so Jazz had said. Streetwise was beginning to understand what he’d meant. He’d been wildly overclocked before, but something about the way Tracks was touching him smoothed out all the raw edges, bringing him higher while easing away the frenetic reeling of his CPU. If it weren’t for the buzz of static throughout his frame he might easily slip right into recharge.  
  
 _Show me,_  he said, mumbling even in tight-beam.  _See your spark, please? See the part of you that made me?_  He petted Tracks’ chest in entreaty.   
  
Tracks arched into the touch, then kissed Streetwise’s forehelm, hesitating. Slowly, he unsealed his spark chamber, parting the armor and substructures millimeter by millimeter. The flare of Streetwise’s fields at the sight made Tracks tremble.  
  
Streetwise opened his chest eagerly, but with a twinge of trepidation. What if the parent spark wanted its sparkmatter back? But no such thing occurred. Tracks moaned and pulled him closer.  
  
The two sparks pulsed in unison –  _hello! hello! I know you, you know me!_  – and swept them up and up, laughing into overload.  
  
…  
  
Knowing Streetwise was going to be out for the rest of the recharge cycle, Tracks maneuvered and carried him into the recharge bay piggyback, wondering if he and his progeny had just done something irrevocable. Wondering if it was only because they were on Earth that he even thought such a thing.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Teletraan and Event Horizon rezzed a spherical chamber the soothing blue of twilight and dimmed optics. Every Autobot on (or above) the planet (including the AIs, who, unburdened by bodies, were there to observe their friends and comrades rather than participate; and also including Atrandom, Bumblebee and Wheeljack’s recently decanted progeny, who had not yet been through integration) manifested an avatar, floating in the bubble-like hollows arrayed geometrically around the chamber’s inner surface.   
  
Hound at first used his human holo, until Mirage privately suggested that under the circumstances, it might be better if he resumed his usual Cybertronian aspect. Embarrassed, Hound complied. Mirage floated his avatar over and kissed him on the cheek spar before resuming his place in the next bubble over.   
  
 **Prime:**  Thank you all for your attention. I wish to make it clear from the beginning that no-one has done anything wrong. We are here to determine what, if any, should be the accepted guidelines of conduct in this matter. We are faced with an entirely new situation and input from everyone is more than welcome.   
 **Ironhide:**  Knew this mucking about with sparks was only going to lead to trouble.  
 **Perceptor:**  The alternative – barring a decision to allow ourselves to become extinct – is to rely solely on Prime as a conduit for the Allspark. Do you prefer that?  
 **Bolo:**  I don’t mind it, myself, but it  _is_  terribly hard on Prime.  
 **Ratchet:**  Despite what Skyfire thinks, too much of that might kill him, burn away everything that makes him Optimus and leave him  _only_  that conduit. I have no desire to merge again myself, but I see no reason to keep others from doing so.  
 **Warpath:**  Slag, why can't the Decepticons attack at a convenient time for once?   
 **Trailbreaker:**  You could always send Starscream another holo of his Princess mode.   
 **Windcharger:**  Or Galvatron a holo of those kissing dolls Epps gave them.   
 **Hound:**  Wonder what happened to those anyway.   
 **Mirage:**  They were probably incinerated.   
 **Jazz:**  Maybe, but I saw 'em dangling from Long Haul's cab mirror, couple weeks after they were "delivered".   
 **Cliffjumper:**  Bwahahahaha! That's awesome!   
 **Ratchet:**  Pipe down you scraplets, this is serious.   
 **Jazz:**  Want me to break out the Robert's Rules?   
 **Perceptor:**  Or Procedurus' Proceedings.   
 **Mirage:**  Oh dear.   
 **Oratorio:**  Whoa, alliteration city. Is it really called that, Perceptor?   
 **Perceptor:**  It isn't quite so alliterative in Cybertronian. The name "Procedurus" is of course an approximation...   
 **Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Cliffjumper, Huffer, Powerglide:**  Oh Primus, don't let him get started.   
 **Bumblebee:**  [aside to Borealis] Are you feeling weird about this?  
 **Borealis:**  Not r… Yes, a little. Or, it’s more that I feel like I should be feeling weird about this. It’s hard to explain.   
 **Bumblebee:**  [tight-beamed] Would you shag Prime or Ratchet?  
 **Borealis:**  [tight-beamed] DAH! No! …Uh.  
 **Bumblebee:**  [tight-beamed] Heh, that sounded rather reflexive. So if Ratchet, say, and you were trapped on a desert island and Ratchet for some reason couldn’t overload himself, but his CPU absolutely had to be defragged or he couldn’t figure out a way off the island – would you…help him?  
 **Borealis:**  [tight-beamed] I dispute the question. That’s completely ridiculous. I can  _fly_ , Bee.  
 **Bumblebee:**  [tight-beamed]What if you were too damaged? Stranger things have happened.   
 **Borealis:**  [tight-beamed] Urgh!  
 **Perceptor:**  I wish to remind everyone that this was done by the Firstforged. They must have enacted a workable system.  
 **Hoist:**  Yes, but  _what was it_? And why did they stop merging and erase the knowledge of it?  
 **Skyfire:**  Do we have any records of that time?  
 **Perceptor:**  No.   
 **Skyfire:**  And the direct memories of the Matrix only go back to the first Prime, is that correct?  
 **Prime:**  Yes. The ruling diad was not enacted until some time after other spacefaring species appeared in our galaxy.   
 **Seaspray:**  Then we’re making up our own rules as we go along. What’s wrong with that?   
 **Railspike:**  Nothing, youngster. It’s just kinda hard to figure out what the right track is when there’re no signs.   
 **Evac:**  We don’t have DNA, though I guess nanocell code can get scrambled. [looks at Prowl] Is there any actual, physical harm in merging “related” sparks?   
 **First Aid:**  Since no-one’s done that, we don’t know for certain, but Ratchet and I don’t think there is. “Inbreeding” doesn’t seem to be an issue, or possible. Each spark chooses its own threads, or strings, to a certain extent, though there appears to be influence by the intention of the donor sparks/mechs which is difficult to quantify.   
 **Evac:**  So we lack the presumptive basis for an equivalent to the humans’ incest taboo.   
 **Ironhide:**  Interface isn’t even sexual. It has nothing to do with reproduction. Why are we even including that in the discussion?  
 **Mirage:**  Because it is seen by our resident humans to be physically intimate on par with sexual relations and courtship rituals among humans.  
 **Sideswipe:**  Yeah, even with only cables, we look like we’re jerking each other off. Unf! Unf!  
 **Sunstreaker:**  [leering] Hey, baby, can I get a jump?  
 **Perceptor:**  To be clear, societal views of incest and biological inbreeding are not the same. Most anthropologists and sociologists among humans believe that nuclear family incest avoidance can be explained in terms of the ecological, demographic, and economic benefits of exogamy.  
 **Mirage:**  Oh, I see! They form alliances between families and clans that way.  
 **Perceptor:**  Which is mutually beneficial and of socially evolutionary advantage.   
 **Groove:**  Then Tracks and Streetwise snuggling wasn’t even incest, technically.  
 **Jazz:**  Technically no, but common perceptions might be different.   
 **Prime:**  How do you new people feel about it?  
 **Brawn:**  Oh for Primus’ sake, they’re only a year old.   
 **Bumblebee:**  That doesn’t mean they can’t have an opinion. Or several. And Borealis and Oratorio are older than that.   
 **Atrandom:**  [props her feet on an imaginary table] I’m only a few months out of the tank and I have lots of opinions. Wanna hear?  
 **Bumblebee:**  [tight-beamed] Do they have to do with the current subject?  
 **Atrandom:**  [tight-beamed] Ummmm. Nope.  
 **Bumblebee:**  [tight-beamed] Then would you like to tell me and Wheeljack about them later?  
 **Atrandom:**  [tight-beamed] Sure!  
 **Hot Spot:**  We…don’t really see how it’s much different from twins interfacing, spark-to-spark or otherwise. And nobody’s told Sunstreaker and Sideswipe they couldn’t merge if they wanted to.   
 **Huffer:**  Primus preserve us!  
 **Sunstreaker:**  Oh relax, you old manifold. We don’t even want to.  
 **Sideswipe:**  So, up your converter.  
 **Grapple:**  That’s a good point, Hot Spot. No-one  _has_  communicated anything of the kind.   
 **Ratchet:**  Perhaps we should have at least thought about it, though.   
 **Hoist:**  One thing I have noticed, now that there are more than two new people here, is an increased feeling of protectiveness toward the progeny.  
 **Prowl:**  Agreed. I would add that the feeling appears to run at equal strength in both directions. Not unlike what we’ve seen in twins and gestalts for our entire history.   
 **Mirage:**  And we have always been protective of the very young, no matter how competent they are programmed to be. We have always recognized the importance of experience.   
 **Beachcomber:**  Yes!  
 **Tracks:**  Are we then even debating this because of the way we’ve adapted to living among humans?  
 **Cliffjumper:**  You  _would_  think that, Tracks.  
 **Hound:**  Liking humans isn’t a crime.  
 **Cliffjumper:**  Didn’t say it was.   
 **Jazz:**  That’s just it, Tracks. We are here, on their planet, and we’ve made an effort to obey their laws. I’m not saying we should change everything – that would be a drag – but it doesn’t hurt to think about the implications, not just for us, but for them as well. Think we can keep Sam and Kaela and Maggie and Glen from figuring stuff out?  
 **Mirage:**  Perhaps Glen. He pays attention to little that isn’t Maggie or in VR.   
 **Red Alert:**  If we go about our liaisons blatantly – any of them, for there are few of us the humans deem “female” – then we risk repercussions from the segments of their cultures that frown upon copulation outside of marriage. I need not remind you how badly we are outnumbered.   
 **Bumblebee:**  That’s true enough as far as it goes, but we’re getting a little off course. I thought we were trying to decide for ourselves whether interface and/or spark merging between progenitor and progeny, or progeny from the same progenitor—  
 **Atrandom:**  [quietly] Which means everyone except me – ha ha!  
 **Bumblebee:**  —constitutes something we want to disallow. Or at least be cautious about. Jazz and Mirage and I, and yes, Tracks and Hound, can work on our PR with the humans afterwards.   
 **Prime:**  Agreed.   
  
A great deal more debate ensued, in which each and every mech voiced their thoughts and opinions and argued and joked and squabbled and disagreed and agreed to disagree and digressed and were brought back to the point and the observations of the AIs were consulted as well, for Optimus valued their dispassion.  
  
 **Hoist:**  So. The consensus seems to be that actual merges should be considered carefully ahead of time, with any future progeny of in-merges monitored carefully by Ratchet or another fully-certified medical officer, and that any other intimate activity is left to the discretion of the mechs involved.  
 **Jazz:**  Shall we call for a vote?  
 **Groove:**  Oooh! Can it be a secret vote?  
 **Gears:**  How would we even do that? We’re all right here.   
 **Streetwise:**  There’s always that black and white pebble thing.  
 **Ratchet:**  All in favor indicate “Aye”.  
[The vote is unanimous until they get to]  
 **Sideswipe:**  [smirking] Nay!  
[In the physical world, Sideswipe is jumped on by every mech at the embassy except Prime, Red Alert and Prowl.]  
 **Sideswipe:**  I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Slag! Aye! Uncle!


	51. Holiday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Autobots celebrate the seasons. Complete fluff. ^___^

2020 – December  
  
Mikaela came into the hangar, singing softly and grinning, carrying a parcel that rustled interestingly. “I like big bots and I cannot lie/You other girls can’t deny/When a bot walks in with a shiny interface/And a drive shaft in your face/You get SPRUNG!”  
  
“Well hello and thank you,” Jazz said. Mikaela laughed.  
  
“Hey, Jazz! Is Prime around?”  
  
“Man, they always like the tall ones. Yeah, he’s in his office.”  
  
“Aww. You know you’re sexy and don’t you guys keep telling us size doesn’t matter?”  
  
“Sure, but you can’t make butter with a toothpick, know what I’m saying?”  
  
Mikaela was glad she hadn’t been drinking anything and decided she didn’t want to know where he’d picked that one up.   
  
In the war room, Prime was leaning with his hands on the edge of the holo table, staring intently at a flickering series of images, sweeping by too quickly for Mikaela to make any sense of. She hesitated at the doorway, not wanting to distract the Autobot leader from whatever galactic events he was evidently monitoring right at the moment.   
  
“Mikaela,” Prime said, his voice modulated so as not to startle her. “Please come in.”  
  
“I can come back later,” she said.   
  
Prime stood up straight and stilled the holo display. Stepping around the table he knelt and gestured for her to proceed.   
  
She opened her package. “It’s that time.”  
  
“So I see.” He didn’t say “already?” or “again?” – he was too polite to mention how swiftly Earth’s seasons passed for his kind. He simply lowered a hand for her to step into. “Where would you like to put it this year?”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>   
  
“Nice placement,” Sam said, looking up, impressed. “Very well hung.”  
  
“Yep,” Mikaela said, leaning on his shoulder. “Wanna try it out?”  
  
“Wild Decepticons couldn’t keep me away.”  
  
Things were just getting good when they were interrupted by Brawn in full grumpy mode.   
  
“Oh come on,” the doughty mech said, putting his hands on his non-existent hips. “What’s that doing up there? You’re not going to keep cluttering up our nice clean base with your terrestrial life forms are you?”   
  
Jazz appeared out of the stem corridor just then. “Naughty! Nice work, Mikaela.” He sauntered over to admire the green tuft dotted with white berries. “Ah, now, you know the tradition, Brawn, c’mere!” He snagged Brawn’s arm, pulling him directly underneath.  
  
This was slightly hazardous, given Brawn’s strength, so Sam and Mikaela hastily scurried out of range as Brawn sputtered in outraged protest.  
  
“Let go, you slagging… CPU-fried… overclocked little… mmph!”  
  
Funnily enough, though, he let himself be spun about and dipped over Jazz’s extended leg, kissed soundly with a scrape and clatter of metal, and released again with another spin in classic Astaire style.   
  
“As you were,” Jazz said, waving at the humans before transforming and heading out, whistling a jaunty tune.   
  
“Gah!” Brawn said, wiping his mouth and stomping away. He glanced back, though, and smirked at the direction Jazz had taken.   
  
Sam and Mikaela watched his retreating back. “This is only the beginning,” Mikaela said after a while, grinning.  
  
“Oh boy,” said Sam.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The trick to optimal – and Mikaela forgave herself this particular pun – mistletoe placement, was to find a place, preferably narrowish, like a hallway, where the traffic wasn’t too heavy, causing pile-ups, or too light, such that no one found themselves underneath with no one else in sight. The entrance to the first and largest room of the med-bay seemed to be ideal. Abutting as it did the hangar, nearly everyone passed by, and could ostensibly avoid it if they wished, but could just as easily come under the influence of a perhaps silly but ancient and well-meaning human superstition. Mikaela and Prime had performed this tradition every year from the first the hangar had been excavated, hanging the beribboned clump in a different place each time.  
  
Sunny and Sides contrived to head that way quite often. Jazz seemed to catch just about everyone there at one time or another, as did Ratchet. Hound and Mirage bumped into each other genuinely by accident, but complied with tradition with no ascertainable hesitation. Ironhide protested loudly but submitted to Ratchet, Skyfire and then Jazz in succession.  
  
One morning Bumblebee caught Prowl’s hand as they passed each other, and pointed upward to remind him. They were still kissing when Prime passed through from the stem corridor to the smaller one leading to his office. Prime kept going, making no comment as he went through the doorway, but they were still kissing when he leaned back just enough to allow one optic a view past the arch. Prime hummed tunelessly as he processed the latest mega-batch of email.  
  
Maggie was the first to catch Prime himself that year. He tried to explain that he honestly hadn’t been avoiding the spot, but simply hadn’t been there when anyone else was, too. No one believed him except Bumblebee. She had been looking for Ratchet and happened to glance upward when she didn’t find him in the med-bay. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked Prime, who emerged from his office to ask her if he could be of any assistance.  
  
“Mistletoe,” Prime said, rather pleased. “Yes, it is.”  
  
Maggie looked up – and up – at him. “Oh my,” she said, nevertheless grinning from ear to ear. Nothing loath, Prime folded himself down so she could reach, and Maggie found herself face to face with a face as big as she was. She placed her hands on either side of his nose and kissed him soundly right on the tip. “MWAH!” she said, for emphasis, laughing as she let go and he stood. She could have sworn his optical shutters winked as he withdrew, back into the war room. She continued her search for Ratchet, but inside she was squealing like any teenaged fangirl.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
During the course of cleaning and arranging and decorating and stocking provisions for the Cybertronian Embassy’s annual Winter Holiday party, Sam or Mikaela turned their backs for just a moment, and Dani, as toddlers are wont to do, toddled off at a surprising speed directly for the corridor leading to the oil bath.   
  
Most of the embassy was childproofed, if only by dint of the equipment being at least ten feet off the ground or higher. Power conduits tended to run through the walls or come down from the camouflaged solar collectors in the mountains to the north. The computer area and the entertainment equipment in the human-scaled section had had to be rearranged and cleaned up, but that was about it. Red Alert's systems were already keyed to detect even so small a presence in any given chamber or hall.   
  
Cavernous spaces and booming voices and even the thump of huge footsteps through the floor were ordinary things. The grooved, sloping ramp and the splashing sounds and the bright, moving reflections on the walls and the heavy yet somehow comforting scent and the heat rising up through the air drew her with their newness. Here was a place she hadn't been before, even with Mama or Dada.   
  
Tracks and Smokescreen hastily submerged themselves, so as not to present an enticement, as Dani came around the curve beyond the control room. She kept near the wall and thus avoided the slick central path where the oil drained off emerging mechs. She tottered fearlessly to the pool's edge, looking up at the star-like lights, and out at their reflections in the dark, rippling surface. The heat this close, and the now-overwhelming smell made her wrinkle her nose. She shook her little dark head no and turned around, starting back up the ramp, only then noticing Jazz a short distance behind her.   
  
"Dass!" she said, and held up her arms.   
  
"You got it, sweets," he said and picked her up, settling her into the modified - i.e. padded - cache in his forearm.   
  
Mikaela met them at the entrance to the corridor. Sam had had a bad moment when he realized Dani was no longer in the bouncy chair where he'd left her, but Bee was calming him. Mikaela had discovered that she, like her own mother, was far from the overprotective type. Sam more than made up for it, but Mikaela found that she trusted the robots completely. Maybe more than she trusted herself. A better cadre of governesses and nursemaids she couldn't imagine. Bumblebee, Ratchet, First Aid and Perceptor would even change diapers, and if that wasn't above and beyond, she didn't know what was. Dani waved to her from the best high-chair ever.   
  
"She can stay with me," Jazz said.   
  
"Until she gets hungry or needs changing," Mikaela agreed.   
  
"You betcha."   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It wasn’t called the Winter Holiday party merely to be PC. Everything Prime did in the diplomatic arena had more than one reason and generally several. Cybertron had had no seasons, its axis having been sensibly exactly perpendicular to the ecliptic, except for conventions such as Turbofox Hunting Season or Forging Season or Rustlet Season, Cybertronians as a whole tending to be very organized about their natural phenomena. Earth’s seasons were therefore interesting and provided the minimal excuse Autobots liked for a nice big shindig.   
  
Teletraan organized the festivities, including the international guest list; expediting the security concerns of official personages; even requisitioning the refreshments for both species and working out the logistics of a hyper-efficient coat check. Most of the Earth’s Autobots would be there, and the groups that weren’t, like the Build Team and the Bullet Trains, would be teleconferencing the event with annex parties of their own.   
  
As the wan December sun set, shading the light dusting of snow a vivid pink, the guests began to arrive, bused in, limo’d, or flown, via their own vehicles or with Autobot friends. The access road between the hangar entrance and Wheeljack’s thoroughly locked and shielded workshop had become a parking lot.   
  
Dress for humans was everything from business casual to ritz and glitz, and the Autobots had put a high gloss on their armor. There was plenty of bright purple high-grade and chartreuse ultra-high-grade to go around, and Ratchet, unbeknownst to anyone but Prime until much later, had tampered somehow with the alcohol. No matter how much one drank, no individual’s blood alcohol level would exceed that which gave to the average drinker a nice, mild buzz.   
  
A water fountain – mercury fumes being poisonous to humans – had been set up in the center of the hangar. Designed and built by Grapple of local stone, the ancient Cybertronian style didn’t deter guests from various desert regions, New World and Old, from claiming artistic influence of their cultures upon the strangely graceful curves and angles. Grapple made no effort to dissuade them, merely noting how the mathematics of beauty seemed to move nearly all intelligent species in similar ways. (Except the Skuxxix, who were said to have no sense of aesthetics whatsoever; a trait of such rarity the Skuxxix took pride in it.)   
  
Oratorio set up a dance floor in one corner, partitioned by a not quite fabric mesh curtain wall. The floor itself was a giant species of OLED screen, or an equivalent, with mostly abstract visualizations that moved in time with the music, but sometimes switched to dizzying and hyper-real depictions of star fields or the Earth swooping away from beneath the dancers’ feet, or endless grassy meadows dotted with flowers, or pristine snow with sunlight or moonlight striking rainbows off the snow crystals. The speakers were peculiar, facing inward, and configured in such a way that everyone within the enclosure and on the dance floor could hear the music perfectly – nice and loud but crystal clear. Yet the moment one moved past the entry, the music suddenly became faint, as though barely heard from a block away. There was something of a traffic jam at the entrance for a while as everyone played with the effect.   
  
“I don’t know how he does it,” Keller said to his wife, Lucia, watching as Prime folded himself up (or down, rather) in order to speak with the Queen of the Netherlands, who had distinguished herself leading humanitarian efforts around the world – not to mention charming the figurative socks off the Protectobots, with whom she had worked closely of late. Prime of course spoke flawless Dutch. “On anyone else that position would look ridiculous. He just looks more like a samurai.”   
  
“If you tried to do that, hon,” Lucia said, affectionately patting his arm, “you’d never get up again without help.”  
  
“You’re right,” Keller admitted, nodding. “Bobby Epps told me they have eternally self-lubricating joints. Wish mine were like that.”   
  
“Mine, too,” Lucia agreed.  
  
The Twins and Atrandom went by on their way outside, caroling, “God rest ye, merry Autobots,” followed by a gaggle of giggling younger humans, with the aim of singing to the stars. It was a beautiful night. Up on the mesa top, Hound had a bonfire hologram going around a Cybertronian portable heater. The illusion was very convincing; Hound’s foglets providing even the scent of burning oak and holly with hints of cedar and sandalwood and palo santo. Skyfire and Borealis sat to either side like winged sphinxes – light and dark, day and night – and Yasmina, escaping the crowds below with Beachcomber, was reminded of both ancient legends and  _The NeverEnding Story_. These sphinxes could shoot lasers all right but not from their eyes.   
  
“Heya, Hound. Yasmina, Beachcomber, Skyfire, Lissi,” Glen said, following Maggie up topside. Normally Glen would have been packing to leave for his cousins’ place in the old DC neighborhood, but five months ago his cousins had been killed in a Decepticon attack. Now Maggie and the Autobots were his only family.  
  
Hound, already seated facing the “fire”, held out his arms and the humans climbed into his lap. Beachcomber, reclining against Skyfire’s foot, waved at them and smiled. Yasmina, reclining against Beachcomber’s side, did the same.   
  
Midnight ticked closer. The two sphinx-jets, like gatekeepers between worlds, watched the stars, keyed to the exact moment of the solstice, feeling the geometry in the flux of gravitational fields. “ _Now_ ,” they murmured, as the Earth in its orbit passed through the exact point on the arc where the tilt of its northern axis was the most inclined away from the sun.   
  
“Happy Holidays, everyone,” Maggie said softly, raising her mug of hot cider, sipping amid the multi-voiced replies.


	52. Seeking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Strake emerges from his cocoon, Thundercracker has a question for Prime, and the Autobots are presented with the first Decepticon defector on Earth.

2023 – February  
  
Strake clawed his way back online. Every system was running on minimum; his body felt hot and brittle, fuel lines slack within his heavy limbs, darkened energon sluggish and thick.   
  
The lightless cave was damp and the weight of stone above him, pressing his shoulders, had not shifted. Checking his chronometer, he found that only a handful of voors had passed since he'd fallen into stasis. Strake hated stasis. Too much could change too quickly and you onlined at the wrong end of the pecking order. If you onlined at all. There were rumors about whether Hook’s stasis trays were really that unreliable, or if some mechs ended up in clandestine experiments.   
  
He couldn't turn or move forward. Thrashing, his sharp armor gouging the rock, he fought backward with energy reserves he couldn't afford to squander. Sunlight. He needed to get out into the air and let this boring little star replenish him. His legs kicked out into the waterfall that hid this cave. The force of the torrent had little effect, but his hands were weak, scrabbling ineffectually at the slippery rock, and his own weight pulled him over the edge. He was too depleted to transform.   
  
Fortunately, the pool beneath the falls was deep and contained no problematic sharp rocks. The water, by no means cold, boiled around him, cooling his overheated frame only slightly. No, he thought, sinking to the bottom. He had to get out or he'd be another who knows how many voors in stasis again, covered in the green filth that teemed beneath the surface.   
  
By the time he reached the shore it was all he could do to cling to the rocks near the pool's outlet, fading in and out of consciousness. Water had sluiced into the remaining, slowly healing rent in his armor. Nothing vital had shorted, but it was a disconcerting feeling. Sunlight pounded him, more fiercely than the water, slowly refilling his reserves. More green shimmered and waved and flickered before his optics. Gaudy planet, sporting and spouting and sprouting in weird extravagances of color and reek and raucous sound. He shut down his optics, conserving power.  
  
He was exposed, though, and as soon as he was able, he crawled beneath the shelter of the jungle. This instinct to hide made him angry. Hone hadn't done anything improper, he'd merely been too close to Galvatron at a bad time, and hadn't dodged quickly enough. Yet, with Skyquake fled, Strake knew he couldn't return to the other Decepticons in this system - they would treat him as a deserter. Trines were always sentenced and executed as one.   
  
Orns passed, both fleeting and interminable. Recharge claimed him most of the time and he wished he had a better hiding place, though he wondered if anyone had come looking for him at all. Certainly Skyquake hadn't. Three thousand vorns together, discarded as if it meant nothing. Strake wanted to scour this island with fire and lightning until there was nothing left but molten stone.  
  
He searched for sign of his former compatriots, opening both common and highly encrypted channels. It was risky – Soundwave could tell who was listening and could be counted on to report immediately to Galvatron.   
  
Over the personal trine frequency was nothing but silence, or the echoes of his own thoughts. He erased that frequency's tag, trembling. There was only a small amount of Seeker comm, and that was distant and subdued, stealthed. Where was everyone else? It took nearly an orn, between bouts of helpless recharge, but as he pried his way gingerly onto the planetary network, he found reference after reference to the Decepticons.   
  
Galvatron had promised them an easy conquest, and now they'd been pushed back to the fourth planet. Everything was going wrong. The Autobots were supposed to be all but vanquished! How had this happened?   
  
Three small towns, villages really, lay within his limited range, whose signals were not cut off completely by the mountainous terrain. He listened to their radio and satellite internet chatter. Much of it was incomprehensible at first. Strake had been built for battle, shortly after the civil war had started. He had no first-contact programming, and his experience was geared toward destroying other cultures, not studying them.   
  
The humans' revolting eating, mating and recharge practices seemed to take up most of their time. No better than the animals they kept as food or pets, he thought. Yet over the orns he lay in the jungle, he noticed things about them. They laughed and fought and complained and were lazy and stupid and cruel; and they loved and hated and defended their young and created crude artforms and told each other stories.   
  
Best not to forget, as well, that one of these insects – albeit with an unprecedented object to hand – had singly laid Megatron low. Their ground-to-air missiles were not to be trifled with. Strake could attest to that personally from previous encounters, though it had been Ironhide who had damaged him so badly this time. (No shame in that, Strake assured himself. Ironhide had been a warrior, too, even before.)   
  
By the time he could fly again, attain escape velocity again, he had learned that his landing site was in the eastern half of Papua New Guinea. That the remaining Seeker eyries were in the Andes, the Alps, and the command trine with their two sub-wings in the Himalayas. He knew the histories of the human cultures that lived near those places, brief as they were, and had a broad understanding of the rocky-planet geological forces that had shaped the mountains. He could speak, if it became convenient, the most broadly-used human languages. He knew the names, both what they called “real” and the online computer “usernames” of everyone in the three villages.  
  
It took four tries before his engines started properly. Transformation had been agonizing and slow. Once airborne, he fought to reach the Earth-Sun L1point, where he could rest again, enjoying full exposure to solar rays, though he had to dodge a couple of helio-observatory satellites there. He kept his systems on standby, hoping to avoid the notice of the Autobot deep-Seekers. He couldn’t stay there long. He needed to decide what he was going to do.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There were three active Seeker eyries left on Earth. Two in the largest mountain ranges on the largest land mass, one in the mountains of the south-western continent. Not caring what the humans named these ranges, the nine trines had nevertheless chosen iconic peaks the filthy insects were hesitant to bomb into rubble. Their shielding was more than adequate against anything but nukes, and possibly Perceptor. The other seventeen surviving trines had gone with Galvatron to Mars, setting up eyries on a spectacular volcano, rather pleased with themselves.   
  
Thundercracker circled the eastern eyrie. The tallest non-submerged peak on this planet was puny compared to the Martian volcano, but the weather was more interesting, which made Skywarp happy. Storm-surfing gave him something to do when they weren't engaged in battle, which made Thundercracker happy.   
  
"What took you so long?" was Starscream's greeting as Thundercracker landed.   
  
"Had a run-in with that new deep-Seeker." He allowed Starscream to stroke his wings, then followed his commander inside to the central chamber. "He's definitely that dark jet Galvatron shot down." The one they didn't have a name for, which still bothered Thundercracker. That the Autobots had been capable of reforging someone so extensively bothered him even more. The Autobots by themselves should not have had the resources for something like that, which meant the humans had aided them. If the humans had aided in such a complex undertaking, it meant the humans were learning a lot more about Cybertronians than Thundercracker was in any way comfortable with.   
  
"I suppose it's too much to hope that you blew him out of the sky."   
  
Thundercracker scowled. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t  _tried_. "You know what deep-Seeker armor is like." Possibly a mistake. Starscream knew very well – knew just about everything there was to know about deep-Seekers, short of being one. This wasn't a good topic of conversation. "There's still activity at the hydro-electric plant you wanted to hit, but the humans aren't pulling that much power from there."   
  
When they'd first arrived after Megatron's fall, it had been easy to cripple huge sections of the continents by taking out one or two power generating facilities and letting their precariously balanced networks shred themselves. Since then, however, the humans had been decentralizing their grids, building numerous smaller plants whose power was used locally instead of transmitted over long distances over aerial lines that were easy to pick off. It had been a mildly amusing pastime for slow days, flying along popping the fragile towers one after another.   
  
"Wretched Autobot interference." Starscream rubbed cheek spars with Thundercracker as an acceptance of the change in the discussion’s vector, then stalked to the holo display. "They're breaking their own rules now," he sneered. "So much for allowing young civilizations – though one could hardly call this planet's infestation by so proper a name – to grow and mature in their own way."  
  
If their enemy was losing their honor, Thundercracker thought, not liking it at all; what did that mean for the Decepticons? He had long had the uncomfortable feeling that his faction had travelled farther astray from their ancient function than Megatron had intended. The Autobots had forced them to change, adapting to unexpectedly determined opposition.   
  
“I want you to take a look at the nuclear plant in the desert east of the main Autobot base again.” Starscream chirped him the coordinates. The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona. Thundercracker sometimes wished Starscream and most of the other Decepticons would use the human names. The insistence upon not bothering because the humans weren’t worth the effort was getting tiresome. “We should have destroyed such targets in the beginning.” Nibbling on Thundercracker’s lateral sensory fins, Starscream seemed to have forgotten that they had made attempts, and had been viciously repulsed by combined human/Autobot defenses.   
  
“Yes, Starscream.” Shuddering, Thundercracker took flight.  
  
Coercing himself onto the Autobot frequencies was almost painful, it had been so long since his mind had traveled there. And the world nets were not unguarded. He slid along passively, searching for any possible point of contact. There was a public address, but each time he tried to key it in the message bounced.   
  
 _Let me in, frag you! I need to talk to the Prime._    
  
 _Do you really?_  Teletraan inquired, frosty, unfazed.   
  
Slagging uppity AI. Thundercracker calmed himself by an effort of will, but before he could compose a civil reply, Prime skimmed neatly into the channel.   
  
 **What do you want, Thundercracker?**    
  
Prime's tone was so utterly, scrupulously neutral it made a tiny, long unlooked-for part of Thundercracker's mind want to curl up in the dark far away and keen.  
  
 _Those tanks and the others, the ones who appeared suddenly, not long ago. They are not drones._  He hated the formal tone his transmission had taken. Not deferential, he told himself. Not really. He had forgotten what it was like to feel the Prime’s words and harmonics fill his CPU. It was a seductive lie, he thought automatically. Another Autobot trick.   
  
 **No. They are not.**  
  
 _The humans call your First Lieutenant “Lazarus.” I looked up the mythology reference. If you can truly rekindle the dead, I want Saberfall and Novawind back. Give me my first trinemates back and I will join your faction._  
  
 **Oh Thundercracker, would that it was so easy. Not everyone’s pattern remains cohesive within the Allspark. The rekindled of the Graveyard Legion are such, true. I could try to find your trinemates if you wish, but will not Galvatron do so? I suppose I need not have asked. Do not join us as a mere transaction, or to repay a perceived debt.**  
  
 _You won’t do it, then._  
  
 **I didn’t say so. If I could bring back everyone who has died in this war… Not all are willing to return, you understand. I will look within for Saberfall and Novawind. See if they remember their names. I will inform you of the results, either way.**  
  
 _All right. Guess I can’t ask for better._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Even staying low, well below the most effective radar boundary, flying within Seekerbane’s range made Strake’s wings itch. Everyone knew Autobots shot Seekers on sight. Didn't they?   
  
Except. Seekerbane could have destroyed the command trine, Strake had learned, but had not. The accounts online were all indirect, but the humans were enthusiastic in their dramatizations. There had also been one, the white-armored one who could have killed Strake before Ironhide had shot him down. Strake had considered it a disgusting display of Autobot weakness, but he was glad to have escaped. And the Prime was accepting...no, he hadn't called it surrender. Amnesty. That was it. Starscream and his command trine had ranted about subversive phrasing and more of the usual filthy Autobot lies.   
  
North of the base…no, the Cybertronian Embassy, were mountains fringed with innumerable canyons and dry creek-beds. He could hide there, watching, prudently waiting not gathering his courage of course; Seekers were fearless. He didn’t want to make such a crucial, life-altering decision rashly. He needed all the intel he could get. It felt like the longest week of his life.   
  
Singing jolted him out of recharge. The moon hung low and yellow in the velvet sky just after sunset. The voice was terrifying; broken and beautiful, spark-rending. Strake moved like the shadows, millimeter by millimeter, creeping, inexorable. Silently, he crouched within stooping distance, watching. The white, door-winged mech – Prowl, the very one who hadn’t killed him – didn't know he was there. Closer, closer. Strake could snatch him up with a quick swoop, drag him to the heights and drop him if he proved troublesome.   
  
Strake suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of a butylpotassium pellet gun. Prowl held it quite steady. Optics met optics, both of them weirdly calm.   
  
"What now?" Strake asked softly, his subharmonics elaborating more than he had intended – you are white and I am black and we are both the color of death to the people of this world.   
  
Prowl lowered his gun. “Prime?” He spoke aloud, but Strake was certain he had transmitted a query via tight-beam as well. In a few moments, the hated and reviled leader of the Autobot rebel fugitives appeared at the head of the canyon. Stately and imposing, alert yet composed.   
  
 **What is your purpose?**  The Prime used an older Decepticon channel without hesitation. Without rancor.   
  
For a moment, the word would not come. Strake knew hesitation could prove fatal. Optimus Prime had once single-handedly held off Megatron, Starscream and Grindor for a full breem until Ironhide’s reinforcements had arrived.   
  
“Amnesty,” Strake whispered at last, shivering. Something was wrong inside his body. He fell more than climbed from his perch, legs collapsing beneath him, and white static flooded his CPU.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Onlining in an unfamiliar medical bay, Strake found himself unrestrained, laid out on a repair table. Empty missile launchers extended from his arms. He stared at them for a moment before retracting them, peripherally aware of several individuals in the chamber.   
  
“Hello,” said a red and white mech, slowly approaching the table, hands conspicuously empty in a human gesture of peaceable intent. Before Strake could process that weirdness, a larger bright green mech, who he immediately recognized as Ratchet, came up beside him.   
  
“Easy. We removed some of your ammunition as a safety precaution.”  
  
Strake nodded. That had always been a standard procedure, he remembered. He should be terrified – captured by Autobots! In the clutches of the vile Ratchet! Prowl, Ironhide and Prime stood nearby but out of the way of the medics. Ironhide’s cannons were out but not spinning. Prime had a hand firmly on his shoulder. Strake couldn’t seem to muster the energy to be too worried about it. They would have checked him very thoroughly for bombs or other devices as well. He hoped they’d found nothing because he hadn’t knowingly been carrying anything of the kind.   
  
Ratchet ran a scan over the rent in Strake’s armor, nearly closed now. “And I powered down those regrowth protocols – your systems have undergone enough strain lately. How do you feel?”   
  
“Tired,” Strake said. “Hot.” He was going to have to do a lot of explaining soon.   
  
“The overheating is due to having to regenerate without medical assistance. Your body went into high gear to mend the damage. Resilience can be costly.” The medic chuffed in irritation. “Why didn’t you go to Hook?”  
  
Might as well drain the cube in one gulp. “We don’t know where he is. The Constructicons have been AWOL for over four years.” As had he, technically.   
  
The mechs around him stirred uneasily. Ratchet shook his head. “I’m sorry, Strake. Never mind.” Stalking over to a row of spools suspended on a wall, he pulled out differing lengths of various wire and plaited them together. Cutting them neatly, he brought the plait to Strake. “Eat. You’re low on some basic elements, but other than that and the hole in your ventral armor, you’re in surprisingly good shape. Your core temperature should return to normal in a few hours now that you’ve been transfused and refueled.”   
  
Strake sat up – slowly, aware of the twitch in Ironhide’s arms – and took the plait, nibbling cautiously. Ratchet nodded and the red and white mech patted Strake’s knee before withdrawing. Prime and Prowl approached as Strake finished the plait.   
  
Prime offered an arm cable. The formalities, and interrogation, could be gotten over with very quickly if Strake agreed. Hesitation was unbecoming. He had decided. Raising his arm, he opened a port. Ironhide growled, but Prime established a careful link – Strake was a known “hacker”, participating in most of the attacks on Teletraan and Event Horizon and the humans’ net. Strake shuttered his optics. Prime’s virtual presence was, if anything, more powerful than his physical. Who could reprogram whom?   
  
 _In November of 2018, I was shot down in battle. I fled to a cave in Papua New Guinea…_  
  
Strake’s report was delivered with the dispassion and thoroughness of long habit, but with greater honesty. Lying hadn’t been punished among the Decepticons, only being caught, and then if the lie was clever or entertaining the sentence would be light. Once his part was completed, Prime gave him the terms. He could join the Autobots with a minimum of one thousand local years parole under constant supervision.   
  
"If you remain on this planet and do not join us as an Autobot, the humans will wish to capture and try you as a war criminal. We will be obligated to help them." Prime tilted his head slightly. "By your own admission, nothing binds you here. This galaxy is largely unexplored."   
  
Strake looked down.  _I'm not delta. I don't want to be alone._  An admission like an energon blade against his spark chamber, but it was a truth of his forging. His kind weren't built for solitude.   
  
 **What of Skyquake?**  Prime's harmonics were kindly meant and indicated that he needn't answer if he didn't wish to. Prime was merely outlining his options.   
  
Strake didn’t answer. Prowl approached his other side as Prime closed the link and withdrew his cable. Ratchet came forward as well and altered the color of Strake’s optics. His visual perception shifted minutely toward the UV end of the spectrum. Ratchet also gave him the file for the Autobot sigil. Strake had never taken up an Earth alt mode, so the next time he transformed his faction badge would also transform.   
  
“You are not to leave my scanning range,” Prowl said gravely. “When I must recharge, Bluestreak will take over your supervision.”  
  
“Bluestreak’s aim is better than mine,” Ironhide felt compelled to add from across the room.   
  
 _And what’s your scanning range?_  Strake inquired silkily, accepting Prowl’s private comm frequency with an insouciant click of his mandibles.   
  
 _You’re a smart mech,_  Prowl told him, leaning very close.  _Figure it out._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They let him into the Autobot cloud mind advisedly. Strake already knew caution when it came to voicing his thoughts - carelessness among the Decepticons could make you dead in a hurry. Smokescreen warned him that the Autobots might not be entirely sympathetic, or polite. Would probably, at least some of them, be hostile. Strake felt a certain bravado was called for.   
  
"Let's see what they've got," he said. It was unthinkable to allow anyone to know how lost he felt, trineless. He almost - almost - hated to fly, with no-one at his wingtips.   
  
So much banter! Everyone was so relaxed with each other. The insults were familiar enough, but they - for the most part - lacked an edge. And the teasing of the Prime! Strake found it offensive at first, how they treated their leader. THE Prime! There were old imperatives yet imbedded in his code perhaps.  
  
He was also discomfited to find out his approach to the embassy had not been as stealthy as he’d thought. “Perceptor spotted you the moment you entered our airspace,” Prowl told him.   
  
“You were watching me the whole time.”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Prime suspected that I was going to defect?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Prowl, as always, answered Strake’s questions openly. These people scared the slag out of him.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2023 - April  
  
Prowl cradled Strake close, cables seated, but he withheld the full transfer.  _You must be certain,_  Prowl told him.  _It must be your choice. If you continue to hold the humans in contempt then your interaction with the other Autobots will be more difficult._  Prowl was in no hurry. He didn't like accessing these memories either, and this he fully admitted to Strake.   
  
 _I don't scare that easily,_  Strake said, grinning. Nothing a puny human experienced could have much of an effect, he was certain. Prowl gave him a look. And pushed the files through.   
  
When the screaming stopped, and Strake pulled his hands away from his midsection to find himself unchanged and whole in body, Prowl held him, stroking his helm and wings, keeping the link open and sending reassurance until the shaking eased.   
  
 _The things we've done,_  Strake whispered. There had been more to the files than Ixchel's death; childhood days of running and play, swimming, the best chocolate sundae ever, a first bouquet of roses, the comforting feel of a favorite old velveteen blanket, a heart-lifting concerto with Spanish guitar in Berlin, the surge of emotion at the sight of a lover's face.   
  
 _Undoing the programmatic inhibitions regarding attacks on civilians is one of the worst mistakes of this war,_  Prowl said. The Autobots, having grasped desperately at very old military programs from Ironhide and others, still retained those inhibitions, and the strong protective impulses as well, which the Decepticons had lost, or twisted. Prowl showed Strake the old programs side-by-side with the newer imperatives Prowl had received from Sentinel, which were eerily similar to Megatron's reprogramming of the Cons.  _I know you're conditioned to regard anything an Autobot tells you as a lie. You're going to have to decide for yourself._    
  
A part of Strake didn't want to decide. He wanted Prowl to tell him, just wanted to follow orders. It was so much easier.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Stretched out on the mesa top, Prowl looked up at the stars. Strake lay beside him, watching him. “In 85 years, my sentence will be completed,” Prowl said quietly.   
  
 _Then you will leave me, too._  He hadn't meant to express that thought. Sometimes Prowl’s honesty was horrifying. And obviously contagious. Learning what Prowl had done, and what had been done to him, left Strake feeling as though all his gyros had failed at once.   
  
Prowl approximated a sigh, imitating Blades.  _It's a big universe,_ he said. You  _can go where you wish, whenever you wish. I submit, however, that you will always know where to find_  me.   
  
 _Where Prime is,_  Strake realized.  _Or wherever he sends you._    
  
Prowl smiled.  _Exactly._    
  
Strake relaxed against him. It wasn't a trine bond, it wasn't even a promise. Merely a simple statement of a fundamental law of physics. He could live with that.


	53. Head-On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playing chicken with semis! Turned into P/B/R so fast it made my teeth rattle. ^__^ Yes, this is movie!verse, but I've - as I often do - borrowed some details from G1 and RiD.

2023  
  
“Fall back, Bumblebee!” Prime shouted, even while he gunned his engine. Bee slowed and pulled off at the overlook as they passed. Optimus continued around the hairpin and up the next grade, putting on speed as though he was on a level straightaway.   
  
Bumblebee opened his doors, and Sam and Mikaela, long accustomed to such cues, immediately got out so he could transform. Bee’s optics were glued to Prime. Finally the humans could see what the robots had long before detected. Up the mountain, at the other end of the long grade Prime had just begun, another big rig was coming down.  
  
Black, a tanker, with… Sam blinked. Red windows? That wasn’t legal, was it? Not on the windshield, he was pretty certain. Reflexively he and Mikaela both looked for the tell-tale sigil. And there it was, on the door, looking like just a part of a shipping company’s logo. Decepticon.  
  
“Who is it?” Mikaela asked. She was pretty sure she’d remember a ‘Con with an alt form like that. In robot mode he must be nearly as big as Optimus, though this truck had a shorter front.  
  
“Scourge,” Bumblebee said flatly, as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. A neat trick when one didn’t strictly speaking have a mouth.   
  
“Oh, no way,” Sam said. No way, he thought, was Optimus Prime going to play chicken with another big truck. Was he? He was. “No way!” He bounced on his toes, leaning forward next to Bee at the guard rail, he didn’t even want to blink, didn’t want to miss anything. It was like in  _The Matrix II_  only with just the semis. And then he noticed how Bee’s hands were crumpling up the steel guard rail.  
  
“Wait. He’ll turn, right? He’ll be okay. Optimus isn’t stupid, he’ll…” Optimus wasn’t turning. Scourge wasn’t turning.  
  
“No,” Bee murmured, distressed. “Optimus, don’t…”   
  
“Oh shit,” said Mikaela.  
  
Sam didn’t turn away. Refused to not bear witness. At the moment of impact, Bee curled around them, their living shield. Because there would be shrapnel.  
  
They felt the crash through their feet, through their lungs, through the curved bones of their faces. Their ears rang with it, their eyes ached, as they flinched away from the heat of explosions. Sam abruptly wondered what Scourge had had in his big shiny chrome tank. Oh god. Optimus.  
  
The crashing noises should have subsided by now. But it sounded like something was coming toward them, rolling down the side of the mountain. Bee snatched them up and ran, cradling them to his chest, though the acceleration forces were still painfully jarring. They held on to him and to each other, waiting for it to be over.   
  
Bee turned and stopped after only a handful of strides. Sam and Mikaela peeked out from between his fingers. The black truck lay on its side in the pullout where they’d been standing, badly crumpled, but Sam wasn’t sure how much of that translated to real damage. The engine was dead, but he wouldn’t bet on the robot. Bee eyed the truck warily for a second, then bounded up the side of the mountain with his humans, setting them down on the switchback road, several meters below where Optimus was.  
  
“Mikaela,” Bee said as he put her on her feet. “Watch Scourge. If he so much as twitches, shout for me.” She nodded, though she wanted to see if Optimus was all right as much as Sam did.  
  
Sam followed as Bumblebee ran to Optimus’ side. Prime was nose first in the ditch on the upslope side of the road, the left half of his front end smashed all to hell. Fires started by the explosion were spreading. They needed Inferno and his cohorts ASAP. Sam was sure Bee was already on it.   
  
“Optimus!” Bumblebee cried, touching the truck’s panels here and there, shaking the cab, brushing dirt and oil from the headlights – even though the left one was a shattered mess.  _Optimus!_  No answer.  
  
Oh god. Sam joined his voice to Bee’s entreaties, stealing a glance down at Mikaela. She kept watch, but he could see her face, expressionless but for the gleam of wetness down her cheeks. “Ratchet?”  
  
“On his way,” Bee assured him. “Along with Inferno, Red Alert and the others.” It was good this wasn’t a windy day. Bee crouched down at Optimus’ front end, one hand on the crumpled grille, head resting just above the right side headlight. Never ceasing his transmitted calls.  _Optimus! Optimus!_    
  
“He’s…just offline, right?” Sam said, worried by Bee’s sudden quiet. He felt like he’d stumbled into hell, fire encircling them, sucking away their air. Prime had to be okay. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. He had shied away from that option even back at the beginning, when Optimus had begged him to put the Cube into his chest… It still gave him nightmares, guessing what would have happened if he had done as ordered. Optimus was all right, nothing Ratchet and Hoist couldn’t fix, given time. Had to be.  
  
“I think so,” Bee said, but his voice wasn’t the steady, calm accent Sam had become used to. There was an odd whimper underneath, like before, when he’d been voiceless.   
  
“Bee!” Mikaela hollered.  
  
Bumblebee was up in an instant, bounding down the slope to where Scourge was trying to transform, groaning and grinding noises coming from within the black, no longer shiny chassis. Bee’s right hand became his solar cannon, firing a rapid series of shots at close range, each point deliberately selected. Scourge stopped moving, stopped making noises.  
  
Mikaela stared up at Bee, not so much accusatory as surprised. “That was a little…”  
  
“Ruthless,” Bee supplied, unfazed. He looked into her eyes until she nodded, a firm set to her mouth. He raced back up to Optimus’ side, beckoning to Mikaela to follow this time. Scourge really was not getting up any time soon, if ever.  
  
“Optimus,” Bee called again, resuming his position at the big rig’s front.  
  
The right side headlight came on.  
  
“Yes!” Sam crowed, punching the air. Mikaela sat down for a moment on the other side of Bee, well off the road in case more traffic, hopefully of the normal human sort, came by.   
  
“Optimus!” Bee stood, and placed his hands on the top of Prime’s grille, to either side of the Autobot sigil. “Are you functional?”  
  
Sam thought of inappropriate Star Trek quotes, but managed not to say anything. Prime wasn’t moving, the light was the only outward sign of life. Mikaela was up again and walking around him, crouching down to peer beneath, assessing his injuries, even if she couldn’t help until Ratchet arrived.  
  
 _Optimus, please…_  If only he had enough power to transfuse Prime’s systems. Bee stepped up the output of his solar collection system, spreading his door wings to the best angle given the time of day. They were at a decent elevation and that helped as well.   
  
At last Prime made a sound, a kind of coughing, garbled noise, incoherent and nonverbal.   
  
“That must be quite a headache,” Sam said helpfully, hands on knees as he leaned forward to look into the one more or less intact headlight. He thought he recalled being told that the headlights often acted as optical receptors when in vehicle mode.   
  
Optimus made more untranslatable noises, possibly Cybertronian swearing, judging by Bee’s amused and startled reaction. “Re…zzzt…pair systems…tional,” he finally rumbled brokenly. Feedback noise followed, mercifully cut off after only a second.  
  
“Ratchet and the others are on their way,” Bumblebee said. “Can you transform?”  
  
“Ac…ledged.” The truck shook for a moment, and some parts came loose from one another, but quickly collapsed together again. “No.”  
  
“Just as well,” Mikaela said. “Hoist can get him back to base easier in this form.” But Ratchet would be able to repair him more easily in robot mode. She bit her lower lip.   
  
“Had us scared there for a second, big guy,” Sam said, patting the front bumper until he realized he didn’t know where the front bumper went when Optimus transformed to robot mode.   
  
“Scourge?” Prime’s voice sounded a little firmer.  
  
“Down,” Bee said. “Offline, maybe more than that. He’s not going anywhere for a while in either case.”  
  
“Good. Wouldn’t…rzzzk…want to…do that again.” Sparks shot out and static discharge crackled across his chassis as he tried to transform again. Bee could hear his transformation cog grind, then catch on something and lock up. He winced in sympathy as Prime was reduced again to scrambled electronic sounds that bore little resemblance to speech in any language.   
  
“Augh! Just stay still!” Mikaela said, jumping back, as did Sam. It was horrible to watch him try and fail.   
  
The sirens announced the repair party’s arrival about fifteen minutes later. Inferno, Red Alert and Trailbreaker got to work on the fires immediately. Ratchet rolled right up to Prime and transformed, scanning for some time. “Prime, you’re a mess,” was his official medical pronouncement.   
  
“He can’t transform,” Bee said, fretful in his movements.   
  
Ratchet nodded, patting Bee’s shoulder. “He’ll be all right, we just need to get him back to base. Hoist?”  
  
The green wrecker truck was already maneuvering himself into position. “I shall be careful,” he said, assiduous as ever.   
  
Slowly, and with all sensors honed to detect any further Decepticon intrusions, they got him home. Hoist brought him into the med-bay and lifted him onto the largest table.   
  
“Can you transform now?” Ratchet asked, scanning intently. Sam turned away, not wanting to see Prime fail again, but Mikaela stood on the gantry Ratchet had built for her so she was more on a useful level to work on the ‘Bots.   
  
Again came the horrible grinding, and the catch, metal screaming against metal. Sparks shot from Prime’s underside and the whole truck shook like he was trying to explode.   
  
“Stop, stop,” Ratchet said. “Your transaxle’s bent. Hang on.”  _Brawn? I could use you in here, if you don’t mind?  
  
Yeah? What for?   
  
Prime’s got a bent axle. I need someone strong enough to help me straighten it.   
  
On my way. _  
  
Once Brawn got there, he and Ratchet got the axle unbent just enough that Prime could at last transform without shorting half his systems in pain.   
  
“What the Pit did you do, Prime?” Brawn said, impressed, as Prime lay full length on the table. Both his arms were badly mangled, one shoulder almost completely out of joint, his hands a shredded mess. The humans, with their sensitive digits, so much of their sense of self wrapped up in their fragile manipulating organs, were most unnerved by that. His chest panels were spiderwebbed with cracks, over and among the now constant merge scars. His legs mostly became the back end of the truck, but parts of one shin were also bent, and his dorsal armor was crumpled in several places. There was severe internal damage to more delicate parts as well, and Ratchet started opening panels with his specialized medical codes right away, delving into Prime’s innards, trying to keep up with small cascade failures, damaged relays and circuits, before they became larger problems.  
  
Prime was still, his optics dim, flickering sometimes as Ratchet manipulated something deep inside. Ratchet hissed like a steam engine at one point and blazed into one compartment with his plasma torch on the highest setting. A short blare of more incoherent noise burst from Prime’s vocal processors, though he didn’t move.   
  
“This would be easier if you were offline,” Ratchet said pointedly.  
  
“I’m not moving,” Prime said, patiently explaining the obvious.  
  
“No, that’s not the point. It would be easier on  _me_ , if you were offline.”  
  
Prime raised a supraorbital crest at him.  
  
“Frag it, Optimus, do you trust me or not? Take a nap!”  
  
Prime’s optics flickered, more with amusement than defiance, Sam thought, and with a rather overly dramatic sigh, Prime at last took himself offline.   
  
Now that Prime was offline, Ratchet reached out and laid a hand on Bumblebee’s arm. “His injuries were grave at the crash site,” he said, a strange mixture of emotions coloring his normally gravelly and jovial voice. “They’re merely serious now. He would recover completely without any help from me, in a few orns, I think.”  
  
“But, you will…” Bee began, and Ratchet nodded, already adjusting his medical plasma emitter and setting to work.   
  
“Of course I will. But by the Allspark, he doesn’t need me any more.”  
  
Maybe not for repairs, Bee thought. But they would all still need Ratchet, for being Ratchet.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Interlewd: Prime Pas de Gras  
  
Ratchet yanked his microwelder out of the way as the last linkage repaired itself before his optics. He closed the armor panel with a snap. Moving around to Prime’s head, he placed his hands over the temporal gears and sent a distinctive pulse through the CPU. Prime’s optics blinked on and he sat up. Sam and Mikaela hugged each other and high-fived, er, foured, with Bee.   
  
“Prime,” Bee said. “You must not put yourself needlessly in such danger again.”  
  
“I wouldn’t call that needless, Bumblebee. Scourge isn’t to be trifled with,” Prime said.   
  
“He’s right, you know,” said Ratchet. Prime turned to look at him.  
  
“Ganging up on me?”  
  
Ratchet crossed his arms. “If that’s what it takes.”  
  
Prime growled. Not a threat, just a reaction. But it reminded them all who Megatron’s twin was.   
  
Not in the least intimidated, Bee climbed up onto him, hands grasping Prime’s chest plates with a fond sort of desperation. Prime’s newly repaired arms came around him automatically, and Bee laid his forehead against Prime’s mandibular commisure hinge. A single cable surreptitiously snaked from Bee to Prime, the latter accepting the contact gladly, only holding back the full force of his thought lattices so as not to overwhelm the smaller bot.   
  
 **Aw, Bee** , Prime said, though he rarely used the nickname. Bumblebee’s worries unfolded jerkily, skittering awkwardly between them, half unbidden, trying to hide and yet aching for proper expression. Prime knew Bee didn’t think him suicidal, just a little too ready, Sam’s family’s motto aside, to give up his life for the sake of others. Too ready, when they all needed him so much.   
  
 _Don’t leave us, please never leave us._  Bee extended another cable, and another. He was shaking with desire for spark contact, but they couldn’t risk opening their chests with Sam and Mikaela present. The radiation, especially from Optimus, would kill them. Prime matched him cable for cable, understanding and echoing his desire and restraint. Holding back itself became arousing. Bee wrapped his arms around Optimus’ neck, and felt Prime embrace him even more tightly, their armor creaking and clanging softly. Prime produced a subsonic hum, making the sound resonate through his massive chest, creating a kind of sonar shadow of his spark that Bee could feel in his own chest. Bee’s back arched, his head falling against his door wings. He pushed against Prime, his feet braced on the table between Prime’s legs.   
  
Sam and Mikaela stood staring, uncomprehending for about three rather long seconds. Ratchet merely watched them, refraining from comment. That in and of itself alerted Mikaela. That and the fact that Hoist and Brawn had conveniently absented themselves already. She grabbed Sam by the tee shirt and dragged him outside. She thought Ratchet grinned at her as they left, but it was hard to tell on his face the way his jaw guards hid most of his mouth. Old pervert.  
  
“That was…” Sam said in a rather higher pitch than usual. “They…”  
  
That was  **hot** , was what that was, Mikaela thought, but she knew Sam would freak out. He was weirdly jealous of sharing Bee with anyone but herself, and also weirdly squeamish about…certain things the giant, alien, emotional robots did with each other. She shook her head, loving him anyway. Sam was Sam. His quirks were endearing. “Never mind, Sam,” she said, grinning. “We just need to find a nice quiet, secluded corner to go make out in. Now.”  
  
Meanwhile, Ratchet let Prime and Bumblebee know the humans were at a safe distance. Bee snapped his chest open, moaning, pressing for Prime to do the same. Optimus caressed him in long strokes, touching his central helmet crest to Bee’s for a moment before giving in to the urge, finally allowing his spark chamber to unseal, slowly opening, bathing the med-bay in its steady blue-white light. Bee’s little golden sun shone bravely next to the blue giant, coronas gently lapping at one another. They fleetingly thought to merge, but Prime was still in no condition to do so safely, as Ratchet sharply reminded them, breaking in with his fierce transmission.   
  
 _Come up, then,_  Bee invited him. The three of them hadn’t indulged in a trine with each other since landing on Earth. Prime, holding on to Bumblebee, moved back on the table, making more room. After a brief moment of consideration – and a quick scan to see where the impressionable young humans had gone…ah, there they were, and quite busy themselves, good – Ratchet climbed up, embracing Bee from behind, though he also stroked Prime’s chest with his fingertips. A bit of cable shuffling ensued, initiating the six links that brought all three together. Ratchet thought to keep his own spark chamber closed, merely riding on the waves of pleasure from the other two, but the heat from the bare sparks was getting to him, particularly Prime’s. Optimus was nigh irresistible, singing like the Allspark itself. Ancient yearnings all pointed to him like a lodestone to magnetic north; ineffable and inexorable. He felt his chest part almost of its own volition, adding warm amber fire to the light dancing all about them.   
  
 _Primus, it’s been a while._  He held on tightly, feeling Optimus’ arms – and legs – wrap around them both.   
  
 **Indeed it has** , Prime agreed, and initiated first-stage, drawing them in, spinning their stars so fast so hot, that ancient burning beyond all hope of equilibrium, emotions spilling from each to the others, positive feedback rising till they hovered on the brink. And Prime kept them there, astonishingly, on the electron-fine edge, extending the moment for cycle upon cycle, until Bee and Ratchet began to whimper and shake violently, the power building up too high to be contained any longer and they all slid down, riven into overload.   
  
When they came back online, chests safely closed, Ratchet was surprised they hadn’t fallen off the repair table. But Prime had somehow kept them up there; though poor Bee was rather mashed between the two larger bots. Not that he was complaining. Ratchet scanned them both just to be sure. Bee was happily exhausted, and Prime was…fully recharged and functional. As though the massive head-on collision hadn’t occurred. Only Scourge’s body, had they kept it, would have given evidence; but Autobots were disinclined to take trophies, and Ratchet’s cursory scan of the Decepticon had been unable to pick up a definitive sign of life. Maybe the ‘Cons had retrieved and repaired him, maybe not. The humans might attempt to recycle his carcass, though their car-crushing machines would make no headway upon Cybertronian alloys. It hardly mattered at the moment.   
  
Ratchet sighed and reluctantly got down, leaving Bumblebee still draped over Prime’s chest. Ratchet had CR chambers and growth tanks to tend. “You two stay put,” he said, waving a hand at them. “Yes, you too, Prime. Everything’s fine right now, you can afford to take it easy. I know you’re fully recovered physically. Consider this a bit of R and R.”  
  
Bee and Prime exchanged a bemused look. “Whatever you say,” Bee said, managing to sound sleepy. He snuggled down against Prime, who cradled him and turned on his side so that he could curl around the smaller bot. What was the human term? Oh yes, spooning. Well not quite, since Bee was still facing Prime, but sort of.   
  
Ratchet hummed to himself, pleased at being obeyed without question for once in the matter of rest. As the door to the inner chambers of the med-bay closed behind him, he heard Optimus murmuring Cybertronian endearments and Bee replying similarly. Ratchet’s optics glowed brighter. The affection between those two was special, and delightful, and it was good to see it again in full measure. Ratchet patted the plex on the latest batch of new protoforms recently ensparked. All were due to pairings with Prime, though he suspected that would change now that Atrandom, Wheeljack and Bumblebee’s progeny, was doing so well. New sparks, old friends. Ratchet hummed happily to himself as he made his rounds, and night fell on the Autobot base.


	54. Himalaya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime takes a long walk to think about things and reminisce, and Prime and the Dalai Lama have a chat in the rain.

2023 - August  
  
Optimus Prime walked the Himalayas, alone in body, though as ever in some form of contact with the other Autobots on Earth and many humans. It was pleasant to feel in scale again, and walk where his feet left no scars.   
  
The Prime and the Lord Protector. Always paired, always twins. If one was deactivated by mischance, the other stepped down and a new pair were, over the span of a century, built by the Council of Ancients. Optimus and Megatron had been constructed when the previous Prime, Volant, had been killed in a thermonuclear explosion on an organic planet, and the grieving Lord Protector Alpha Trion resigned.   
  
The Council had been an early casualty of the war. No one had considered in their most dire simulations that Megatron would invade the sanctity of their citadel in Iacon. The mad Lord had ripped their sparks out, torn their bodies to pieces with his own hands. Megatron had disabled Alpha Trion and made him watch, killing him last.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
9 million years ago. Late Miocene.  
  
They had been brought online together, at the same instant, already aware of their purpose, of the tragedy that necessitated their construction, of how rare such occurrences were, and that despite this tragedy it was deeply programmed into them that each could and must rely on the other for the entire span of their lives.   
  
Megatron held Optimus’ head, staying within his field of vision, when they installed the Matrix. They had to move his spark, slightly adjust the chamber – exquisitely uncomfortable and delicate operations, for which he needed to be completely conscious.   
  
 **I’m glad it’s not me,**  Megatron told him ruefully, painfully honest over the frequency only they two shared.  **Oh Ops, I’m sorry, but I’m glad it’s not me.** They both knew Optimus would be a different person when the procedure was complete. A sacrifice only the Prime was required to make.  
  
Optimus wasn’t afraid, exactly. He had, after all, been built and programmed for this. In a real sense he would be incomplete until the Matrix was integrated with his spark, CPU, memory core and several other systems. But he was grateful to have his twin nearby.  **I know, Meg. It’s all right. Just…stay with me.**    
  
Megatron made a small sound and pressed his forehelm to Optimus’, embracing him until the med-bots fussed at him to get out of the way. Masses of cables still needed to be attached to Optimus’ neck and head.  **I won’t leave you, Brother! I won’t! They can’t make me!**    
  
“Lord Alpha was just the same when Volant went under,” said a truly ancient med-bot named Lever, smiling. “Run the cables around him, my dears, there’s plenty of leeway.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2023  
  
If Optimus stepped down, as was customary, who would build the new leaders? The program sets he had written as the core of his successor’s mind had been lost. He could donate nanocultures for a new Prime’s body, but getting Lord Protector cultures would be trickier.   
  
Even if a new pair might be built, could the frames be properly ensparked? If something went wrong, given the less than ideal circumstances, would the resultant mechs be flawed, crazed? Fated to replay Megatron’s role? And even with spark-merging, they had no idea how to create twins deliberately, nor could they fine tune the new sparks’ attributes as the Allspark could. The success with Jazz and the Graveyard Legion notwithstanding, Prime didn’t feel at all qualified for the task of deliberately ensparking a Prime and a Lord Protector.   
  
So much of their civilization was gone, might they adopt the human practice and call for a vote? Were there any twins left to choose from, besides Sunstreaker and Sideswipe? Could they abandon the idea of a ruling diad completely? What system would they choose to put in its place?   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Tenzin Gyatso, 88 years old, broke away from his retinue and ran like a ten-year-old boy toward the robot, robes flying. Optimus, laughing, kneeling smoothly, scooped him up to hold him against his cheek guard.   
  
Attendants fluttered over the breach of protocol, though most were smiling. International camera crews, kept at a respectful – and practical – distance, prayed Teletraan kept the links up and steady, despite the remote location. Optimus returned the Dalai Lama to the ground and to his relieved entourage.   
  
Some effort had been made to find or make a  _kata_ , the traditional white scarf symbolizing purity of intention, large enough. A great length of silk was produced and folded so as not to trail on the ground. Getting it around Optimus’ neck had everyone flummoxed for a moment.   
  
As Tenzin held the silk folds up for Optimus to arrange himself, a gust of wind took the  _kata_  from his hand. It flew up like a dragon kite, whirling in the high mountain air. Ducking swiftly, Optimus caught a loop of the scarf across the back of his helm. Only a few discreet tugs were needed to drape it properly over his chest.   
  
The streets of Dharamsala were too narrow to accommodate Optimus in either form, but a meeting place had been found, and the entire human gathering climbed from the valley floor to reassemble at a large, covered balcony at a hillside hotel, with space below for Optimus to stand without damage. It was August – the height of the monsoon – but Optimus assured them the inevitable rain would not trouble him in the least. The Dalai Lama settled himself into his chair carefully. That run had perhaps not been the wisest of actions. It was a regret easily set aside.   
  
“Did you enjoy your walk in the mountains?” Tenzin asked. His translator, Thupten Jinpa, was present but unneeded, as Optimus spoke fluent Tibetan, his strange accent disappearing quickly the more he heard the Dalai Lama and his attendants speak.   
  
“I did. Very much.”  
  
“And how did you find Tibet?”  
  
“Almost deserted, I’m afraid.” Only a few hardy souls remained encamped in caves, keeping watch. Starscream and his wingmates had made Tibet and Nepal their playgrounds. China had bigger problems of its own and had pulled its troops out to defend the more populous and industrialized East. Everest stood unclimbed, left to the nine Seekers living upon its peak. Skyfire and Borealis were nearer to hand, in the Dhauladhar mountains as extra security.  
  
Tenzin nodded sadly. “Perhaps that will be for the best in the long run. Nature will take her course. The land will heal itself while man is absent.” Then he brightened, regarding with wonder the complex, angular face of the robot. “The first time I saw you was on television. Your first official world greeting, I think. A bee flew into your mouth.”   
  
“Ah, yes. The incident is in my short-term memory cache.”  
  
“What struck me was how you held your mouth open, waiting for the bee to fly out again. Of course you could not have been stung. It was interesting that you noticed such a tiny thing, and were careful not to harm it.” Perhaps the robot had been cognizant of the cameras and the audience, but Tenzin had felt at the time, and more so now, that Optimus’ reaction had been genuine and spontaneous. He giggled. “It was also quite funny.”   
  
Optimus chuckled. “The earliest forms of society among my species were not unlike that of bees. They are exoskeletal, so are we in a sense.”  
  
“So you feel a kinship to bees?”  
  
“Hm. Setting aside the DNA-based notions of kinship, I suppose so. Affinity is perhaps a closer term.”  
  
“Ah, of course.” Tenzin leaned forward. “You do not have families, no parents or children; but you form very close friendships and other associations. I am intrigued because I wonder very much if that means your feelings of loving-kindness naturally extend to all Cybertronians. You have no kinship bonds to render a bias.”  
  
“Unfortunately that does not keep us from distinguishing – more than is beneficial in the long run – between Cybertronians and non-Cybertronians. That kind of bias we do have. It is a large part of the root cause of our present conflict with the Decepticon faction.”   
  
The Dalai Lama’s commitment to peaceful resolution was well known; but after the devastating attacks of 2018, even he admitted that, “the ant may cry for mercy, but the charging elephant is not likely to hear him.” Non-violent resistance was the first thing most Cybertronians had tried, and Bluestreak’s heartbreaking accounts of the results still brought an uncomfortable tightness to Tenzin’s chest.   
  
The clouds chose that moment to empty themselves, and Optimus leaned away from the balcony to avoid splashing the humans, turning his shoulders this way and that, clearly enjoying the pounding of the water ringing off his armor.   
  
“I hope he does not shake himself, after,” Thupten Jinpa murmured.   
  
“Heh.” Optimus grinned. Sensing that the shower seemed likely to continue for some time, he placed his hands on the roof of the building and leaned down and forward with his elbows straight, his arms becoming a rather imperfect awning. The noise and splashing were reduced enough to continue the conversation.   
  
“When I was a boy,” Tenzin ventured, observing the robust structure of Optimus’ shoulders, “I was always fascinated by mechanical devices. Once, I snuck one of my predecessor’s automobiles out for a drive by myself, but I had a small accident and broke the left headlight.”  
  
“Ouch,” said Optimus, his optics twinkling.   
  
“Oh!” Tenzin exclaimed, bowing and laughing and it was a moment or three before he could continue. He held out a hand and Optimus extended a forefinger, deploying the small manipulating tool from its tip so Tenzin could examine the elaborate but sturdy joints and workings. “I suppose there are a few among your people who study organic life as a hobby?”  
  
“Indeed there are. Perceptor is one. He would like to take you up on your offer of scanning the brains and bodies of accomplished meditators. He would be the one to ask whether or not the mind is irreducible to the physical. Just be sure you have plenty of time to listen once he gets going.”  
  
If their voices hadn’t been so different, there were times it would have been difficult to guess which of them was speaking.  
  
“Do you miss your home?”  
  
“Yes, very much. But I have learned to appreciate our new home as well. I often feel this entire world is my home.”  
  
“Change is inevitable. Life adapts.”  
  
“I was thinking, as I approached this place, that we are perhaps both the last of our respective lineages, if one may call them that. If our respective peoples will it.”  
  
“Precisely so."  
  
They spoke of the nature of consciousness. The still unanswered questions regarding what human consciousness was, whether it existed during dreamless sleep, or required an object to be conscious  _of_. The way in which Cybertronians were on or off, and consciousness was only a potential when they were offline, and how certain kinds of CPUs, like those of the Council of Ancients and that of Perceptor or Serendipity, were capable of more than one state of “on” – and that those states might be equivalent to different kinds of meditation.   
  
They spoke of the value of subjective experience of mind or consciousness, and the differences in the objective, reductionist approach of science and the disciplines Tenzin had been taught. Of how experiences are shared among Cybertronians, including memory files, emotional and sensory files; even though each individual – though sometimes the definition of individual was hazy – had their own CPU which were quantum in nature and therefore the differences at the quantum level were significant; the subjective experience of Cybertronians was that minds can be shared…and oh my, ask a gestalt. And of how Cybertronians had been surprised that organic life produced intelligence, and the robots’ horror at the aloneness within organics’ separate minds.   
  
They spoke of Buddhism’s law of impermanence – anything proceeding from causes can be changed; if one can control the conditions one can alter the mind – and of Dharmakirti’s “psychological law” of opposing emotional states, dualities, to bolster one aspect necessarily undermines the other. Of how the physical form has limits, design specs beyond which one cannot go; true of men and mechs. But the mind has no such barriers. Compassion can be developed to a limitless degree, extended to all sentient beings. Optimus lit up at this idea. Tenzin grinned – you are already there, my dear friend.  
  
They took a break for an hour or so – the humans to enjoy an excellent lunch, Optimus to stand in the rain with his head tipped back, optics dim.   
  
Hardly noticing the stiffness in his legs, Tenzin resumed the lotus position in his chair. “I have been told that you have evidence among your kind of reincarnation.” This was not common knowledge among humans and he spoke quietly. He wondered if Teletraan would garble the feed just at this point.   
  
“Hm.” Optimus seemed thoughtful rather than concerned about a security breach. “We would call it re-embodiment. I should explain. AIs are unbodied and have no spark and we therefore do not consider them alive – but we do consider them ‘people’. Drones are embodied but have no proper spark and are neither alive nor people – they are tools. Symbionts are also embodied, have small sparks, are dependant upon their hosts, and are considered a kind of people, usually subsets of their host’s identity. It is difficult to explain in human languages. We are very…modular. None of these states carries much weight of superiority or inferiority, or they did not before the war.   
  
Optimus’ optics lost their focus for a moment. He spoke slowly, searching for answers within. “I feel that it has not been done before, what happened with the Graveyard Legion and Jazz. However, much of our most ancient history has been lost.”  
  
“Are there human spirits, could there be spirits of sentient beings other than your own species within the Allspark?”  
  
“I do not think so. I can make no judgment about what happens to other species after death. Organic species in particular have always been curious and puzzling. The Allspark created us, and to it we return when our individual sparks are extinguished.”   
  
“Wondrous! To have a physical, concrete object that all may observe with simple senses. A great deal of contention and even bloodshed might have been averted, had human beings been furnished with such an origin.”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
“Your sparks, your souls as we humans might call them, are manifest physically, like little suns inside your bodies?”  
  
“Yes, it is very similar to a sun – in my case, there is a visible-light spectrum resemblance to the star Sirius.”  
  
“Would it be possible for me to see it?”  
  
“The radiation would harm you past repair.”  
  
“Then, when I am very old and already dying, if my last sight with these mortal eyes is the great soul of a being from another world, I would account it a blessing.”   
  
“I will endeavor, when the time comes, to make that possible.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
3.047 million years ago. Late Pliocene.  
  
 **You don’t understand. It isn’t your people dying out there.**  This wasn’t the reason, not the whole reason, but Megatron seized upon it as a lever with which to pry into his brother’s equanimity.   
  
Optimus stared at him.  **Meg, _all_  Cybertronians matter to me.** Why must this even be said?  **All life is precious.**  
  
“An easy philosophy,” Megatron sneered, “for one who has never had to fight for his own life.”  
  
Pointing out that this was one of the reasons the Lord and his troops existed would not be helpful. Optimus lowered his shoulders and held out his hands. **Brother, you’re in pain. Come, let me ease you.**  That shoulder needed to be looked at, but a nice hot soak would help all the places where Megatron’s armor was scraped and his joints strained. He was increasingly irritable whenever he came home from battle, and Optimus was at a loss as to how to aid him. The open channel between them was more and more silent.  
  
Megatron allowed him to approach. Think you’re so clever, he thought. Think you’re going to distract me so easily with your scent and your voice. You have no idea what I – oh  _Primus_  he knows how to touch me… Megatron wrapped his arms around his smaller twin, growling in counterpoint to Optimus’ tuneless yet somehow seductive hum, and let himself be drawn into the bath.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
3.008 million years ago.   
  
Thread by thread, lattice by lattice, Megatron tore the memories from his own mind. Every touch and glance and thought and glyph, everything that composed the ways in which he loved Optimus. He could not continue, could not do what must be done while still bound thus. The fate of his species in the universe was more important.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The first city to die rose up and outward, disintegrating in a roil of blinding plasma. The Matrix was a booming cacophony in his chest –  **If the Lord Protector is mad, psychotic, flawed then so might be his twin, unworthy, flawed, mad**  – the outraged Primes, except the rolling, melodic voice of Volant, his direct predecessor, who instead told him,  **This is what you were made for, this is why you were built, why your programming is unusual – to face trials and choices unknown in all our history.**  Optimus knew he would not be allowed to die of sorrow and horror as he that moment wished to.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2023  
  
The mountain’s peak no longer came to a sharp point. An alien structure perched there; symmetrical, fluidly complex, vaguely spherical though the upper portions were open to the thin air, like spider-lace woven of metal. Optimus altered the magnification on his optics. Either the Seekers had remained hidden within or were not currently in residence.   
  
The two Autobot deep-Seekers crouched at his sides, Skyfire quivering now and then with quietly suppressed hatred. Borealis hoped Prime wouldn’t ask her to break things up if Starscream appeared. Just because she was of a size to attempt it didn’t mean she thought it would be a good idea. Perceptor’s way was safer. Mmmm. Perceptor.  
  
“What do you think, Skyfire?” Prime asked. “His Holiness says that according to Buddhist beliefs, it is impossible to gain practical knowledge of the beginning of the universe.”  
  
“What?” Skyfire flared his wings. “I suppose in a quantum, four-dimensional sense, that’s true as far as it goes. Barring the assistance of Vector Prime, if he wasn’t a myth.”  
  
“Time Lord,” Borealis giggled.  
  
“Or you could ask the Allspark, Prime,” Skyfire said. “It came through the beginning.”  
  
“Maybe so,” Prime conceded. “But I’m not certain I have the mental, erm, horsepower to frame the answer in words.”  
  
“We’ll have to upgrade your vocabulary, then,” Skyfire sniffed.  
  
Prime widened his optics. “Will we indeed?” He held up a finger. “Borealis, I forgot to warn you.” He winked. “Jets are ticklish!” And he was on Skyfire in a trice, hands a blur on a low set of intakes used mostly for atmospheric flight or as emergency ramscoops. Skyfire was entirely bowled over, kicking his feet helplessly, howling as they slid around in the snow.   
  
Snickering, Borealis transformed and took off, circling well out of grabbing range.


	55. Ring of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Beachcomber takes Skyfire on a Grand Tour of some of Earth's geological delights.

2024 - February  
  
Beachcomber had his own cable to the surface. He didn’t feel he really needed one, it wasn’t that hard to keep a sensor on ALVIN IV without actually holding on to it and risking damage to the relatively delicate craft on their way down. But Perceptor insisted, in that way that meant there would be a lot of yelling and a long delay if Beachcomber didn’t agree, and anyway, Beachcomber didn’t mind all that much so he gave in. It was just a simple tether cable looped around his waist anyway, and could be quickly unfastened.   
  
It was a long drop. He kept in touch with Perceptor and the human crew of the ship at the surface, describing the life forms he saw or scanned. Once you got so deep, there weren’t that many organisms per cubic kilometer of water, so his tally was more scanned than seen. He shared his delight at feeling the songs of distant whales brush through him now and then, feeding the input to Perceptor who happily relayed to Seaspray.   
  
Beachcomber’s friendship with Perceptor had reacquired their habitual equilibrium after he and Miles had returned from a year’s wandering through the Sahara. They hadn’t been completely out of contact – a lone human and a small Autobot with minimal weaponry and armor were perilously easy targets. If they could be spotted. There were advantages to being small, and liking places that were of no immediate strategic importance. The physical solitude had done both human and mech a world of good, though, granting restless spirits a measure of peace. At least for a while.  
  
Eventually, they reached the ocean floor of the East Pacific Rise. The vents were about half a kilometer to the west – they hadn’t wanted to set down right on top of them, both to preserve the delicate ecosystem and to avoid damaging the submersible. Beachcomber walked very slowly and carefully. He didn’t want to stir up the silt or damage anything either, and everything was fascinating. He let the submersible lead, and shine the only light. The headlamps that perched on the lateral surfaces of his knees in robot mode were too bright, he felt, and might disturb any life forms that had eyes down here in the more or less eternal dark.   
  
He took samples of water, mud, and once they reached the black smokers, the boiling emissions themselves. ALVIN’s crew took a few individual animals as well. Beachcomber couldn’t quite bring himself to do that, so he left the humans to it. It took him a while to find an area clear of tube worms so he could set his coring drill.   
  
After nine hours, the submersible was compelled to begin its ascent, with its samples and the three humans aboard. It took an hour to descend, and because the sub’s titanium sphere is kept at one atmosphere, they could rise at the same rate without having to decompress.   
  
“How long do you think you can stay down there?” the human team leader asked over the radio. They had tried to get an estimate from him before, but Beachcomber wouldn’t hazard a guess until he was actually on site and could feel what it was like for himself. Perceptor had supplied an estimate of 48 hours, based on Beachcomber’s typical recharge cycles, fuel consumption at normal – meaning a lot slower than Perceptor, generally – surface speeds and pressures, and awareness of how far curiosity could propel him past whatever limits were supposed to have been built into his design and forging.   
  
“Mmm,” Beachcomber answered vaguely, setting his core drill again, a little farther out from the neck of the same chimney. “Three or four days. Hey, you know what, I’m groovy down here. This water feels good. Nice and warm. I can unhook the cable if you all up there want to move on to a different part of the vent field.”  
  
 _Absolutely not!_  Perceptor cut in, having the grace at least to use their internal comms rather than harangue his colleague over the radio, which would have amused the humans and embarrassed Perceptor.  _Don’t you dare unhook that cable. I know you, you’d be perfectly happy to walk back to shore from there. You’d be down there for months if we let you._    
  
Beachcomber smiled to himself, and chirped an amused glyph at Perceptor, who couldn’t do anything about it from way up on the ship.  _Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Thanks, Perceptor!_  He could take years about it, if he just wandered. Fuel would be a little tricky, without sunlight available, but Beachcomber was small, and if he conserved diligently and moved very slowly, he really could walk across the bottom of the Pacific. It seemed like a thing worth doing.   
  
 _No! You’ll fall into a rift zone and then I’ll have to come down after you to pull you out._    
  
Beachcomber sighed, sort of. The mechanism wasn’t the same, but the sentiment was. Perceptor  _would_  come down after him, too. And he’d hate doing it, because Perceptor loved heights but was much less enthusiastic about depths. He would take the plunge anyway, and then he’d be irritated for having to do so, so he’d be vexed with himself and even more vexed with Beachcomber. Vexed. Yes, that was a terrific word, in relation to Perceptor. The temperature of lava, magma and even the upper mantle weren’t enough to damage a bot like Beachcomber – Beachcomber was actually a lot tougher than his size might indicate, being built for geological survey – but the pressures of being caught in a collapsing rift could flatten him, and Perceptor had spent too many millennia keeping Beachcomber alive through one embarrassing scrape after another, he wasn’t about to just sit up there and do nothing this time either. Besides, once Beachcomber emerged from an ocean-spanning, century long hike, Perceptor would still be there to meet him, with an epic lecture. He’d never hear the end of it.   
  
 _Aw. All right, fine, fine. Don’t get your capacitors in an uproar, Perceptor. What did you tell them, forty-eight hours? So. I’ll come up then, all right?_ Because he could stay down so much longer than the submersible, the humans had asked him to take extensive video of the animals, which he was also doing while he took core and other samples.   
  
 _Very well. Forty eight hours. And leave the cable attached, please. I know you could find us by scanner if we were separated, but getting back to the surface would be more problematic and you know it, unbuoyant as we are. Just humor me, if you please. If a storm comes up – which it won’t if my meteorological simulations are at all accurate – we’ll bring you up and get out of the way. We are under no circumstances leaving you down there, understood?  
  
Sure, no problem. See you in two days!_   
  
“Uh, your colleague up here is shaking his head and glaring,” the team leader said, in the same time it had taken Beachcomber and Perceptor to have their discussion. “I think we’d better keep it to just two days, all right? Keep those feeds coming, the biologists are in ecstasies up here!”  
  
“Will do, captain,” Beachcomber said cheerily, waggling his fingers in front of his own optics by way of a wave at the observers above.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The flight over only took a few handfuls of minutes – up and up and then down again before the planet turned too far beneath them. They could have landed at Hilo International Airport, but then Skyfire would have had to walk all the way down Hawaii Belt Road aka the Mamalahoa Highway, past the little town of Volcano, to the National Park. There was a parking lot just south and a little east of the Halema’uma’u Crater, and Skyfire, even with a passenger, could land on feet in a VTOL maneuver that was stunningly impressive in a jet his size.   
  
Darryl Kāwika and Sophie Howell, their volcanologist liaisons and native guides, met them there in a beat up old jeep. Having corresponded for several months via email and watched years of television and internet video had not fully prepared the humans for the actual sight of the two Cybertronian scientists.   
  
“Hey there,” Beachcomber called to them, waving and trotting down the ramp so Skyfire could transform and stand up. Sophie lurched forward on wobbly knees to hug Beachcomber immediately. It seemed like the sort of thing one did, with Beachcomber. Skyfire stretched rather unnecessarily then crouched low, leaning on his elbows with his knees up by his shoulders and somehow not in the way of his wings.   
  
“Wow,” Darryl said.   
  
“It’s nice to meet you face to face at last,” said Skyfire, offering his smallest fingertip to Darryl and then Sophie once she disengaged from Beachcomber. Beachcomber liked hugs.   
  
“So, I guess you two want to get right to work, huh?” Darryl waved his hand toward the crater. He and Sophie had gathered as much sampling equipment as they could beg, borrow and steal from their colleagues at the university’s geology department, from the USGS station and the park itself. As much as they could carry in the jeep. Back at the university, they’d bought several new hard drives with their own salaries, too. Anticipating unique sampling opportunities and enormous downloads of information from the robots’ feeds. Though Beachcomber had promised them that he would process a lot of it for them, and of course translate the raw data into forms the human computers could process.   
  
“Sure thing,” Beachcomber said, nodding for the humans to precede them.  
  
Skyfire stood and held his hands out in front of him, scanning the environment carefully. Beachcomber went ahead of him, the sensors in his feet would warn them when they reached layers of rock too thin to support Skyfire’s weight.   
  
***  
  
“Oh. My.” Sophie put her hands to her mouth. She’d known they would be doing this. She really had. Seeing them do it was a little different.   
  
Beachcomber was wading out into a pahoehoe lava stream. “How’s this?” he asked, poising the sophisticated collection device – an old hammer.   
  
“Yeah, that’s fine,” said Darryl, his voice about an octave higher in pitch than normal. Beachcomber plunged the hammer into the middle of a ribbon of dull red molten stone and brought it up sharply before the metal head melted. With his other hand he caught the trailing string of lava and wrapped it around the rest of the sample, careful with his shields so he didn’t contaminate it.   
  
“You’re not letting that lava cool in your feet and ankles are you?” Skyfire asked rather pointedly. He’d been against Beachcomber actually walking _into_ the stream. Not because the temperature of the lava here at the surface was anything more than rather pleasant, but the viscosity was something to be considered, particularly if the speed of the flow were to suddenly increase. Beachcomber could be knocked over, and then he might get molten rock in his joints – which would be a real nuisance to get out if it cooled there. As awful as sand was, hardened basalt would be worse. And if anything untoward happened to Beachcomber, Skyfire would get an audial-full from Perceptor.   
  
“No, Skyfire,” Beachcomber said, in the same tone, Sophie thought, that one might say ‘no, Mother’. “My shielding is almost as good as yours, remember?” Indeed, if one looked very closely, one could see the lava wasn’t quite touching Beachcomber’s complex surfaces. There was a gap of a couple of centimeters all around. It didn’t look like much of a distance because Beachcomber was about nine feet tall, and the humans tended to overlook the smaller details at that scale. “Anywhere else, Darryl?” He clambered out of the stream, trailing thick ropy pahoehoe.   
  
“Um. No, thanks. Thanks so much.” Darryl was still having trouble wrapping his mind around people who could walk around in molten lava.   
  
“Ok, then next is the fumaroles for gas and mud samples, all right, Skyfire?” Sophie didn’t want Skyfire to feel left out. They’d been making such a fuss over Beachcomber for hours now. She held the bucket for Beachcomber to drop the hammer sample in, then got everything packed for the trek back to their jeep.  
  
They drove and walked along in companionable conversation. Skyfire’s strides were slow, stately, but his stride length was twelve and a half meters, so he had no difficulty keeping up with jeep and dune buggy. Climbing down into the crater was easier than usual since Skyfire simply jumped down himself and then gave the others a ride to the rocky floor in his hands. Still checking the terrain carefully, he and Beachcomber took the gas samplers farther down, into the areas that would be toxic to the humans, and too hot even with suits.   
  
At the end of the day, Darryl and Sophie were ready for the ubiquitous beer, but weren’t sure how to treat their Autobot colleagues. “I guess beer’s out of the question,” Darryl said, a little relieved, since the volume that would probably be required to fill Skyfire’s tanks was rather prohibitive.   
  
“Hmmm, thanks, yeah. But we brought our own beverages,” Beachcomber said, grinning. He climbed up onto Skyfire’s shoulder as the latter sat cross-legged in the middle of the parking lot. From internal storage spaces, he and Skyfire produced glowing tubes of energon, which as always they were careful not to spill when humans were about.  
  
A full week of further sampling all over the islands remained before them. The sites had already been chosen, though of course if the mechs found something interesting they could divert.   
  
Sophie took a sip of her beer and looked up and up, watching Beachcomber clamber down his friend’s body. “So, if I’m reading your overall plan right, you two made quite a detour to come out here.”  
  
Beachcomber sat between her and Darryl, saving vertebrate necks from inevitable cricks. “Mm, yeah. Thought we’d go in for the whole Ring of Fire tour. Not that our own little Mount Hillary isn’t fascinating. Might as well be thorough. From here I guess we’ll visit Pinatubo, Mayon, Taal and Kanlaon in the Phillipines; Krakatau, Lake Toba and Mount Tambora in Indonesia; the Aleutian Trench; New Zealand’s youthful rhyolitic volcanoes; Mt Fuji and Mt Bandai in Japan – and Perceptor wants us to check out the chemosynthetic communities in the underwater cold seeps around there; Villarrica in Peru; the acidic caldera lake at El Chichón in Mexico; Kamchatka Peninsula; Mount Erebus in Antarctica; Mariana’s Challenger Deep; the Puysegur Trench southwest of New Zealand…”  
  
“Not necessarily in that order,” Skyfire added, sounding a little pained. Not that the flight pattern mattered a great deal – the distances were so small. Skyfire was more in Perceptor’s line, liking a set of data that was a little more orderly. “And I don’t know about going all the way down into the Challenger Deep.”  
  
“You could make it,” Beachcomber said, confident. “Poking into gas giants the way you do, the pressure can’t be that bad.”  
  
Darryl shook his head. “Wow.”


	56. Interlewd: Harmonices Mundi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Hound and Mirage decide to take the spark-merge plunge.

2024 – March  
  
Hound came online slowly. Haptics first as his CPU booted up, closely followed by audio and most of his EM receptors. His optics brightened like the first stars as evening falls. Mirage was a comfortable heat and weight atop him, his head resting on Hound’s chest, his long, graceful limbs in disarray. Hound didn’t want to move, even to arrange them both less precariously. And anyway, he liked Mirage very much right where he was.  
  
The recharge table and their sides were still warm from where Wheeljack had been. He must have gone moments before, probably back to his tower. Wheeljack had carried them off Borealis upon their return from Mars and brought them into the recharge bay, overloading both of them to ensure that they would come online smoothly, needing only refueling.   
  
Hound felt as much as heard Mirage’s CPU boot up and greeted him with transmitted contentment and affection. Hound liked this almost better than overload itself, when they had the leisure to stay cabled together for a good long while afterward. Words were there if they wanted them, but they weren’t needed.   
  
 _Mmm. That was nice,_  Mirage said, ever courteous and appreciative, though small glyphs wafting through indicated he wished Wheeljack had stayed, and that Prowl and Tracks had been there, too.   
  
Prowl was keeping Strake busy, however, and Tracks had decided to assist in the healing of the former Decepticon. Tracks’ second alt mode made him a Theta-class Seeker, much to Strake’s – who was, like Starscream, an Alpha – consternation. Tracks was smaller and more maneuverable, but not as fast, and his high power consumption made his range limited. Tracks therefore fought dirty and very, very smart. Backed by Prowl’s tactics, Tracks flew Strake into the ground on a regular basis.   
  
Mirage didn’t seem inclined to move any more than Hound, but he did send low-power pulses through his invisibility net, knowing Hound’s sensitive scanners would pick that up as rather interesting sensations.  
  
 _Mmm, still a little overclocked eh, Mir? Nice yourself._    
  
Hound draped an arm around Mirage’s waist, which was about all the action he was prepared for at the moment. Vague, half-formed thoughts cycled between them, gaining cohesion with each slow iteration. Curiosity, supposition, desire to be of service, aid to Prime, it was possible, they should at least make the attempt.   
  
 _Everyone, except Wheeljack and Bumblebee, keeps asking Prime to merge. We should be able to do it ourselves, spare him more scars. We saw him after that time with Prowl, he draws more than his share of the pain and damage. It’s not right. Besides, why should he have all the fun? We’ll be swamped by Prime progeny! Oh no!_  They laughed, not hard enough to make Mirage fall, but it felt good.  _Shall we go annoy Ratchet now or later? How about later. And maybe we can get Prime to observe, give us some pointers._  They both found the thought of Prime’s presence, and perhaps participation, highly stimulating.   
  
Their hands moved, as much of the other’s volition as their own, stroking and plucking in familiar patterns, a comforting ritual, no less arousing for its familiarity. They knew exactly how to turn each other on. And the thrill of what they had decided to do added what little jolt of novelty they could want.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **Are you both ready?**    
  
 _Yes, Prime._  They sat upon the recharge table near the growth tanks, legs and arms wrapped around each other, already in unison, cables firmly docked, chest armor parted slightly, shivering with shared heat.   
  
 _Hey,_  came a query from Wheeljack, who was standing outside the repair bay, head down to aim his sensory fins, hands clasped.  _Would you guys mind… I mean, could I… if you…?_  
  
 _Oh! Yes! Yes, Wheeljack, please come in!_  
  
Ratchet unlocked the doors, and Wheeljack hurried inside, pressing his forehelm to Hound’s and Mirage’s, then withdrawing to a safe distance to observe.  
  
 _Remember,_  Ratchet chided them.  _Pay attention to what you’re doing. You’re just overloading in public, otherwise._  He was concerned. It seemed on the surface that there was more love and passion between these two than determination. They needed to focus. This was still a hazardous game to play. He decided to scan them carefully throughout the process.  
  
 _We know,_  they thrummed. Link deepening, sparks spinning bright, copper and pale clear green, conductive, ductile, soft as the first tendrils of their coronae wound together, coiling tightly, generating a static charge that arced across the med-bay, making Ratchet duck involuntarily, despite his proclaimed enjoyment of high voltage electrical tinglies. Wheeljack snickered. Slowly they turned their lambent optics up at Prime, their mouths open slightly, their vocal processors beginning a subsonic hum. Mirage and Hound traded scanning and cloaking pulses to wind each other higher, while their optics stayed focused on Prime.  _We know,_  they spun, weaving long history, long friendship, long threads of life and time, warp and woof, gravitational, but not as dangerous.  _Oh Mir, Oh Hound._  Their chests sprang wide, spark chambers completely unlocked and engaged, edges touching, coronae fully overlapped.  _We are. We are one. Oh Prime, we are._  They passed everything by, let everything go as they dove into the well of matter, of the universe. It was hard, the strands were slippery, mischievous. Hound and Mirage focused doggedly, kept trying until two strands caught and held. More joined them, slowly, then quickly, gathering, spinning –  _ignition_.   
  
They shouted through the explosive backwash of power, through the pain to overload, caught and held in Prime’s arms.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They came online laughing, though they found, once they accessed their internal clocks, that an entire day had passed.  _Prime! We did it!_    
  
 **You did indeed. Beautifully done, both of you.**  It had been moving to watch, to observe from the outside for once. He had stayed close, scanning closer, his spark humming in sympathetic harmony, unflinching from the lightning and heat that sprayed around the room. Prime and Ratchet had conveyed the new spark to the protomass tank, allowing Hound and Mirage to recharge where they were, side by side. Ratchet hoped this might ameliorate some of the effects of the merge. Both Hound and Mirage bore the tell-tale lightning-tree scars across their chests, concealed by their chameleon mesh.   
  
Prime, Wheeljack and Ratchet had left them cabled together. Ratchet felt it would be too jarring to disconnect them until they regained awareness. Hound and Mirage made no move to disconnect, however. Instead they clasped hands, fingers intertwining. Prime leaned down and held their linked hands within his own.  **Rest for now. Ratchet will take care of the spark. Just remember later on, you need to come visit it, talk to it.**    
  
 _Wait a minute,_  Hound said.  _You mean to tell me you and old Ratchet were in here singing lullabies to Borealis while she was in the tank?_  He and Mirage both laughed at the mental image.  
  
Prime chuckled.  **Not lullabies as such, no.**    
  
 _Don’t be ridiculous,_  Ratchet put in.  _Prime can’t carry a tune in a bucket._


	57. Cybertron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime asks Borealis for a ride, Prime and Elita are reunited and commence to getting jiggy, Shockwave sends presents, and the Aerials make a dramatic entrance. Hee!

  
_The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose._  
\--Henry Kissinger

  
  
2024 – May  
  
Earth curved below her, fine and full, and she felt the first kiss of atmosphere as she pointed her nose on the trajectory that would take her to the embassy – home. It was good to see water oceans again.   
  
 **Welcome home, Borealis,**  came a transmission from Prime. Tight-beamed and scrambled. Her CPU immediately went on alert.  
  
 _Thank you, Prime. What’s up?_  Besides me, she thought.   
  
 **I have a personal favor to ask of you.**  
  
Personal? She was low on energon, but a thrill of energy surged through her circuits nevertheless.  _Anything! Truly!_  
  
 **I know, Little Bird. Can you take me to Cybertron?**  
  
 _!!! Yes, Skyfire gave me the nav equations. I need a refuel, though. Where do you want me to land? Oh, and by the way, Prime? I’ve just been to MARS!! EEEEEEEE!!!_    
  
He laughed.  **I’ll bring you energon. Meet me at these coordinates.**    
  
He chirped her data for a landing and takeoff from a desolate stretch of highway in northwestern Arizona. He didn’t want her to land in Nevada? This must be a secret trip. She’d been about to fish around to see which of her friends was on Earth and say hello, but she aborted the frequency search instantly. And altered her course.   
  
Hot from reentry, she saw Prime’s cab and trailer as she landed. He transformed, uncoupling from the trailer. He brought large canisters of energon for her, and unloaded her scientific instruments and cargo, placing them in the trailer and sealing it. Later, Prime would retrieve it himself or hire a human trucker to pick it up and deliver it to the outskirts of Autobot territory.   
  
 _Thank you for choosing Borealis Starlines,_  she said as he climbed into the cockpit, folding himself into the piloting chair she reconfigured to fit him. _Emergency exits are located, uh, above you, as I will pop the canopy and let you out in the event of a real emergency. Please maintain the seat back in a fully upright position for takeoff and extinguish all smoking materials._    
  
 **May I have pretzels? I’m allergic to peanuts.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It wasn’t her first wormhole crossing. Prowl had piloted her through a small, local one during her shakedown cruise – out to Vega and back. He hadn’t said anything when she’d wibbled about sending a poet, but he’d patted her console kindly.   
  
Even hopping from one wormhole to another, the journey took three months each way. Prime had no qualms leaving Jazz in charge of the Autobots on Earth, while Prowl and Ironhide commanded those gaining a toehold on Mars. Many of the world’s leaders expressed concern over such a lengthy absence, but Jazz’s explanation that Prime would likely return with reinforcements quieted the grumbles.   
  
Still, it struck her as odd how they so casually set out on such a journey. No years of planning – at least not on her part. No massive loading of supplies, though Prime had brought a few crates aboard. No Tang or freeze-dried ice cream. Just a set of coordinates in another galaxy and a body built for space. Yeehah!  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2024 - August  
  
Cybertron was a dim world, reflecting distant starlight, pale and icy. Not water ice, Borealis’ sensors told her. Mostly carbon dioxide, methane and ethane. What atmosphere was left was nitrogen and argon with traces of other gases. Nothing humans could breathe. Both moons remained in their ancient orbits, brought along when their sun imploded by some arcane contrivance of Shockwave’s. Even Perceptor didn’t know exactly what Shockwave had done, though he had ideas.   
  
Prime gave her his old map overlays; not so much a holo of how his world had been before, but faint outlines of the states and cities, names, ghosts of topography. The Rust Sea was a gaping wound, red and empty down to the bone. The Sonic Canyons had collapsed, haunted by memories of sound. Darkened cities splayed like corpses, no more than shambles of frozen debris. Nothing had decayed, not in the sense of organic life, nor was there rust per se. Acid rain had carved sweeping gouges across the surface, pitted and corroded, seeming from above like glacial valleys. Cold. Dead. Everything was blasted to slag, shrouded by dust and smoke from old explosions that would take centuries more to settle with no wind to disperse it.   
  
Yet Prime indicated there were people here. Why? Borealis wondered. Why would they stay? What would it do to a person to stay on a world like this?  
  
 **You haven’t asked me why I wanted to come back,**  Prime said, curious, as they made their approach to the coordinates he specified. Heavily cloaked and shielded, Borealis took an unconventional angle and landed rough but in a much shorter span than usual. Shockwave would never know they’d been here.  
  
 _If you wanted to tell me you would have._  Besides she hadn’t had the spark to disturb his rest. He hadn’t been in recharge, but had entered a twilight state of consciousness, his body utterly still, energy fields quiet. She had been absorbed enough in flight, her mind skipping from quasar to pulsar like a net of lighthouses spread through the vasty deeps. How could anyone get lost or feel lonely out here? The stars and galaxies sang such astonishing x-ray hymns.   
  
 **I should have said earlier, but I’ve been distracted by my own thought-lattices, I’m afraid. This is an almost purely personal visit. And I’d like to introduce you to some people.**  He unloaded the crates he’d brought, carrying them to the center of a flat, open space amid the rubble.  
  
Between the illumination from the stars of the dense galactic arm through which Cybertron was currently passing, and the reflection of pooled ice and needle-sharp rime over every surface, the wracked landscape was brighter than a moonless night on Earth. Without passage of day and night, the sense of time was tenuous and attenuated. Borealis transformed as her sensors picked up flickers that might indicate the approach of stealthed robots. Much smaller than herself but more than three of them. Prime stood alert but relaxed. She kept her arm blades sheathed.   
  
One of the flickering shadows resolved itself into a tall Autobot; bright copper, titanium pale, flashing chrome. She was as tall as Prime but more gracefully built, and radiated a similar aura of sheer controlled power. Borealis suspected this bot and Prime had been transmitting privately at high bandwidth since they’d come within orbital limits. The new bot stopped toe to toe with Prime, paused for a second, then the two embraced tightly, armor groaning with the force of it. Borealis almost felt she should look away, but the other flickers were solidifying now, running forward to meet them, forming a rough circle around the embracing pair that neatly included Borealis.   
  
“Welcome to Cybertron,” one of the Autobots said, quietly but happily. She was powerfully built, heavily armed with so many cannons she would impress even Ironhide, and her armor was a dazzling, iridescent blue. “You must be Borealis. We’ve heard a great deal about you.”  
  
“Oh dear,” Borealis said. “Thank you.”   
  
 _My name is Chromia,_  the beautiful blue Autobot told her, using a standard Autobot frequency at first, but showing Borealis the special coded channels she and her team used here. She introduced the others.  _Moonracer, Firestar, Magnesia, Skyheart. And there with Prime – oh it’s good to see him again! – is our leader…_    
  
 _Elita-One!_  Borealis gasped, realizing as Chromia had named them who this group really was. Nothing less than the legendary elite guerrilla force, led by the former governor of Iacon, that had kept the hope of the Autobots alive here on Cybertron for thousands of voors, faithfully, even as their planet died. They were supposed to have been wiped out by Shockwave’s sentry fleet ten vorns ago. Apparently not.  _Wow._    
  
 _Oh don’t be too impressed,_  Chromia chuckled.  _You people out on Earth have annoyed the Decepticons so much they’ve left little more than a skeleton crew up here. Moonracer’s taken to shooting filigree off over-the-horizon buildings out of sheer boredom._    
  
 _Yeah, but that’s only been the last twenty years or so. Jeez._  Borealis observed them as closely as she could with passive scans. Chromia cocked her head slightly, and Borealis was reminded that her Cybertronian was heavily “accented” by English intonations and patterns, not to mention the odd slang. Oh well.   
  
 _Nothing wrong with your accent, youngster,_  Firestar said, nodding at her from across the circle.  _You’re perfectly understandable, just colorful._  And Borealis was given to understand that Firestar liked colorful.   
  
 _I see you’re low on energon after your long journey,_  Chromia said.  _We never have much in reserve, but we’ll give you what we can as soon as we get back to our base._  “Come on, you two. Shockwave still sends flyers out this way every great once in a while. You can clang all you want once we’re back under cover.”  
  
Elita and Prime looked at her and laughed without breaking their embrace. Borealis thought she saw a single cable retract as they finally parted. Elita came over to greet Borealis, and behind her the rest of her troops rushed to cluster around Optimus, touching his hands and exclaiming to each other over the changed energy signature of his spark. He was the Allspark now, and they couldn’t help but notice.  
  
 **Welcome, Borealis,**  Elita said, her transmission as warm and bordering on overwhelming, careful and leashed as it was, as Optimus’ always was. Her voice had strange harmonics, staggeringly complex and beautiful. As though she spoke with the voice of time itself.  **Thank you for bringing him to us.**    
  
 _Any time,_  Borealis squeaked.   
  
As one, Elita-One and her group re-engaged their cloaks, shimmering out of plain sight. To Borealis’ surprise, even Prime had this capability, equal to the sophisticated mode the Cybertronian Autobots employed. She had never seen him use it before. None of them, oh, wait, there went Magnesia… none but Magnesia were as completely scanner-invisible as Mirage, but they were very close. She felt enormous and exposed in comparison, but Firestar chirped the promise of an upgrade, smiling as she and Skyheart hefted the crates Prime had brought.   
  
 _Yes, let’s get her hidden quickly,_  Moonracer said, laughing.  _She’s not little!_    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It was a long, long crawl in the dark. None of them required vision, and there were few branchings. Labyrinths were only useful if you could afford to shield all the walls, thereby making scanners ineffective. The guerillas left on Cybertron had no such resources. Firestar led the way, then Borealis, and Prime and the others followed Borealis, always in contact, chatting about old memories of Cybertron that was, or the exotic inconsequentialities of Earth.  
  
Borealis crept along, wormed along, in a body not really built for worming. The voices in her head calmed her if she needed calming. Had she, had Ixchel ever been claustrophobic? Ixchel had not. But this Borealis self was not happy in the little tunnels. Out under the forever dark sky would be better, she thought. Even under threat of fire and acid and whatever else Shockwave’s troops might hurl at her. Dark sky was better than dark underground. It just was. But she was all right. Prime was near, others were near. New friends who were glad to see them. She was all right.   
  
She was, in fact, grateful to fit inside at all. They had chosen the largest of their concealed entrances. Elita’s troops were mostly  _je_  like Arcee - on the small side, which was sensible. They were fast and hard to hit. Once inside, she found their ops hub was large enough for her to stand or even lie down for recharge. Prime and Elita, arm in arm, disappeared down a dim corridor.  
  
“They didn’t waste any time,” Moonracer remarked, grinning.   
  
“Can you blame them?” Magnesia said. “They haven’t seen each other face to face for more than twenty thousand voors, you know.”  
  
Borealis’ optical shutters flicked in surprise.   
  
“Optimus and the others went looking for the Allspark, and we stayed here,” Chromia explained. Borealis nodded. She’d known it had been a long search, but it was crushing to hear a number so baldly applied to it. Chromia chirped a further concept-memory: Optimus and Megatron, as co-rulers, had had many attendants and aides and friends, but Elita and someone named Ultra Magnus had been the twins’ particular and dear companions during the six million years of peace and relative peace before the schism.   
  
“Tell us about Mission City!” Moonracer exclaimed, tugging at a spar of armor on Borealis’ foot in her eagerness. “We have the data files, but no one’s been up here to really  _tell_  us anything. What was it  _really_  like? What’s Earth like?”  
  
Borealis crouched down in her sphinx pose and settled in for a long data-share as Chromia brought her a full energon cube, and more bots emerged from the shadows of the base to listen – mostly more  _je_ s, but a few who were  _zhe_  or  _ke_ , all dark but with the white metal filigree that made up their stealth nets. “I wasn’t there at Mission City, Moonracer. I wasn’t decanted until about eight local years afterwards. But I can tell you about Earth.”  
  
“Decanted,” Chromia murmured, exchanging looks with Firestar and Magnesia and moving closer.  _We have three growth tanks set up here. We’ll be finding out about new sparks soon,_  she tight-beamed to Borealis.  
  
 _!!!! Making up for lost time, eh?_    
  
 _Precisely. I think the plan is that Prime and Elita will fill all three while he’s here. Then when those are decanted the rest of us will take our turns. I would have said I didn’t know where we were going to get the energy, but Prime just gave Elita specs from Wheeljack. He’s come up with a device that will convert even the depleted building alloys here on Cybertron into energy. Primus, we’ll be cannibalizing our own planet, but we won’t starve again._ Her transmission was a mixture of elation and sadness.  
  
“Oh!” Moonracer said, now doubly excited. “That’s right! You’re a new spark! Show us, show us!” She was practically bouncing up and down on her toes.  
  
“Moonracer!” Chromia chided her.   
  
It was a rather intimate request, but Borealis got the flavor of people who suddenly found themselves impending progenitors, urgently curious about a process they needed to understand on a fundamental level. She squirmed a little as Chromia and Moonracer apologized, but began to unseal her spark chamber.  
  
“It’s all right.” She pulled her ventral armor open and leaned forward so they could see and scan.   
  
“Ooooooh!” several of them said at once. They moved closer, taking in the heat, so like Prime’s, yet unlike. Chromia and Firestar remembered Ratchet and felt his influence within this new being as well. And they could feel how Borealis wasn’t just a mixture of her two progenitors – she was her own mech, as unique as anyone Allspark-kindled.  
  
Skyheart and Firestar grabbed Moonracer’s arms. “Just scan, you little glitch,” Skyheart said. “Don’t touch!”   
  
After about half a breem, Borealis closed her chest, repressing a shiver.  
  
 _That was uncommonly generous of you,_  Chromia tight-beamed.  _Thank you._    
  
 _No problem._  “So, what do you want to know about Earth?” Borealis happily fielded questions that she could answer with the dual experiences of human and Autobot senses, though she was careful not to state specifically anything about her Ixchel memories. Sam, Mikaela, Miles, Epps, Lennox, Maggie, Glen and Keller were humans and she could easily have gleaned observations from them.  
  
Despite the energon she’d been given, after several groons she found her power reserves fading. “I know I just got here, but, if it’s all right, do you mind if I recharge? I’m kinda tired.”  
  
“Ah! Of course, don’t mind us,” Chromia said, shooing the others toward various tasks they could be taking care of instead of harassing the newcomer.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **Oh, I have missed you.**    
  
Desire – like that which binds protons and neutrons together, like that which attracts electrons to protons, yet as weak as gravity, as inexorable – radiated like an expanding nova. Galaxies of thought and intent collided, merged, doubling their mass, spiral arms embracing, core quasars singing fiercely.  
  
Lightning struck once: Air and fire, a high singing against the fading of life, sharp and clear, the tip of the sword.  
  
Twice: Fire and water, balance, feet that would stand astride two worlds, hands that would reach out across two galaxies, the blade of the sword.  
  
Thrice: Water and earth, deep, a pulse like onyx drums, holding the foundations and roots, tapping the cores of ancient power, the hilt of the sword.  
  
Prime, chest armor a molten ruin, stood on trembling legs to deliver each new spark to the waiting chambers. Once the third was safe, he crashed to his knees, to the floor, falling beside Elita’s inert body, falling – for the first time in a long while – into recharge.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Borealis snapped her optics on the moment she came out of recharge, unused to awakening on a world where the spin and gravity and magnetic fields were different than Earth’s.   
  
 _There you are,_  Moonracer said, letting her in on the common in-base chat channel. The cloud mind here was quieter with fewer people in it, but the tenor of their interactions was familiar. Autobots. The people here knew the precariousness of their situation but there weren’t the hard edges or jitters Borealis had expected. They were calm. They had plans. They were holding.   
  
“Ah,” Borealis said, seeing they were unpacking the crates Prime had brought. “Just like Christmas.”  
  
“What?” Moonracer asked, mid-nibble on a length of the arsenic wire Ratchet had sent.   
  
“Oh. An Earth holiday where people give each other presents.” Borealis leaned over to peer into the three-meter-square boxes. There were spare parts made by Ratchet and Wheeljack, purified materials from Perceptor’s lab, rows of small data chits from Prowl and Red Alert. Prime had asked for these things, Borealis realized, but hadn’t told anyone what they were for. The existence of Elita’s group was a secret even from those who would very much like to know their friends were still alive. Sad but necessary. Shockwave was plagued but couldn’t base his calculated responses on his knowledge of specific adversaries. If the profiles on him she had from Ironhide were accurate, it must drive the Decepticon strategist mad.   
  
“Hey, Chromia,” Firestar said, coming into the hub carrying an unwieldy, cobbled-together looking mishmash of parts across her broad shoulders. Borealis recognized a Wheeljack design when she saw one. “Oh, Borealis, you’re on. Even better! I want to test this gizmo, but not near our hideout. Mind giving me a lift?”  
  
“Not at all,” Borealis said, leaping up, knocking her wings on the wall. “Ow.” Even the long crawl would be worth it to get out for a while.   
  
“Heh,” said Firestar. “The Aerials don’t like it down here either.”  
  
Once outside, Borealis transformed and Firestar climbed aboard with the matter converter. “You’re the resident engineer?” Borealis asked, setting the course Firestar requested. They skimmed the jagged surface closely, zigzagging around the jutting fingers of broken towers.  
  
“For what it’s worth,” Firestar said. “I’m really glad to hear Wheeljack’s still kicking around, though. And Perceptor!”  
  
“And Red and Inferno,” Borealis added, shamelessly fishing. “They miss you. ‘Ferno rambles on about you for ages if you give him a chance.”   
  
“Yeah,” Firestar said quietly, optics dim. “Never did know how to keep his vocoder off.” She leaned forward to touch Borealis’ nav console. “You can’t tell them I’m here, alive. Not yet. You know that, right?”   
  
“I figured. Prime was pretty cagey, having me meet him out in BFE to pick him up.” She hastily chirped Firestar the meaning of the acronym.  
  
“So how are they, anyway?” Firestar asked, settling back in the seat and smiling. She was glad those two were together at least. Red needed to be with people. Borealis launched into a winding account of the ways Red watched over the embassy, and how he and Prowl became friends; Inferno helping local firemen, getting the rest of the embassy bots into it as well – Firestar’s look of horror at the way fires could sweep across organic worlds was very like Inferno and Red Alert’s had been; the protective programming of all three was strong – myriad rescue efforts, both from natural disasters and Decepticon attacks, now greatly augmented by Hot Spot and his team.   
  
“Hot Spot,” Firestar said. “First Aid. Streetwise. Blades. Groove.” She tried each name, playing with the harmonics of switching back and forth between English and Cybertronian. She had an ardent desire to meet them.   
  
Borealis giggled, and did a spherical scan before landing vertically at the site Firestar had specified. On Earth, Borealis would have said it looked like the bombed-out basement of a skyscraper that had been completely blown away. They’d be out of general observation except from directly overhead, and Moonracer kept the population of Shockwave’s spy satellites low.   
  
“Slag but Wheeljack’s amazing,” Firestar murmured as she set up the device, pointing a parabolic dish at the nearest solid wall. “It’s like he knew what kind of scrap we’d have lying around and could bolt together.”  
  
“I think he created that for his own team while they were out searching. I gather there were times when it wasn’t safe for them to show up on civilized planets to resupply.” On a couple of occasions this had been due to Cliffjumper’s indiscretions, but more often it was because the Decepticons had been there first, and because Cybertronians in general were not exactly regarded with favor by their neighbors. “If you double up the feeds to the nanoassembler the output will be faster – that’s how Jack showed us, anyway.”  
  
Firestar made the adjustment and gave Borealis a sidelong glance. “What do you do, anyway? Please tell me Prime didn’t spark you just to fill the troop roster. Not that the Ratchet I knew would have agreed to that, but…”  
  
“Not just for that, no. I’m…a particle physicist. My forging was a little wonky at first, according to Perceptor they couldn’t yank enough mass out of Prime and Ironhide. I was supposed to be Delta – well, I am, now.”  
  
“Heh. Perceptor would tell you that.  _De_ s have no tact.”   
  
Borealis,  _de_ , snorted. Tact evidently wasn’t a  _she_ ’s strong suit either.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Chromia joined Elita at the tanks, touching the darkened plex in wonder.   
  
 **It’s an interesting idea Sentinel had,**  Elita tight-beamed.   
  
 _Shockwave would never expect something like that,_  Chromia agreed.  _He’d be so busy gloating at finally catching one of us. Wouldn’t even have to get that close._  She doubted they could reproduce a system as elegant as what Trochar had done to Prowl, but they would figure something out.  
  
 **We’ll wait until after Prime and the Aerials leave,**  Elita said.  **If no-one volunteers I’ll do it.**    
  
Chromia nodded. There would be, she knew, many volunteers.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Firestar flipped the switch – amused by but appreciative of the use of basic hardware rather than a remote command menu. Hardware was immune to the jamming blanket fields the Decepticons routinely laid down. The wall glowed softly for a moment, then a circular section was gone, and the machine gave a faint hum and splash of thermal signature, spitting a stream of energon into the vessel Firestar had brought along for the purpose.   
  
“Ha HA! It works!”   
  
“Right on!” Borealis paused, looking up suddenly. “Uh…” In an astrosecond Firestar had climbed to her shoulder.  
  
“Frag. Mag-ships.” Firestar cast about for a way out big enough for Borealis even as she turned off the converter and collapsed its tripod, slinging the device over her shoulders again. Borealis took it from her and cached it in her forearm, poised to transform. “No,” Firestar told her. “Stay on the ground. There’s three of them and they’re full of drones. Come on!” Firestar transformed into a cargo hauler, stocky but powerful – and, unladen as she was, fast. She barreled toward a split between the hulks of buildings, wires spilling between the cracks like metal spiderwebs. Borealis was soon running flat out to keep up.  
  
 _If they haven’t spotted us we can hide in the outskirts until they pass, but if we can help it we don’t want to go too far in,_  Firestar explained. They followed a broken canyon of road, leaping fissures and ducking the leaning spines of acid-eaten towers; Borealis soon perceived the radial arrangement of one of Cybertron’s sentient cities. Kalis.   
  
 _Oh crap. Kalis isn’t one of those zombie cities Mirage told me about, is it?_  
  
 _Afraid it is, youngster. Down this way._  They followed the fractured ceramic paving into a tunnel, Borealis’ big digitigrade feet and Firestar’s wheels leaving tracks in the frost. Firestar paused a few meters in and a nozzle extended from a turret on her roof, spraying a liquid behind them that froze in midair, covering the dark scuffs and treadmarks back to the last chasm they’d jumped. They withdrew further into the dark.  
  
 _Quiet,_  Firestar instructed as Borealis crouched on all fours.  _Power down everything you can but be ready to make a fast break._  
  
They waited. Slowly, the oscillating whine of the mag-ships’ lifter engines grew louder.   
  
 _Tlechunktlechunktlechunktlechunk…_  
  
Firestar swore and backed up, turning.  _They’re popping out the drones. Must’ve picked up the converter’s sig somehow. Come on, we’ll have to hope Kalis is in recharge right now._  
  
Crouching lower, Borealis inched forward, angling her scans out and up. The specs she got from Firestar indicated the mag-ships were heavily armored, but there were only four big repeaters per ship; two fore and two aft, and they couldn’t rotate all the way around so they couldn’t be made to destroy each other. There were also four lifters, at the corners of the brick-shaped ships, below the guns. Borealis was damned if she was going to be taken on the ground like this by a bunch of frigging  _drones_. She grabbed Firestar and ran for the tunnel entrance.   
  
 _Borealis, no!_  
  
Borealis tossed Firestar up, transformed, and caught her in her open cockpit – a trick Skyfire and Perceptor had showed her – clawing for altitude. _Between the devil and the deep blue sea I’ll take the sea, thanks,_  Borealis said. She pulled up out of the atmosphere, then angled down again. No sun to hide in, but it didn’t look like these mag-ships were very smart.   
  
 _What are you doing? Take a high orbit and head back to base._  
  
 _These are drones, not people. And Ironhide says never leave resources for the enemy to use against you later._  
  
 _Oh Primus. You were battle-programmed by_  Ironhide.  
  
 _And Skyfire._  
  
Firestar shuttered her optics and held on.   
  
Hitting atmosphere, Borealis slowed to dogfight speed, deploying the hot blades from her nose, dodging fire from the repeaters of the nearest two ships, plus the swarm of drones the first ship had dropped. Angling the blades, she drove for the lead ship’s bow. She calculated her dorsal armor could take another 13.7 seconds of this onslaught before critical damage. Plenty of time.   
  
Skimming tight up underneath, her blades cut through the two front lifters’ housing, through the coils, through the antigraviton— yes! And half a second later she hit the rear lifters, flashing free as the ship plummeted, disgorging drones as it fell. Drones clumped onto her like locusts and she spun into a hard, fast roll to shake them off, hoping Firestar’s equilibrial circuits were in tip-top working order. Drones were thick in the air now, but only so many of them could shoot at her without hitting their fellows. Borealis powered up her main cannons, frying a path to the second ship.   
  
Since her cannons were warmed up, might as well give them a try. Taking out only the fore lifters sent the second ship into an interesting nosedive, the aft pair of engines screaming as they tried to compensate and maintain lift. A quick reverse Immelmann gave her a clear shot at the underside, slagging the slots where the drones exited, preventing that ship from emptying itself as the first had.   
  
She wheeled, shifting her sights to the last ship – it exploded under a hail of golden-beamed fire from high above.   
  
 _Pardon us,_  someone said politely over the frequency Elita’s group used as five jets streaked across the edge of Borealis’ visual range.   
  
 _Looks like you two need some help,_  said someone else, pleased with himself.  
  
 _Actually,_  said a third,  _I think they have the situation pretty much tied up._  
  
 _Whoa, he’s bigger’n you, ‘Bolt! Oh! Hey, is that you, Skyfire? Nice paint-job!_  
  
 _Fireflight, you need rebooting. That’s not Skyfire!_  
  
 _Take it to the roof, guys,_  the first voice said.  _These lensheads can’t reach._    
  
Borealis pointed her nose up, yawing back and forth to shake off the Klingons. They were thick on her again, and keeping up with her climb.  
  
 _Uh, ‘Bolt? They’re reaching,_  the fifth voice pointed out unnecessarily.   
  
 _Shockwave’s upgraded them again,_  Firestar snarled.   
  
 _Slag,_  growled the second voice, and the five jets dove, wingtip to wingtip, into the fray, splitting off in a fan pattern as they encountered the border of the drone-cloud.  
  
“Ow! Dammit! Ow ow ow, stop shooting at me you damn little flying paperclips!” Borealis yowled at the top of her vocoder. “Hold still so I can blow you to bits!” Unused to so much company in the air, it was harder to shoot and yet miss allies.   
  
 _You…really are unclear on this whole combat thing, aren’t you,_  second voice observed, smoothly incinerating another line of drones before they could close with him.   
  
By the time the entire swarm had been exterminated, Fireflight and fifth voice were laughing, taken with the absurdity of Borealis’ insistence on hunting down every last one, and giddy with low fuel levels. Borealis was ticked off but kept silent. This was too much like Galvatron’s drone tides to be funny. Every mad little machine with a trail of blood behind it.   
  
Her pique did not survive closing with the five for the steep-angled flight back to Elita’s base.   
  
Oh my, she thought. Look at all the pretty jets. They were dark blue-grey and black and steel and copper, blending perfectly with the twilit ruins even without cloaking. Starlight shone so clear and hard in this thin air; she could see everything about them, how beautifully they moved. Firestar somewhat belatedly chirped Borealis their famous names. She could almost see whatever threads of programming, sparks, matching colonies of nanocells made them a gestalt. They did remind her of Hot Spot and the others. They moved like that, with that inherent awareness of each other.   
  
Silverbolt. She had never met anyone so perfectly named. Silver arrow, the eldritch and powerful prize, won for love, won for justice, shining from a Lady’s dark-gloved hand.   
  
 _We’ll be following you back to Earth when you go,_  Silverbolt told her, his kindly harmonics setting her at ease. She sent a simple glyph of acknowledgment, made mute by his beauty. They didn’t need to literally follow – they had the navigation coordinates from Prime. But it would be remarkable, splendid, to bend their way back home together through the starry void. She would watch them fly, and maybe just by  _being_  they would teach her things.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Borealis let Firestar out as soon as they landed, the sturdy bot staggering a little, looking as though she might kiss the ground.  _I’m sorry I disobeyed you,_ Borealis tight-beamed.  _I just couldn’t…_  
  
 _It’s all right, youngster. I understand._  Firestar smiled up at her.   
  
The Aerialbots landed around them, jets transformed to tall, slender bipedal modes, wings brushing angular shoulders, optics lucent in the shadows. So beautiful, Borealis thought.  
  
The crawl to the command hub, however, did not improve anyone’s humor. Firestar headed directly for her workroom with the fortunately intact matter converter and Silverbolt went off to find Chromia, leaving his team to interrogate the newcomer.  
  
“You,” Slingshot said, stalking up to Borealis, “are  _weird._ ”  
  
Borealis put her hands on her hip gimbals. “Yeah? What’s it to ya, shorty?”  
  
“What’d you call me?”  
  
“You prefer pipsqueak?”  
  
Prime and Elita entered, hand in hand, to find Borealis pinning Slingshot under her right foot, which Slingshot was biting and clawing at with hands and feet. Both were yelling, but not as loud as Silverbolt, who came in from reporting to Chromia, wings upright and irritated, flanked by Fireflight and Skydive. (Air Raid was standing to one side with Moonracer, looking suspiciously like they were taking bets.)  
  
“Slingshot! Stop tormenting Borealis!” he shouted. “Borealis! Stop encouraging Slingshot!”   
  
“What?” the addressees said in unison.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The base was quiet. After two orns of activity – supplies from Earth unpacked and sorted and implemented or stored; another sortie to draw out and wreck more of Shockwave’s sentries; reports exchanged and processed – almost everyone was in recharge.   
  
Elita walked the perimeter, smiling. Cherishing the new memory of Optimus, fairly pinned under a pile of every mech in Elita’s group. He’d overloaded everyone with that staggering alloyed spark, freely shared. Elita had come in to inform him that her jets and his were in the hub, similarly sprawled and offline.   
  
 **I’m going to miss my air support,**  she tight-beamed affectionately.   
  
 **Mm. We can ask Magnus to pull his group back here if you think it’s going to be a problem,**  Optimus replied.  **I won’t keep them long. If we can get enough people working on Perceptor’s plan, the course of this war is going to change drastically.**  
  
Elita double-checked the seals and alarms on the last outer door. Shaking her head, but her optics were bright.  **He’s amazing.**  
  
 **So are you.**  
  
 **Oh hush. I wish we had the wherewithal to build more than the three tanks. If these turn out as interesting as your first…**  
  
Optimus chuckled.  **I’m certain the new sparks here will keep you – and Shockwave – fully occupied and intellectually engaged.**  
  
 **…Thanks.**  
  
 **Can’t wait for you to meet the Protectobots!**  
  
 **Oh my.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2025 – January  
  
Earth curved below them, blue-white and inviting. Six jets felt the first kiss of atmosphere as they descended toward the Cybertronian Embassy, nestled in its red desert stone.   
  
 _Look at all that water!_  
  
 _Oooh! Pretty!_  
  
 _Bah. It’s too bright. We’ll be spotted from hundreds of kilometers. Thousands…_  
  
 _Perceptor says millions!_  
  
 _Hi, Perceptor!_  
  
The cloud mind expanded, reeling with laughter and glad greetings, old friends and new. From the green north a white jet hurled himself upward to meet them – seven jets spinning and whirling entwined in a dance as old as the first wings.   
  
 _Skyfire!  Skyfire! Skyfire!!_  
  
He and Silverbolt exchanged a brief but passionate tight-beamed burst, then he opened out to include all of them.  _Welcome to Earth,_  Skyfire said to the Aerialbots. And to Borealis and Prime,  _Welcome home._


	58. Interlewd: Good Morning Starshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Perceptor and Beachcomber have a long-delayed discussion, and shag each other senseless. ;D

2024 - July  
  
“Hey, Percy.”   
  
Perceptor stared at Beachcomber for almost a full minute. Spending five months bouncing around in Skyfire’s compartments, frolicking in this planet’s volcanoes had clearly unhinged him. Perceptor’s name in Cybertronian wasn’t any lengthier or difficult to pronounce than most people’s, so he’d never had a nickname before. Speakers of English tended to shorten names of endearment, he understood that. Structurally it was logical enough. But.  _Percy_?   
  
Eventually logic and his helpless affection for Beachcomber won out. The best he could hope for was that the geologist wouldn’t use the name in front of any of the others.   
  
“Good morning, Beachcomber,” he sighed.   
  
Beachcomber hugged him from behind, pressing close so Perceptor could feel the sun’s warmth, different from their native heat, through his chassis. “When’s the last time you recharged? Or went outside?”   
  
“Oh, honestly. I need to finish this. Prime said—”  
  
“Hoist says you finished it yesterday. Now you’re just fiddling with it. Come on, come outside. It’s a beautiful day.”  
  
Perceptor put his instruments away, each in their categorized and labeled place. Beachcomber sounded like he was in a persistent mood. Besides, he was correct, the ultra-capacitor augmentation regulator was indeed completed.   
  
Smiling with what he hoped was a properly indulgent expression, Perceptor followed Beachcomber outside into the sunshine and clear Oregon breeze. He stretched out his arms, (aching at the elbows – an ache he’d feel for a hundred years, reminding him with each pull and twinge of the landing they had survived) feeling the light recharging the cells of his chameleon mesh. Hoist and Grapple were off to sunward, cabled together, planning gleaming new cities festooned with green that would need to bend themselves around gleaming new laws of thicker air and unstable ground and organic resource management systems. It would keep them busy all year.  
  
Perceptor loved how a solar system shaped the life that grew in it. How everything about that life was tuned to unique circles and tides of light and gravity. It was one of the many symmetries that pleased him in his most fundamental programming, in his spark.   
  
There were aromatic compounds and polyphenols from various nearby conifer species, as well as pollen from angiosperms, harmless spores from a vast array of mosses, fungi and molds, ash from the last eruption of their home volcano, small amounts of dander from mammalian and avian life forms of various kinds. Sunspot activity was minimal today. The moon was just setting – hidden from human eyes by daylight and the surrounding forest, but Perceptor knew where it was. At least four different species of birdsong wafted on the breeze, hushed by the whisper of the air in the soft needles of the trees. The river splashed and roared over the rapids, punctuated by the heavy but careful footfalls of his fellow Autobots. “It is a nice day,” he said. Beachcomber tugged on his hand.  
  
“I want to show you something.”  
  
“I have experienced 112.7 seconds of your vaunted sunlight, is that not sufficient? I do have the transmat reduction beam to repair.”  
  
Beachcomber laughed. “Come on, you’ll like it.”  
  
Perceptor allowed himself to be led away from the base ramp, through the forest around the feet of the mountain and into a rocky area full of deep cracks and fissures where layers of ancient lava had been worn away by water over millennia into slot canyons and boulder-choked gullies. Beachcomber slipped through easily, but Perceptor nearly got stuck in a couple of places. They came to a diagonal slash in a cliff, a cave entrance. Beachcomber went first, activating the headlights on his knees. He was fairly certain Perceptor could make it, but he hoped his readings had been accurate. Their path sloped downward for quite a distance, and the ceiling grew so low that Perceptor banged his light cannon several times, hard enough to scratch the casing, which made him fuss about its structural integrity the rest of the way.  
  
“Calm down, everything’s groovy,” Beachcomber said, patting his friend’s forearms. “We’re here. Look up!”  
  
Far, far above them an old vent pierced the cavern’s ceiling. They were effectively at the bottom of a very deep well. The dark, velvety blue sky twinkled with stars behind the veil of atmosphere, in defiance of the bright daylight. It was a lovely optical trick that Beachcomber was delighted to find worked on Earth, though one needed greater depth to achieve the effect here. Back on Cybertron, the air was much thinner, and their sun, when they had had one, a comparatively dim hue.   
  
Perceptor’s optics flickered, with interest or mischief, Beachcomber wasn’t certain. It was one of the things Beachcomber most liked about Perceptor. For all the beauty of his face, his expressions were sometimes very hard to read, moving across his features with such subtlety and swiftness. Perceptor knelt and reconfigured the lenses and internal mechanisms in his light cannon, transforming it into a high-powered telescope, making minute adjustments for a few minutes, picking an object of interest. It was an old game.   
  
“Set,” he said, and Beachcomber skipped around to peer through the eyepiece.  
  
A gauzy nebula, like two double-walled champagne goblets without stems, set bottom to bottom, with a dying star between them. Bright puffs of hot gasses were embedded like eyes at either end. Perceptor was enhancing the color; pale sea-foam greens and lavenders, with hints of pastel rose in hazy bands that ringed the widest part of the goblet bodies. A bright orange star above and to the left of the central white star of the nebula looked on warmly. Beachcomber accessed Teletraan surreptitiously.  
  
“The Butterfly Nebula,” he said. “Beautiful.”  
  
“You cheated,” Perceptor said, but he didn’t sound very put out. He was already looking for another gem amid the black velvet cosmos.  
  
“Aww,” Beachcomber protested. “I’m using the English names. So I had to look that one up. The Boomerang nebula looks more like a butterfly to me, but I guess they found that one second.”  
  
“Correct. Although the nomenclature is due to the low-resolution telescopes they used at the time. Here.”  
  
Beachcomber looked again. An amorphous scattering of stellar clouds this time. Remnants of a very ancient explosion indeed, long scattered by the tugs of gravity. There was no need to adjust the color. Blue within blue, periwinkle to cobalt, radiant and iridescent. “Iris Nebula!” That one he hadn’t had to look up. Perceptor had pointed to it before.   
  
Beachcomber liked blue. Those wavelengths made him feel good. He caressed the shaft of the telescope, letting his hands sweep downward over the steadying frame. Perceptor shivered and turned to face him, as intended. Otherwise he would have spent the day stargazing, forgetting even his precious inventions and experiments indoors. But the Iris Nebula reminded Beachcomber of the last time Perceptor had shown it to him, and the sweet, leisurely interface that had followed. Seemed like a good idea now, too. Percy could use the loosening up.   
  
He caught Perceptor’s hands firmly. Percy often went right for cables, but Beachcomber wanted to take the long way this time. He leaned against the larger bot, shifting his shoulders so their chests slid and tapped together, the vibration felt in their spark chambers, though that culmination he wanted to put off as well. He released Perceptor’s hands now that he had the idea, and Perceptor wound his arms around Beachcomber’s shoulders. Beachcomber pulled him closer so he could reach the sensitive hollows in Perceptor’s back, beneath the heavy support frame for the cannon.   
  
 _You comfort me,_  Perceptor tight-beamed softly. It meant more to him than he could express with words that Beachcomber kept his peaceable spark intact and undimmed. Beachcomber knew anyway, but Perceptor often tried to remind both of them, no matter how exasperated they might get now and then, no matter what harsh things Perceptor might sometimes say out of that frustration. No matter how he fussed, Perceptor needed, appreciated, loved Beachcomber just the way he was.   
  
 _I know, silly Perceptor. I know. I love you, too._  He ran his fingertips across Perceptor’s joints where the armor was thinnest, following an old pattern that stimulated a slow flow of heat, circuits lighting up one by one. Finally he allowed the first cable to link them, and was washed away by the combined sensation and emotion. Perceptor needed the break more than he’d thought, if he was this wide open already. Perhaps they’d have to overload twice to get rid of all that nasty accumulated fragmentation and static that was making him so tense. At least twice, yes.   
  
Beachcomber set a second cable and opened the link wider, sharing memories, brief flashes of good times and laughter, going back and back. Ah there it was. Their first interface, back on Cybertron, barely recovered from the last throes of integration, every sensor tuned too high, emotional algorithms still so easily thrown into arousal and confusion. Blue and blue eyes, finding unimagined depths in each other’s minds, exploring bodies newly fitted with alt modes, freedom of wheels and speed across the vast steel and ceramic highways of their world. Dreams of their future that seemed to come true for ten thousand years, a hundred thousand, five million…they calculated time but paid little heed to it, not knowing themselves immortal until encountering life that was not.   
  
Perceptor drank the memories in, for the first time making no effort to conceal his desperate thirst. The sadness of the present, aided and honored by the bravery of tiny, finite, fragile beings, juxtaposed on the whirl of colorful joys and naïve harmonies of the past sent them crashing into overload in unison, bright blue lighting the cave in delicate waves.  
  
Beachcomber landed on top. As usual. He often wondered how Perceptor always managed that, when he knew for a fact that Perceptor was just as swept away as he was, barely able to collate, let alone move in a premeditated fashion. He stroked the faceted planes of Perceptor’s face; luminous even with the optics dark. The only time Perceptor’s face was ever totally still. Beachcomber loved to watch him thus, it was such an interesting contrast. Even without cables Beachcomber could tell the instant he regained full consciousness, merely by the minute shifting of his facial plates, before his optics lit.   
  
It was taking a long time, this time. Beachcomber wondered how he would get him out of this cave if he fell into full recharge. Hoist would be willing to help, but Hoist was bulkier than Perceptor – he couldn’t get this far in without carving a wider passage through the rock.   
  
At last Perceptor stirred, optics lighting, hands jittering over Beachcomber’s back and legs, chassis jerking as he clawed his way free of his CPU’s inclination to shut down.  
  
“Um, Perceptor? How long  _has_  it been since you recharged?”   
  
“I had intended to do so tonight.”  
  
Uh huh. Beachcomber knew how that would go. He made up his mind to make sure Perceptor at least got to the recharge bay tonight.  _What are you really working on? You’re obsessed with something, aren’t you._  
  
 _”Obsessed” is such a harsh word._  
  
“If the cookie fits, eat it.”  
  
“I thought it was ‘shoe’…”  
  
“Miles says ‘cookie’.”  
  
Perceptor rubbed at his orbital crests. “Of course.”  _Beachcomber, you’ve never badgered me about classified projects before, please don’t start now. Everyone will know about it soon enough. We’re going to need all hands. At this time I must make certain my math is absolutely, irrefutably correct._  
  
Because if it wasn’t, something very, very bad would happen. Beachcomber knew this drill backwards and forwards. “I like badgers.”  _Fair enough. But if you run yourself into the ground—_  
  
“I’m not in the least surprised.” _I know. But it’s fascinating! I don’t think anyone has properly appreciated these old equations; there are so many avenues of inquiry to be pursued. And it will mean so much if… Well. Never mind._  He stroked Beachcomber’s ankles, skirting chemoreceptors and atmospheric gas analyzers, a teasing proximity to the ground-penetrating radar receptors.  _Never mind._  
  
Beachcomber scooted forward to kiss him, lingering in the flutter and tap of lip components, the mingling of internal fields.  _Do you remember the time we kissed for three orns?_  
  
 _No._  Perceptor insinuated a hand between them, touching Beachcomber’s face. Beachcomber withdrew a centimeter or two. Their optics met, and Perceptor’s gaze didn’t waver.  _I know we did. I left myself notes. But I don’t remember those days except through you. My original core wasn’t just erased, it was overwritten._  There would be no retrieving ghosts of data from the quantum spin within the crystal.   
  
 _Oh Perceptor. Why?_  Beachcomber cringed within himself, his visor dark. So many friends gone, living only in their memories – and Perceptor had erased them. Perceptor’s harmonics indicated he’d done this to himself deliberately. This must have happened sometime during that century Perceptor had been missing. Wheeljack had picked him up on the edge of Iacon, missing a secondary arm, carrying the…carrying what everyone had assumed was the University Library cores.  _What did you really do, back then?_  
  
 _I’m not certain I should tell you. Honestly, gallivanting around like you do, you could get yourself captured at any time._  
  
 _I guess that’s possible. I don’t think Skyfire would have let anything happen to me, though._  
  
 _I meant the Sahara jaunt, actually._  
  
 _It was good for Miles._  
  
 _Indeed, that I do grant you. Joey was somewhat perturbed that you did not invite him as well, but after I showed him some images of specimens of_ Blossia echinata  _of the Order_ Solifugae _he seemed to reconsider._  
  
 _Awww. I thought the camel spiders were pretty cute, myself._  
  
 _I am inclined to agree with you._  Humans’ general fear and distaste for the Arthropoda was understandable, given the severity of conflicts and the occasional causes of plagues and famines throughout the history of human civilization. Unfortunate, in most cases, but understandable. It was rather surprising, then, that most humans seemed to like Autobots so much.  
  
 _You’re also changing the subject._  
  
 _Mmm._  Perceptor rolled them onto their sides, seating another pair of cables, the cranial set, slamming up layer upon layer of firewalls around their commingled minds. He sealed their mouths together, locking oral polyhedra, the fins and tendrils on his head sweeping forward around Beachcomber’s helm and shoulders.  _The Archive in Uraya held older files than the Library. A lot of them._  Lancing an old wound, he sent Beachcomber the catalogue.  
  
 _Oh Primus. There’s… You… Oh slag._    
  
 _I’m building another memory core as a backup. I may need you to hide it somewhere for me. Your mind works in peculiar ways; no one would be able to puzzle out your reasoning to find it._  
  
 _Thanks. I think._  
  
Laughing gently, Perceptor retracted firewalls and cranial cables, leaving the thoracic ones in place to convey his affection and regrets, worry and confidence.  _May I ask you something, then?_  
  
Beachcomber grinned.  _You want to spark-merge._    
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _Kept expecting you to ask when the Protectobots were up here during their integration._  
  
 _You and Gears were busy working with Heifer International. Then I was busy rebuilding Borealis. One thing and another._  He waved a hand about vaguely.  
  
 _It always is,_  Beachcomber said pointedly, trying to scowl. The effect was ruined by their forehelms bumping. He might as well kiss Perceptor, since they were in such good proximity.  _And yes, by the way._  He ran his hands through Perceptor’s sensory array, nibbling on one serpentine antenna-tip as it brushed against his face.  _Yes._  
  
Perceptor’s optics flared a deeper blue as he drew Beachcomber across his chest as he rolled again onto his back, the damp, cold stone beneath them forgotten.  _It is fortuitous we built three growth tanks._  Besides a new spark engendered by Hoist and Grapple, there was another from Hound and Prowl since the embassy’s seven tanks were full – including the one in Wheeljack’s tower. Red and Inferno had been busy, as had Smokescreen, Tracks, Windcharger and Bluestreak. A couple of the new people ought to be decanting soon, but Perceptor was glad they had a free tank here in Oregon. They were unfortunately too far from the med-bay to carry a new spark – unless they wanted their hands melted off.  _Not today. Tomorrow?_  
  
 _Mmyeah. We could sort of practice now, hey?_  He began to work his hands into Perceptor’s undercarriage.  
  
Perceptor shifted position beneath him, arching to give him better access. He wrapped his hands around Beachcomber’s shoulder armor and activated his heavy neutrino field. Beachcomber hummed appreciatively, almost a melody but not quite, and his chest seals released slightly. Not enough to open the chamber, but Perceptor felt it anyway and responded unintentionally in kind. Beachcomber elicited spontaneous, impulsive responses from him like that.   
  
 _Just as you are,_  they told each other.  _Just as you are._  Not unchanging, but changing over the eons in their own unique ways. Slow or steady, orbits around each other unbroken.   
  
Beachcomber’s chest parted fully, revealing his sapphire spark, like a hot blue star, like Sirius or Rigel, as the humans designated them. Perceptor moaned softly and opened himself. They sank into each other, closer to merging than they meant to be, for they both had remarkable minds, powers of concentration and control, even on the edge of bliss.  _Oh, so close,_  they thought.  _Not yet, but close._  They spun faster and faster, joy in the boundary between them shared.  _I am me and you are you, but we are also one…someday, someday peace, put down the cannons, the lasers, the missiles, particle beams. Fought for so long never forget why. This is why, freedom to be is why, love is why._  They released all but the final holds, crashing like the surf of this watery world’s oceans, close enough to hear even from this dark space at the foot of the mountain.   
  
Shooting Beachcomber a mischievous look, Perceptor clutched him hard to his chest, pinning him on the edge of overload. Beachcomber’s body writhed, but he smiled, optics fading. It had been a long time since they’d done this.   
  
On the edge of overload, sometimes, if he could be held there, Beachcomber’s mind would take a strange turn. He liked the human word – dreaming.   
  
Steep green hills rose up around him; karst topography like that made famous in Chinese silk paintings, though he had seen such wild forms on other planets. They were covered with lush green growth of a type he couldn’t identify, and the smooth, pale grey road, instead of winding around the hills, ran straight up and over the peaks. He drove fast, wheels humming, in no alt mode he’d ever had – he couldn’t tell what he was, and the four human or humanoid passengers inside him were equally unknown.   
  
The sky coiled with dark aubergine clouds, tornado fingers wandering, reaching idly for something here and there, though they never seemed to touch the ground. He felt his passengers’ alarm but did not share it. Along the western horizon a break in the clouds let in a narrow band of late golden sunlight; wind whistled through his audials. No one spoke.   
  
He crested a hill, kicking out with his wheels to try to stay connected to the road, but for a lurching moment he was airborne, and a long, long drop ahead, birds flying between him and the valley floor. A yellow kite shaped like a 17-dimensional cube broke its string and sailed by.  
  
The image shattered as bright static surged through him, tumbling him into warm darkness, offline.  
  
Perceptor, as he always did, held him tenderly, though he had overheated himself to a nearly dangerous degree to keep Beachcomber in that peculiar state. Guilt twinged him for doing so, but Beachcomber found Perceptor’s fevered body fascinating. He wished he could expand and disassociate his entire protoform to somehow touch every part of Perceptor at once, sharing heat and seething nanocells.   
  
Instead, he opened panels on their torsos, disconnecting a coolant line and reconnecting it to Perceptor’s system. Beachcomber was too small in comparison to dissipate the heat efficiently, but the kindly stone around them would help.   
  
“We should get back,” Perceptor said, later. “Brawn and the others should be reporting in soon. Hopefully that went well.” They were trading small, simple devices and processed alloys for raw materials with the local humans, contributing to the economy as much as they could. Hopefully Seaspray had been able to keep everyone on track.  
  
Beachcomber hummed a little, motionless, happily draped over his friend. Tranquil.   
  
“Yes, we should go back. In a moment,” Perceptor said, a slight hum in his own voice. “In just a little while, I suppose.” It really was such a nice day.


	59. Interlewd: Pisces, Virgo Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Perceptor gets his wish and Beachcomber lights up the lab. :D

2024 - July  
  
Over the past twenty-four hours, Beachcomber had shared as many memory files as he could find. Any time he and Perceptor had spent together, anything he’d heard of Perceptor doing, during the over five million years they’d known each other before the war.   
  
“Your memory core is a muddle. It’s a wonder you can find anything in there,” Perceptor said, disapproving perhaps, or impressed.   
  
“Not everyone wants things organized out to Fornax and back. Never know what I might stumble on in there. It’s fun.” Beachcomber hummed, quirking the harmonics to vibrate sensitive inputs in Perceptor’s body and face. Perceptor leaned toward him, large optics vivid.   
  
 _Come._  Perceptor clasped Beachcomber’s hands firmly and pulled him out of the workroom.  _We…mmm…need to be close to the tank, remember._    
  
Pushing as much as being pulled, Beachcomber followed, then pounced, and they tumbled into the med-bay, laughing, hands roving, rolling toward their resting place. Beachcomber pulled harder, wanting Perceptor on top for once. It was a good weight, a protective, safe weight, and he was so warm.   
  
 _Mmm, nice. Hey lovely. Wish we had moonlight but this will do._  A thought directed at Event Horizon and the part of Teletraan that extended here opened an experimental compartment and simultaneously darkened the bay’s working lights. The compartment held a small but craftily designed tank, full of circulating seawater – seawater and sea creatures. Bioluminescent creatures called sea sparkles. The Latin name was just as nice:  _Noctiluca scintillans._ By their quiet greenish light the new spark would be made. Perceptor watched them swimming, entranced, delighted. Bioluminescence was one of the things native to Earth that was completely new to Cybertronian science. Perceptor adored all creatures that created it, no matter how predatory or outré.   
  
A long caress over his starboard hip gimbal brought Perceptor’s attention back to the bot under him.  _Lovely Beachcomber thank you lovely._  He lowered his face to Beachcomber’s, nibbling the smaller mech’s mouthparts. Beachcomber hummed into his mouth, hands grasping at him convulsively. Perceptor added his fingers to the oral caress, tracing each facial plate, careful around the flickering visor, more firmly around the helm, clutching the latter tightly as he pressed his mouthparts deeper, rubbing the upper set down into Beachcomber’s mouth, against his oral polyhedron, which shivered and rolled under the intense contact.   
  
Beachcomber ran his fingertips lightly beneath Perceptor’s main chassis, following every little contour, slipping behind the heavier plates of armor and cannon supports, moving upward for a while only to sneak downward towards his hips again, making Perceptor shiver and jolt above him. His mouth roved near an old splice in Perceptor’s portside neck cable. The splice was slowly reworking itself and all traces would eventually disappear, but until then it was very sensitive. Beachcomber called it Perceptor’s “reset button.” Oh but keep that kind of thing up and they’d be overloaded on the floor too soon. Pleasant but not what they wanted at the moment.   
  
Pairs of thoracic cables were set - one, two, three - and they dove through the layers of each other like sedimentary strata or electron shells. Met and matched. Step by step, turn by turn, they wove the ancient pattern, fueled by Perceptor’s joy and Beachcomber’s love, and their immeasurable curiosity.  
  
When the heat and lightning had subsided, they both had the oddest sense that the new spark was  _looking_  at them. Impossible of course, Perceptor would have said, but his optics guttered and went out. Beachcomber lurched to his feet, swaying, chest closed but smoking. The tank was right there. He wished he could hold this precious thing a little longer – his hands were heat-resistant, but small, and this spark was big, spinning, shining brightly. The magnetic intake tube extruded from the tank, waiting. Beachcomber watched as the new spark was drawn inside, up to the top, where it wafted down through the thick growth medium to a broad spiral of protomatter, nestling in and pulling tendrils of activating nanocells over and around itself. Just before it disappeared completely, Beachcomber thought he saw it twinkle at him. The spark’s light was now hidden, but the readouts on the tank bleeped happily at him.   
  
“Perceptor,” he said. He could feel things shutting down, he wasn’t going to be conscious much longer, but the smile stayed on his face. “Perceptor, he says his name’s Rutile!”


	60. Countermeasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Hound and Mirage meet the new kid, Countermeasure gets to frolic with the big bots, a new talent is discovered, Mirage is very VERY upset, Strake and Jazz come to an understanding, and Shockwave's happy funtime new project begins without a hitch. O.O

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find the idea of Punch/Counterpunch's character very interesting. Hate the name. So I renamed him. In so doing, yes I know I got the names kind of reversed. I don't care, it works. ^^;

2026 - October  
  
Midnight, local time. The tank’s sensors beeped a signal directly to Ratchet’s CPU, yanking him out of recharge. He passed on the favor, knowing the recipients wouldn’t mind the abrupt awakening.   
  
Slightly bigger and heavier than Hound, the mech stepped down, looking around for the first time with bare optics. He regarded them with an easy confidence, already having parsed the human internet and learned much from Teletraan. “Hi, there.”  
  
“Be welcome,” Ratchet said, since Hound’s vocal processors seemed to have frozen for a moment.  
  
Hound recovered quickly, though and went to the new mech, embracing him warmly, bumping their cheek spars together. “I’m Hound. What’s your name?”  
  
“I’m Countermeasure. Pleased to meet you face to face, finally!” Countermeasure gave Hound a happy squeeze in return.  
  
Mirage hung back, watching. He took a step forward, withdrew it, turning his body away for a moment, before turning back with a rush, gliding in to take Countermeasure’s hands. Hands joined, held between their sparks, Mirage sang the Iridium Tower welcoming in Old Cybertronian, inducting a new member into the Consortium. He stopped mid-word, trembling. The Towers were charred husks, empty and lifeless. What was the point of all this useless formality?  
  
Prime’s hand was warm across Mirage’s shoulders.  **Don’t stop, Mirage. Don’t forget. Hold on to anything you can.**    
  
Hound watched with optics bright as Mirage continued and completed the ritual. Mirage’s voice was exotic and beautiful, especially when he sang in Old Cybertronian. Hound would give up a lot to spend the rest of his life just listening to Mirage sing.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2026 - November  
  
Countermeasure’s integration went hard and fast, like Oratorio’s. Hound and Mirage’s peculiar talents had fortuitously not been needed during those brief, agonized days, so they had sat with him the entire time, crooning and humming, telling stories and holding his motionless hands.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The 2026 Firebird was only a temporary alt mode. Countermeasure already knew he’d be needing something else soon. Something he couldn’t scan on Earth, though Wheeljack had old specs for a couple of possibilities.   
  
For now he exhilarated in the feel of his tires scrunching and scrambling on the dusty roads around the embassy, the wind through his chassis, sunlight gleaming winter-cold off his warm yellow armor. He didn’t have an assigned function yet. No one pressured him to choose. The Autobots didn’t even have a formal duty roster – there were enough of them on Earth that if anyone needed help with anything someone would step forward – though Jazz liked to keep track of what everyone was up to anyway. Ratchet and First Aid said it was much harder to get anyone to  _stop_  working and rest. Countermeasure wondered if this was an Autobot thing or a general Cybertronian thing. What would it have been like if he had stepped out of the growth tank into Decepticon ranks?   
  
A jet screamed by low overhead. Countermeasure ID’d him instantly. Strake, carrying something, no someone – Prowl – on his underside. They landed just over a jagged ridgeline to the east. Countermeasure idled his engine for a moment, then transformed. Successfully sneaking up on Prowl and the former Decepticon would be an accomplishment.  
  
Or not, he thought, as he peered through a crack in the weathered sandstone. They were pretty distracted. Countermeasure bet he could drop Mikaela’s new iBox on their heads at its highest volume setting and they’d hardly notice.   
  
Strake nuzzled Prowl’s helm from behind, one hand reaching up under Prowl’s left arm, fingers probing deep for rare sensitive places hidden under layers of armor.   
  
Some mechs, like some humans, were silent. Some moaned and cried out, some shouted endearments or heavily laden profanity. One could hardly cruise down the streets of a city or town at night and not hear them, these fierce mammals, coupling. Limited as they were to the purely physical, it was tempting to pity them their lack of deeper connection. But Streetwise and Groove said the humans managed some pretty hefty emotional gymnastics – and anyway, their dermal sense of touch was way keener than almost any mech’s.   
  
Prowl, in Strake’s embrace, was of the first sort. Silent, but responsive in other ways. It was said, in the cloud mind, that – except for rare occasions – only Prime could wring sound from the tactician’s vocoder. It was also felt that this was for the best, given the nature of Prowl’s voice.   
  
Countermeasure’s first impulse was to withdraw. It wasn’t polite, though he wasn’t sure how he knew this, to join an interfacing without an invitation. Yet he wanted very much to know what a Seeker’s claws would feel like, running over his body.   
  
“Enjoying the view?” Strake said. This one wasn’t newly landed, Strake knew. This one was new, period. He’d been wondering what they were doing behind the closed and locked doors in the med-lab. No one would tell him; Prime said it was classified, and Strake was still on probation. He could guess, though. They were building new people in there, and Prime ensparked them, like Galvatron was supposed to have been doing, rebuilding his great army. There was something about this Strake couldn’t figure out. Not that he’d ever bothered to learn much about building, but didn’t they need…raw materials? They couldn’t be using Earth steel or alloys. Where were the parts coming from? A question for later. Prowl was beckoning to the young one.   
  
Countermeasure scrambled over the rocks and took Prowl’s hand, trembling lightly, optics flashing from Prowl to Strake and back. Strake nodded at Prowl’s tight-beamed query. Consent was important. Strange.   
  
Prowl drew Countermeasure close, cupping his face in gentle silver hands, optics locked. The way the young one’s antennae quivered, they must be exchanging interesting data. Strake put his hands on Countermeasure’s shoulders and felt him jump. Prowl had turned the young one’s back on the Seeker deliberately, a gesture of trust. One Strake found he appreciated deeply. No one else had ever taken him so much into consideration; Prowl did nothing without thinking of how it would affect Strake, and though the Seeker had seen through the tactic, Strake knew it worked. Prowl’s care struck him to the spark and Strake would rather die than betray his trust.   
  
“Cables?” Strake purred, covering Prowl’s hands with his own, medial claws stroking Prowl’s wrists, whisper-soft, knowing Prowl felt it as a tender warmth through his arms to his chest.   
  
“Yes!” Countermeasure gasped. Carbon fiber sheathing slithered hot around and against him, the covers of his ports snapped open. He almost forgot to extend cables of his own as the other two entered him. Slow, gentle, but they had already been deeply aroused when he’d found them. Their minds twined with his in fierce longing, two vast-winged dragons coiling around him, lifting him up, fiery breath redlining his engine.  
  
He had never felt more alive than he did now – pressed between the overheated bodies of two murderers.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The golden Firebird wasn’t his only alt mode, Countermeasure discovered. He’d been practicing high-speed transformations and at first thought he’d done something rather wrong, getting into robot mode. It was the wrong robot mode; he felt like he had everything on backward. Except it worked.   
  
He needed to talk to Strake.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“I don’t know, Mez,” Jazz said, shaking his head. “War’s been going on so long, we all know each other. Don’t know how you could show up outta the blue and expect not to be challenged. They won’t trust you, man. Specially not old Shockface.”  
  
“Strake said the same thing,” Countermeasure said. “But Prowl and he got to talking. There are deserters, defectors on both sides. I could pose as someone going over from a battalion like Sentinel’s. Lockdown and Swindle are on Mars with Galvatron, and Strake says they didn’t have that much trouble joining up. Shockwave can’t have full records on  _everyone_ , given how much data was lost early on, and how many groups scattered.”  
  
“Shocky’ll peg you as newbuilt.”  
  
“Or newly rebuilt,” Prime commented reluctantly.   
  
Jazz leaned forward. “And you think a few chats with Strake’s got you all prepared to jump in the middle of the Cons like you’re one of them.”   
  
“You don’t think I can do it,” Countermeasure said.  
  
“Nope, I’m asking. Can you?”  
  
Countermeasure pressed his lip components into a hard line.  _Hound? Could you join us in Prime’s office, please?_  
  
 _Sure thing, kiddo. Mind if Mir tags along?_  
  
 _…Not at all._  He crossed his arms, determined while they waited. He hadn’t counted on Mirage being present, but maybe it would work better this way.   
  
“Heya, guys,” Hound said, smiling as he and Mirage entered the war room. Jazz keyed the door shut behind them.   
  
Countermeasure transformed to his other robot mode, the one that didn’t bear the Autobot sigil. He grabbed Hound by the throat, swinging him around, pressing the gun Ironhide had fit him with just last week against Hound’s right optic. “What do you think now, boys?” he asked, shaking his captive roughly. “Name’s Mez, for Mesmerize, like all you punks are, with your gaping face-holes. Think I got the stuff, you Autobot filth?” His voice was different; higher-pitched and snide. His optics had shifted to red.  
  
After a long, cold, silent minute, he shoved Hound toward Mirage, glaring at Jazz as he transformed back. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at Prime, or Mirage. He hoped Jazz hadn’t noticed that, but it was probably a vain hope.   
  
 **Smokescreen, we need you,**  Prime tight-beamed, unlocking but not yet opening the door.   
  
 _On my way, Prime._  
  
Mirage felt as though half of his systems had randomly and abruptly shut down. His subroutines ran diagnostics but nothing physical was wrong. Hound was frozen where he’d fallen against him.   
  
“M-mirage?” Countermeasure whispered, optics, blue and flickering, now locked on his progenitors. “Hound? I’m sorry!” He wanted to run to them, but he was afraid if he moved right now Jazz would shoot him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…if I’d warned you I thought it wouldn’t be as convincing. Please…”  
  
Prime relaxed, bowing his head. “Jazz, stand down.”  
  
“Convincing all right,” the First Lieutenant said, his tone carefully neutral. He closed his hands, powering down his magnetic fields.  
  
The outer door opened and Smokescreen slipped through, already briefed by Prime. He moved between the trembling Countermeasure and the motionless Hound and Mirage, extending his hands to each side.  _Come. All three of you, come to me. Hound, Mirage, his life will depend on his acting ability. You know that._  Countermeasure took Smokescreen’s hand and buried his face in the diversionist’s shoulder.   
  
“Looks like he’ll have a better than even chance, then,” Hound finally managed shakily, grinning. He straightened, taking Smokescreen’s other hand, glancing up at Prime and Jazz. The rapid-fire comm between those two was practically causing heat-shimmer in the air. He looked back at Mirage. “Oh dear.”  
  
Mirage’s head turned slowly, toward Prime, with a look of barely-suppressed fury none of them had ever seen on his cultured face-plates before.  _This. Must. **Stop.**_  He bolted out the door and out of sight. Prime shuttered his optics.   
  
“Mirage!” Countermeasure cried after him. Hound took his hands, both of them leaning heavily on Smokescreen. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…it’s a stupid idea…I’m sorry…”  
  
“Hush,” Hound said. “It’s not stupid. We could really use someone who could find out what Shockwave and some of the other Con groups are doing.”  
  
“Even Ultra Magnus hasn’t been able to get anyone into Shocky’s team,” Jazz admitted.   
  
“You want me to go after Mirage in a bit?” Smokescreen asked. Hound shook his head.  
  
“No, send Prowl and Strake.” Hound looked up at Prime, worried. “I’ve never seen him that temper-y. Maybe give him a couple hours to cool off?”  
  
“One hour,” Prime said.  
  
Jazz cocked his head. “Strake?”   
  
“Prowl and Strake together,” Hound explained. “Who better to stand as evidence that this war can be over?”  
  
“Agreed,” said Prime. Later, he would do all in his power to apologize to Mirage. For everything.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They found Mirage – visible – on the mesa-top, seated at the southern edge, gazing sightlessly out across the desert. Prowl sat beside him, not touching but close. Strake rather awkwardly – alphas weren’t really built for sitting – crouched behind them, mantling protectively.   
  
“Look what we’ve come to,” Mirage said softly. “We’re sending newforged out to be spies and double-agents.”  
  
“He wasn’t created for that purpose,” Prowl said. “He simply found a way to use his unique talents. Like you and Hound do.”  
  
Mirage laughed bitterly.  _And what were we thinking we’d get,_  he tight-beamed to Prowl,  _Hound and I, merging with each other? What else would we get, given what we are? What do you think_ your _next progeny will be, coming from you and Hound?_  
  
Prowl flinched, and Strake clicked worriedly at him. Mirage turned to regard the Seeker, bristling. Then he seemed to collapse in on himself, covering his face with his hands. “Oh, Prowl, I am so terribly sorry.” Prowl opened his arms and Mirage dove into the embrace.   
  
“Come,” said Prowl. “Let’s go inside and find Countermeasure before he frets himself into stasis.”  
  
Mirage gave a cry and leapt down the mesa, somersaulting and flipping from rock to ledge to boulder, transforming once he reached the desert floor and wheeling into the hangar with a screech of tires.   
  
“Nimble little thing,” Strake commented. Prowl smiled and they followed Mirage’s course, somewhat more straightforwardly.  
  
Inside, Strake remained in the hangar near the main doors while Prowl followed Mirage down the stem corridor to one of the multipurpose chambers where Hound and Countermeasure waited for them with Smokescreen. Several groups of human personnel passed the Seeker, giving him a wide berth and covert stares. He was used to it.   
  
“Evening, Strake,” Oratorio called, skating by with Jazz. Strake nodded in acknowledgment, preoccupied. Jazz continued on toward Prime’s office, but Rio spun a circle and came back to him. “Hey, Wings, what’s got you grounded?”  
  
“Mirage is right,” Strake said. “You civilians should never have had to become warriors. Everything we were has gone wrong.”  
  
Oratorio said nothing for a moment. Jazz had told him a great deal about Strake’s situation. Rio knew Galvatron had killed one of Strake’s trinemates, and the other had abandoned him when he was wounded. Jazz himself could still only manage a cool tolerance toward the Seeker, but he encouraged Rio’s kindness. “I guess that ‘Mez’ act really shook everyone up.”  
  
“You were built after the war started,” Jazz interrupted, appearing as if out of nowhere, looking up at Strake.  
  
“Yes,” Strake said.  
  
“Megatron’s new programming and everything. Yet you figured that out.” Jazz tapped his toes, then retracted them and skated a circle around Rio. “Huh.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2027 - January  
  
“Please,” Mirage said. “Please don’t leave us. We’ve scarcely had time to get to know you, or you to know yourself. Please.”   
  
Silverbolt, Skydive, Prowl and Strake had composed a tight cover-story, with corroborating evidence and records. Countermeasure would go to Cybertron when the Aerialbots returned, hidden in Silverbolt’s hold, and be dropped off at a nearby spaceport. There he would go to ground, assume his Mez persona, and reappear, hooking up with the first Decepticon patrol he could. He would almost certainly be gone for several Earth years.  
  
“Mirage,” Countermeasure said. He’d known this was going to be hard, but he’d thought Mirage understood now. He hadn’t anticipated the depth of anguish radiating from his…father. In his core of cores, Mirage was his father, Hound his mother, though he knew the simple term  _progenitor_  was more correct. Hound would have understood. Would have been pleased to be called Mother. But Countermeasure never said it. “I’m sorry. Please, Mir, I can’t leave with you so sad. But I… I have to help.”  
  
“Yes, but so soon?”  
  
“A year wouldn’t make that much difference, where you’re headed,” Prime commented idly, scratching at a cheek guard and gazing up at the ceiling.   
  
“A year and a day,” Countermeasure said, holding Mirage close. “Will that satisfy your sense of poetry?”  
  
“I suppose I can put up with Slingshot’s grousing for that much longer,” Mirage said, winking.   
  
“Hey!” Slingshot said. His brothers laughed and jostled each other and Air Raid gave Slingshot a good shove and was shoved back. Silverbolt let them roughhouse, glad they weren’t having to break up the new little consortium, er, family right away. He thought about Skyfire, wondering if the elder delta was right about this merging business, if it was worth it or was the price too great. And if it really were a matter of choosing life over death, would Skyfire ever change his mind, maybe consider…   
  
Silverbolt sternly set that thought cascade aside.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
On the second, smaller moon of Cybertron, Shockwave checked the lines to every charge, every antigrav booster, and rechecked them. He’d run tens of thousands of simulations. He gave the order for the drones to retreat.   
  
A countdown was superfluous. He initiated the sequence himself, watching all the remote sensors keenly. Cybertron convulsed, the entire planet ringing like a struck bell as a chunk of the polar state of Kaon the size of Manhattan island (though Shockwave himself would never make that comparison) – sixty square kilometers – detached itself from the planet and was flung into a tangential trajectory out of the system.   
  
The cone-shaped gap left in the wounded planet was already collapsing, gravity reforming the world as a sphere, or trying to. Shockwave observed this with satisfaction. There were Autobots on or under the surface somewhere. They were either dead or in very dire condition now. He’d send the Sweeps down to search for survivors later.   
  
Until then, he had much to occupy him.


	61. Interlewd: Growing Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime has a problem, Ratchet and Wheeljack fuss, and Wheeljack is ::cough:: recruited to ::ahem:: help Prime with his...problem.

2027  
  
When the meeting was adjourned, after the humans had gone, and only Wheeljack and Ratchet stood by the holo table, deep in occult technical conversation, Prime, making his way around them toward the outer door, suddenly staggered. He clawed at his chest, jerking the armor panels apart roughly.   
  
Ratchet and Wheeljack were not so absorbed by their conversation as to miss this. At his sides in an instant, they flooded him with scans and questions, and when he couldn’t answer fast enough to suit them, they hustled him across the hangar to the med-lab. Prime’s attempts to shoo them off were worrisomely feeble.  
  
“I’m fine, you mother hens – just stretching! Let go. Ratchet, pinching is entirely uncalled for!”  
  
They got him onto a repair table anyway.  
  
“Hm,” said Ratchet.   
  
“Prime, you’ve gained 0.75 metric tons,” said Wheeljack, who sounded like he had no idea how to interpret this datum, let alone convey it to Prime diplomatically.  
  
“Hmmm,” Ratchet said.  
  
Optimus was rather carefully silent.  
  
Ratchet crossed his arms, tapping his fingers rapidly. “Thought so.” Most of the lintels and archways in the embassy had been carved to accommodate mechs Borealis and Skyfire’s size, so it wasn’t as though Optimus had been hitting his head on abruptly-too-low door frames, but he was definitely growing. “It’s the Allspark shard, regenerating.”  
  
“And he hasn’t merged in…18 months,” Wheeljack added, optical shutters widening. Nor had he ensparked any Junkions in over a year. The humans had been getting nervous about that, so he had been desisting for the time being.   
  
“Yes.” Prime’s tone was acerbic. “Your campaign to give me ‘a break’ has been working.”   
  
“Uh, sorry about that.” Wheeljack shuffled his feet and scratched an imaginary itch on the back of his helm.  
  
 _No wonder most of the mechs we get out of you are on the large side,_  Ratchet said, nodding. “All right. But I still say no more than four merges per solar year, understand?”  
  
 **Then the first one for this year had better be soon.**  Prime grimaced, digging his fingertips into his central seam.  
  
“…Oh,” said Ratchet and Wheeljack. All of the growth tanks in the base already had new people in them. Ratchet meant to build another handful but hadn’t had time.   
  
Prime looked at them.  **And by soon, I mean NOW. Wheeljack?**    
  
 _The tank in my workshop is free, but I’m kinda in the middle of some unstable—_  
  
 **Can you move the tank once it’s occupied?**    
  
 _Tricky but doable,_  Ratchet assured them hastily. Prime was curling his fingers around the top edge of Wheeljack’s chest armor, pulling him closer. Wheeljack was conspicuously not protesting.  _I’ll get Brawn and Hoist to help me with the preparations, then._  He sidled past them, closing and locking both the inner and outer bay doors as he went.   
  
Maybe he wasn’t as nimble as Jazz or Bumblebee, but Wheeljack jumped up to stand astride Prime’s waist, gazing down at him, trembling as cables snapped between them. Prime’s spark chamber slammed open with a reverberant crack. The blast from the corona nearly knocked Wheeljack off the table. He fought for control – overload alone wasn’t going to be enough. Overload alone would make things worse. He clenched his hands into fists and sank to his knees, Optimus twitching beneath him, pulling him down, into the maelstrom in his chest.   
  
“One,” Wheeljack gasped. Control. He needed control. “One.” His spark chamber was unsealing itself and he wasn’t ready. “Two.” He locked his elbows, leaning into the light but bracing against the pull. “Th-three.” Prime emitted a long, drawn-out growling moan, hands scraping over Wheeljack’s aft and shoulders, optics darkened, back arching. “Five!” He shook his head as though that would clear his CPU. The power coursing through the cables from Optimus was like ultra-high-grade, intoxicating and potentially explosive. “Eight!” He called up the file on the merge procedure, double-checking everything. Prime had done this so often it was almost an unconscious subroutine, but Wheeljack hadn’t merged since Bumblebee, several years ago. “Thirteennnnn…” At last he let his spark chamber snick open, an aqua frond of sparkmatter uncoiling as though drawn by a singularity, engulfed by the massive blue-white wave from Prime. “Twennnnt-t-ty onnnnne!” The new spark between them spun fiercely, huge and hot. “THIRTY FOUR!!” He threw one shaking arm up to protect his optics as the new spark ignited and broke free, lightning raking their bodies, searing the bay, and overload crashed and raged through them with devouring, merciful darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Extra brownie points to anyone who recognizes the numerical sequence Wheeljack uses. XD


	62. Diving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Prime copes with casualties, Elita's group moves out, Countermeasure and the Aerials leave, Prime and TC have a tete-a-tete, mechs get frisky, TC finally defects, Galvatron gloats, Prime gets a message from Ultra Magnus, and Strake, Prowl and TC have a frolic. 8D

2027 – January   
  
Magnesia. Skyheart. Tap. Finder. Nitro. Optimus was getting better at concealing his reaction when sparks far away were extinguished, igniting anew within him. The throb of almost gleeful  _satisfaction_  from the Allspark as it welcomed the patterns of its creations back to itself, however, was still disquieting. He was beginning to have suspicions about what the Allspark was actually for. He hoped he was wrong.  
  
“Prime?” Lennox stopped and looked back. Optimus unshuttered his optics and resumed walking, catching up with the Brigadier General in half a stride.   
  
“Casualties,” Prime explained.  
  
“Ah,” Lennox said. “I’m sorry.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Elita sent the message via Ultra Magnus as they left the remnants of their base for the last time. Many quartexes would pass before it reached its destination, even through subspace, but Optimus would already know whom they had lost.   
  
 _That’s everything,_  Chromia said, climbing up to Elita’s lookout point, by habit facing the opposite direction so that nothing could surprise them from behind. Sensor nets, extra weapons, explosives, portable batteries and generators, energon, the growth tanks (filled again), large tools that could not be built into the frames of most people, and spare parts were all packed and loaded. They rarely stayed more than two or three vorns in one place, their “bases” more like temporary encampments; they were moving as they had done many times before. Leaving the dead who could not readily be retrieved, as they had also done many times before. Magnesia, rolling away from a crumpling wall, had been smashed in two lengthwise. Skyheart had been crushed when a long-forgotten hall far below collapsed and the structures above it pancaked.   
  
Elita nodded. The last glyph in her message to Optimus had been the one for  _sorrow_. Retracting her rifle into her forearm, she followed Chromia down to the dusty road and transformed.  
  
 _Survey complete, Elita,_  came the tripartite voices of the Nornir – orbiting Cybertron in their collective interceptor mode – across the secure channel. They chirped their progenitor video and scan telemetry of the crater Shockwave had made in the southern polar region.  _We’re tracking the fragment now. Possible destinations include Systems 80.6786.23.0 and 80.9753.44.0. Shockwave has not yet left the moon, but there’s activity at the main port._  
  
 **Thank you. We’re moving out now. Rendezvous in five orns,**  Elita told them, chirping coordinates in return.   
  
 _Did you get through to Ultra Magnus?_  
  
Elita smiled to herself.  **Yes, Skuld.**  She was fairly certain it was Skuld. The three were difficult to tell apart, especially when in gestalt. If it was gestalt. Firestar wasn’t certain.  **But I’m telling Optimus to keep the Aerials there on Earth. There’s nothing we can do about this right now.**  
  
 _Oh. All right. See you in five orns._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There was something so incongruous and adorable about giant alien robots snuggling, Maggie never got tired of watching them. Even when the occasion was sad.   
  
Danaela Witwicky clung to Countermeasure’s neck, sobbing. Good thing the bots were rustproof. Hound, Mirage, Wheeljack, Smokescreen, Bluestreak, Prowl, Nightbeat (the recently decanted progeny of Hound and Prowl) and Bumblebee formed a cluster around them, consoling each other and the tiny human. Nearby three big jets held hands and pressed their helms together, surrounded by four smaller jets. Maggie was impressed that no-one’s wings were bent.   
  
“Dani,” Countermeasure murmured, rocking her gently. “Danibot, mechling, I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”  
  
“Noooo!” Dani wailed. “I’ll be an old woman by then!”  
  
“Good lord that kid’s smart,” Maggie whispered, as Glen hugged her from behind. Icon scampered across her collarbones to join Chipchip on her opposite shoulder. They would both turn 42 this year, and it looked like they wouldn’t be having kids of their own. Years of undiagnosed endometriosis and other difficulties had left Maggie’s uterus too scarred. Even with the choice taken from her, she found she didn’t mind that much. Watching Dani grow up was harrowing enough when she wasn’t yours.  
  
“What? Sixteen isn’t old!” Countermeasure said. “I’ll be back to help teach you to drive, remember? At the absolute very latest.”   
  
“Already know how,” Dani said. Hound abruptly looked rather sheepish. Bee facepalmed. “You have to come home sooner.”  
  
“Oh god,” said Sam, unconsciously mimicking Bee’s gesture. Beside him, Prime chuckled.   
  
“That’s my kid,” Mikaela said, grinning.  
  
There was a shivering among the jets, and at last Slingshot stepped away. “Come on you guys, we’ll be at this all day. Let’s  _go_.”  
  
Silverbolt grabbed Skyfire for a last fierce kiss, then the Aerialbots assembled on the road to transform. Countermeasure passed Dani to Hound.  
  
“Be good,” he told her, leaning close so they could bump noses.  
  
“YOU be good!” Dani shouted back, as Countermeasure ascended Silverbolt’s boarding ramp. He waved to her, to everyone, and disappeared inside. Maggie felt the cloud mind light with farewells – a cluster of new mechs in Oregon helping with base renovations, the Protectobots and Build Team in Malaysia, the Bullet Trains and the Spychangers.   
  
With a scream of powerful engines, the Aerialbots lifted off. Fireflight and Air Raid waggling their wings in unison.  _Goodbye! Goodbye!_  
  
 **Safe journey,**  Prime said.  
  
 _We’ll be back if you need us,_  Silverbolt promised. They passed through the mesosphere into the thermosphere, speed increasing exponentially as the atmosphere thinned. Exosphere and gone.  
  
Nightbeat leaned against Skyfire’s foot, watching the disappearing contrails. Maybe, in a year or two, he would follow, to chase puzzles and mysteries in the wide universe beyond the shores of Earth.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2028 – October  
  
 **...Thundercracker.**    
  
The transmission from Prime, repeated every 31 astroseconds, had been slowly increasing in volume, finally impinging upon Thundercracker's consciousness without startling him. From his position near Earth's moon, he angled down to a geosynchronous orbit.  _I hear you._    
  
 **Meet me _here_ , at  _this_  time, regarding that matter we discussed.** The channel closed without waiting for a reply. Thundercracker couldn't afford to be caught talking to the Prime, and he wondered what Prime's people would think if they knew he was in contact with one of the command trine.   
  
Mount Elbert, in Colorado, had the distinction of being the highest peak in the Rockies, and had therefore been chosen as a site for one of the Seeker eyries. Now abandoned. Seeing Prime standing amid the crystalline, angular Constructicon-built architecture was surreal. Prime had come alone. Of course he had, they were well within Perceptor's range, and looking at Prime closely, Thundercracker was not at all certain he could best him, one on one. Not in melee. The Seeker was larger, but Prime was stronger, more durable.   
  
 **I found Novawind and Saberfall,**  Prime said.  **Their patterns are not entirely cohesive; they are not as they were when you knew them, but they remember their names. They remember you.**  He opened his chest, extending a hand to Thundercracker.   
  
Thundercracker shrank away, flinching from that searing blue-white light. This wasn't what he'd expected. One subroutine shrieked that here was the great enemy, spark exposed – he could be killed, now, with a single shot. Galvatron would reward him for... No, Galvatron would kill him, for robbing him of the pleasure of killing his brother himself. Still, he should take the shot. End the war in one stroke. The Decepticons would win.   
  
But what would winning mean, under Galvatron? Under a Galvatron driven even more mad by the death of his twin. A cold certainty encompassed Thundercracker's spark like a closing fist. The Prime – Optimus – must be protected at all costs. This war could not be won, only lost. Nothing but disaster lay ahead of them.   
  
A curl of blue lightning snaked from Prime toward him, wrapping around and through him. The internal damage he'd been hiding since the last battle on Mars repaired itself seamlessly.   
  
 **C-come clossser...**  Voice slurring, optics dimmed, extinguished. Chest gaping wide, forcing his torso into a painful arch, Prime yet held out his hand. **Spark to...spark. May...be a way to com...municat-t-te.**  Something Prime was doing was taking up nearly all his processing cycles.  **N-n-not really built...for...thissss. Hurry.**    
  
Thundercracker leapt the distance between them. With a heavy  _crrack_  he opened his chest – an insane vulnerability – crashing, screaming through the streaming, hyperthreaded consciousness of Prime, falling, pulled inward toward singularity, the event horizon of no return. Their bodies thrashed, unheeded. Within, a flash, a border crossing; beyond was night, or nothing, or the soft glow of a stellar nursery.   
  
 _Saberfall! Novawind!_  They were there, they had always been, they would always be. It was as though he could hear their voices in another room, but there were no doors, no windows, no sky to fly through to reach them.   
  
 _Thundercracker. We are. We are one. Thundercracker. Our one. Our whole. Love is. Love us. Love you. We are._  
  
 _Novawind! Saberfall! Please, please come back to me. You can be embodied again. It is possible! Please! Come back! I need you…_    
  
 _We are. Love us. Love you. We are one._  They were no longer two separate beings. They could no longer exist in discrete forms. Thundercracker threw himself outward, breaking the fragile link, staggering away from Prime. He had to dislocate his shoulder to do it, but the muzzle of his sonic disruptor fit just beneath his own chin.  
  
 **NO!**  Prime grappled with him, forcing his arms away from his body.   
  
 _Let me go!_  
  
 **Consider your choices first!**  
  
 _How many more of my own species must I kill, Optimus Prime? Let me go._  
  
 **When Novawind and Saberfall died, what kept you from following them then?**  
  
 _Frag you…_  Thundercracker had been in a CR chamber when his trinemates had been killed during a battle with the Penstirachtatoriafelexians. Infusion had kept him under until he was completely repaired. And then Megatron and Starscream had been there, with a brand new Seeker, the mischievous Skywarp, hoping to save the old veteran, put his experience to use in a new trine. Megatron hated losing good officers; he took it as a personal affront.   
  
 **Consider, Thundercracker. You will always join them. No matter what happens, no matter what you do, the day your spark is extinguished you will be with them again. But it does not have to be _now_. There are so few of us. We need you to live, and remain active in the world.**  
  
 _How few?_  Thundercracker glared. He’d had this thought before, this suspicion, but dared not broach the subject with Galvatron.  
  
Prime told him.  
  
“Frag.” He felt as though Prime hadn’t stopped him from shooting himself.   
  
Prime backed away, sitting down abruptly with his back to one of the cupola’s support columns. His optics guttered.  
  
 _Don’t fall offline!_  Thundercracker darted forward and shook him roughly.  _Perceptor will shoot me!_  
  
Letting his head tip back, Prime drew up one knee and rested an elbow on it. “No, he won’t.”  
  
There was that, Thundercracker realized. If he joined the Autobots, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting his wings lasered off from six hundred million kilometers. Seekerbane as ally instead of enemy. An interesting thought. Weighed against every Decepticon, including Galvatron, Starscream and Skywarp, who would actively hunt him down, to kill him personally. Prime would try to protect him, and order the rest of the Autobots to do the same. A fine joke.  
  
Prime. There were larger issues here. Thundercracker bowed his head. His core programming fought with newer imperatives composed and uploaded by Megatron.   
  
“Do you remember the last battle at Stirachtator?” Prime asked softly, looked up at him, smiling. “And the celebratory dance in Iacon, after?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
8.997 million years ago.  
  
Five hundred thousand mechs fit in the Iacon Central Plaza. The Prime and the Lord, as was custom, began in the center, the intricate patterns of the dance drawing them outward through looping figures like the glides of planets and the whirl of galactic spiral arms, complex and sublime.  
  
The new command trine, heroes of the battle just past, considered ideal because of their perfectly matched and complementary skills and temperaments, made poignant by the eldest’s tragic past, swayed and slid near the ruling twins, beautiful and dangerous. Every optic followed them, every broadcast lens caressed their sleek planes.   
  
Seekers and twins circled one another within the dance, closer and closer, hands and bodies touching as all around them mechs were doing the same thing. The dance patterns slowed, clusters forming and merging as people slipped cables chest to chest, optics vivid, engines hot.   
  
At the last measure, the last slow revolution before everyone’s knees began to give out and blue static fire rolled across the plaza, the mech whose optics met Prime’s, the mech whose chest opened to his impassioned touch, was Thundercracker.   
  
Later, the two of them alone in the Prime’s suite, Thundercracker was putting his considerably more vast experience to its best use when the Lord Protector walked in, a Seeker on each arm.  
  
“Well, Ops, I’m glad you approve,” Megatron purred. “Do be sure to put him back where you found him when you’re done. He’s one of  _mine_.”  
  
“Mine,” Starscream corrected calmly.  
  
“Ours,” huffed the younger one, Skywarp.  
  
Optimus had to reboot his vocoder, but regained enough composure to make a suggestion. “Five is a prime number, too.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2028  
  
Thundercracker kept his distance. Too much death lay between them now.   
  
Prime offered him the same choices he’d given Strake. Freedom of the universe, with the attendant risks. Or asylum among the Autobots, with a thousand local years of probation under the supervision of Prowl.   
  
 **I know Strake would benefit if you join us. He’s missed having other alphas around.**  
  
 _Strake! What have you done to him?_    
  
“Easy. He’s fine.”  **Strake?**  
  
 _Yeah? Oh! You’re… Is he?_  
  
 **Ask him yourself.**  
  
 _Thundercracker!_  
  
The ping came through strong and clear on the old private Seeker frequency. Wary of Soudwave, Thundercracker replied via tight-beam.  _What happened to you, Strake? Report._  
  
 _Yes, sir._  Strake explained his injury, abandonment and subsequent defection.  _They have me on a short tether. His name’s Prowl. I think I like him a lot._  
  
 _I see._  Thundercracker gave a short, clanging laugh.   
  
 _Are you coming over?_  The younger Seeker’s hope and wistfulness were unmistakable – and undisguised. Vulnerability shocking in its nakedness.   
  
 _…Yes._  Meeting Prime’s optics firmly, Thundercracker clawed at his own chest, marring the faction sigil.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **I’m not going to change anything,**  Prime told him. Thundercracker lay on a repair table in the embassy’s med-bay. Ratchet, Strake and Prowl stood by. **We are only going to show you where the differences are. Then you must choose, as Strake has, what alterations, if any, to make.**  
  
 _It’s hard, TC,_  Strake said.  _He transformed us so slowly, I don’t think any of us noticed._  Updating one’s programming was fairly routine, but in the Decepticons’ case the updates had done grievous harm; not only to individuals but to their civilization.  _Once you see the difference…_  
  
 _I know. I can feel it sometimes._  Thundercracker’s core programming, his “instincts”, had always been particularly strong. Starscream had often berated him for reacting first and thinking after.  _Proceed._    
  
Ratchet and Prowl moved back, as Strake and Prime dove within, highlighting line after line of code.  
  
“Think you can handle two?” Ratchet asked Prowl.   
  
Prowl’s smile in reply was best described as feral.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Pulling Starscream closer, Galvatron laughed. Let Prime think they had been driven from the third and fourth planets by those pathetic Autobot jets. Let Prime think the war was nearly won. Well, it was, but not by the Autobots. Shockwave would be well rewarded for his brilliance and loyalty. They would be joining him on Chaar soon. He bit the edge of Starscream’s wing, enjoying the feel of the Seeker shuddering beneath him.   
  
“My Lord,” Starscream gasped, daring Galvatron’s mood. “I beg you. There is enough matter aboard the  _Twilight_. Please, enspark a new trinemate for Skywarp and I. We will be mightier than ever in your service, I promise you.”  
  
“That’s right, Starscream. I’ll make you a new trinemate.” Galvatron forced Starscream’s chest open wider. “When you bring me Thundercracker’s head.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mikaela stood at the inner doorway and watched as Prime seated a pair of cephalic cables into ports on either side of Thudercracker’s head. Optimus’ hands lingered over the Seeker’s face and chest and shoulders.  
  
“I take it they knew each other, before,” she said as Ratchet approached. Her tone indicated she had a certain definition of “knew” in mind.  
  
“Of course they did. Megatron’s commanders usually went to the same parties he did, and Megatron went to a lot of the same parties Optimus did.” He looked at her and smiled. “You have gathered by now how much we enjoy congregating in groups, large or small.”  
  
“For any reason or no reason at all,” she finished for him, smirking back. Her smile faded. “Prime was serious about letting the Cons switch sides.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I suppose he expects us to forgive them, too.”  
  
“That’s your choice.”  
  
“Not in my lifetime, Ratchet.”  
  
“No. I suppose not.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2028 – November  
  
Optimus climbed to the mesa top, gazing into the stars. The better to receive the subspace transmission from Ultra Magnus. Two transmissions, he amended. The first was older, sent from the vicinity of Cybertron, containing Elita’s report. The second was a query from much closer to hand, in a way. Ultra Magnus had his ship positioned near the wormhole leading from the Cybertronians’ native galaxy to the Milky Way.   
  
 _We’ve found some kind of message buoy, Prime. Silverbolt says it must be from Countermeasure because of the strange markings on the outside. I’m including image data encoded in the subharmonics. Let me know if you want one of us to courier the physical object out to you. None of us has been able to decipher the message, if there is one beyond the presence of the object itself.  
  
Also, we are fairly certain at this point that Shockwave and the Kaon fragment are heading for Chaar.   
  
Be well, Optimus. Ultra Magnus out._  
  
Laughing, Optimus composed a reply and sent it. The “message buoy” was definitely from Countermeasure. It suspiciously resembled a Rubik’s Cube.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Cruising at fifteen thousand meters above the ground, two alphas and a groundbound  _de_  danced and played through the clear blue sky. Prowl and Strake extended their arms until Strake held him by only their fingertips. The thought fleeted through the Seeker’s CPU that he could drop the Autobot from here and Optimus Prime would be down one of his most important officers. Something of that must have translated through his fingers, metal to metal. Prowl gave Strake a crooked smile. Pulling his arms down to his sides, he rolled over and  _dove_.  
  
Strake flailed for a second, grabbing at the air where Prowl’s hands had been. There was a flash of blue, and something hit him across the back of his helm.   
  
 _Idiot!_  Thundercracker snarled, powering into his own dive to catch Prowl. Swearing, Strake followed.   
  
It was strange. Once Thundercracker had caught him, Prowl held on firmly, not clinging in terror, but embracing him as though making certain Thundercracker could feel his engine thrumming.  _You have interesting reflexes,_  Prowl hummed, nuzzling Thundercracker’s jaw.   
  
 _Is he all right?_  Strake tight-beamed, sounding all worried and slag, like he’d just been kindled a week ago.  
  
 _You slagging moron,_  Thundercracker snarled.  _Of course he’s all right. How many times do I have to tell you – do NOT try to bluff or threaten this one!_  
  
 _I wasn’t! He…our fingers slipped._  
  
Thundercracker growled.  _I would also remind you, then, that he can shift to cometary mode and land just fine that way._  
  
 _Oh slag, I forgot they can do that too._  
  
 _Fragging novice._  He shifted his grip on Prowl. The tactician’s fingers were doing interesting things to his canopy. Strake maneuvered beneath them, avidly watching.   
  
 _Don’t be too hard on him,_  Prowl said, wriggling a bit farther up to get within kissing distance.  _You and Starscream once played the same game with a dignitary from Velantia IX. Only it wasn’t you who caught her._  
  
Strake boggled at them, then giggled at Thundercracker’s expression.   
  
Velantians were large reptiloids with vestigial flight membranes; they could glide but lacked the musculature for active flight. The unexpected drop from an altitude she was unaccustomed to attaining had been alarming. A nearby AI-driven ship, Megatron’s personal cruiser, had been in a position to arrest her fall through Cybertron’s tenuous upper atmosphere. The whole incident had been covered up, however, to avoid further embarrassment to any of the parties involved.  
  
 _How…how the slag do you know that?_  
  
 _Mm. You and I were…acquainted…a very long time ago. On the_ Fission Blade _. But then you knew me as Lance._  
  
This time it was Thundercracker who nearly dropped him.


	63. City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the new kid in the tank looks funny, Blurr is curious, Beachcomber is thinky, Borealis has a little glee, Sam and Optimus have a talk, a rescue team goes to Cybertron, Mirage is sad, Galvatron arglebargles, Mrs. Epps goes out with Mirage, Beachcomber has a bad moment, the rescue team returns in something vaguely resembling triumph and Ratchet gets a little frisky trying to help a friend.

  
_"The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity."_  -- Lewis Mumford

_"The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins."_  -- Italo Calvino

  
  
2029 – March  
  
Wheeljack opaqued the plex on the growth tank and stepped away, careful to use a very narrow tight-beam.  _Ratchet? Think we should get Perceptor down here? This one…doesn’t look like the others. I think I mighta screwed something up._  The new mech from his and Prime’s impromptu merge should have been close to decantation by now.   
  
 _What?_  There was a pause while Ratchet came in from watching Prime and some of the Graveyard Legion play tackle basketball. Prime had Bolo in a headlock and both were giggling like teenagers. He phased the plex transparent again and cocked his head at the large protoform growing inside.  _Hmm._  It didn’t look like the others, that was true; but it was definitely alive and well. More radially symmetrical than bilaterally, multiple tendrils and arms swayed out from a central mass.  _Primus. Wheeljack, you didn’t screw anything up._  He looked at his friend and smiled broadly.  _This doesn’t look like the others because she’s decided to be a cityformer._  
  
“Huh.” Wheeljack leaned closer, running a hand over the smooth curve of plex. He’d never been involved in building a city before – it wasn’t done very often. “We’re gonna need a bigger tank.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Whatcha doing, Wheeljack? Can I help? CanIcanIhuh? Wow that’s a big circle whatsitfor?”  
  
“Take a couple steps back, Blurr, while I fire this puppy up,” Wheeljack said. He placed the small, ball-bearing-like sphere of his nanodigger in the exact center of the circle he’d laser-etched on the floor of the empty chamber. Having already programmed it to excavate a cylinder of the proportions Ratchet specified, he now triggered the device with a signal only he and Perceptor knew. Ratchet wanted nothing to do with the “Pit-spawned thing.”   
  
“Is it on? What’s it doing? Is it broken? I don’t see anything happening.”  
  
“Use your zooms, kiddo,” Wheeljack said, moving outside the circle and patting the new mech’s shoulder. Blurr was the result of a merge between Bumblebee and Bluestreak, and had been decanted seven months ago. His sky-blue Mazda KAAN EV alt mode was faster than Mirage’s – albeit not even remotely street legal. “Won’t see anything macroscopically for a while. Maybe a few hours. But once these little guys get going – WHOOSH!” Wheeljack cackled. Blurr gave him a wide-opticked stare.   
  
Twenty-four hours later, the chamber held a perfectly cylindrical pit of sand. The Autobots formed a line and used the sand to fill sandbags, which the Protectobots were taking to a flood zone in Peru. As soon as the last grains were vacuumed out, Ratchet and Wheeljack jumped in and began prepping for the new growth tank.   
  
Even as big as the new tank would be, it wasn’t ideal for a cityformer, but they would do as they had done for Borealis. Let her decant when she was mentally and physically able and rebuild her bigger later. At least now they’d be better prepared if any more deltas kindled.   
  
 _Has she said anything?_  Ratchet asked.  
  
 _Nah._  Wheeljack shook his head, playing the fusor beam over the sandstone, melting it into a smooth, non-porous surface.  _Thought you said cityformer protoforms took something like ten years to build, back in the day. If that’s still true she isn’t anywhere near done cooking yet._  
  
 _I know. But some of the new ones have…defied expectations._  
  
 _Rutile._  Wheeljack grinned. Spark of Perceptor’s spark, after all. They shouldn’t have been surprised that he had chosen a name shortly after ignition, that he had held conversations with his progenitors and anyone else who came near his tank during the two years he’d been growing. That he’d invented a new kind of geological scanner and mapped the entire crust of Mars in less than three years – including tactically invaluable, hi-def charts of the Noctis Labyrinthus, where the Decepticons had been hiding. Prowl and Silverbolt had both cited the charts as being pivotal to the effort of driving the Cons off the planet.  
  
The memory made him smile again. Rutile had already had a great big, obvious crush on the those two, but Prowl and Silverbolt, being the serious, focused mechs they were, hadn’t noticed until someone – probably Fireflight, now that Wheeljack thought about it – told them.   
  
 _Or your friend Blurr,_  Ratchet added. Blurr had taken six months less time in the tank than any of the others. In retrospect, this was typical of him.   
  
“Okay, that’s got it,” Wheeljack said, jumping out of the cavity, followed by Ratchet. “I’ve got the fabricator running out lengths of plex, so as soon as Skyfire gets back from…wherever he is, we can start assembly.” Plex was laid down in layers and then molecular bonded with a specialized radiation field. Skyfire could carry two spools of the stuff at once and one of his long-range scanners emitted the right kind of radiation to get the job done swiftly and neatly. Then Ratchet and Wheeljack would build the tank’s controls and homeostasis mechanisms over the top, which would be lifted out of the way when getting the new person in and out.  
  
“Jazz says Skyfire’s on his way now,” Ratchet said. “Let’s get refueled while we can.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Beachcomber sat on a rounded knob of serpentine, watching the sun turn the evening mists golden, turning the sea stacks with their crowns of trees into magical islands – though Avalon was almost two thousand miles to the south. Miles trudged up out of the surf carrying snorkel mask and fins. The respirocytes in his blood allowed him to hold his breath for as long as the average sperm whale, but the snorkel was comforting. Beachcomber noted that he was not quite as springy as he had been fifteen years ago. The sun had etched fine lines on his browned skin, and time had begun to thin his still-blond hair. Everything in its season, the robot told himself.   
  
Leaving the fins and mask at the foot of the rock, Miles climbed up to warm himself in Beachcomber's lap. Other machines in his blood and tissues helped keep him warm in the chilly Northern Pacific waters – not to mention the full wetsuit – but they could only do so much.   
  
Getting the nanos had been pretty anticlimactic. Just a shot in the arm, like any subcutaneous or intra-muscular vaccination – but there were veins in the skin even there, and Perceptor's aim was good. Reading the information packet and signing the permissions Perceptor and Ratchet had devised to address whatever concerns the human medical community might raise had taken a lot longer. Miles, still convinced of his own intrinsic worthlessness except as the peripatetic Beachcomber's companion (though that in effect made him as much an ambassador as Sam), had volunteered for the procedure. DARPA had observed him closely, drooling to get nanos for North America's troops. They wanted to expand the small human base on Mars, now that the Decepticons were – for the moment – gone, and humans who didn't need 21 percent oxygen, who could make do with 15 percent, say, would be an advantage. More hardcore terraforming efforts would take decades, maybe centuries, even with the Autobots' help.   
  
Humanity had gotten pretty far in the past twenty years, especially once Sector 7’s secret pipes had been thoroughly flushed clear. Prime saw no reason to restrict whatever knowledge they had already thus gained, or anything the humans built on from there. Predictably, the worldwide reaction to the various technologies had been mixed. Those who objected and refused to pursue the research on whatever grounds, however, soon found that no matter what their country banned, someone else would allow. The financial implications alone were usually enough to get various nations on the bandwagon. Prime lobbied continually to make certain the benefits were available to everyone, not only the wealthy. Since the oil market had crashed, the world economic playing field had gotten a little more flat anyway. Miles suspected Smokescreen had had a hand in that somehow, though admittedly the mech might have disarmed the World Bank with charm alone.   
  
Well. That and he and Prowl had run some rather pointed sims and then put the data up on the web for all to see. Prowl's ideas about efficiency were scary, but effective.  
  
"Squid are migrating," Miles said, just to hear Beachcomber's hum in reply. It was slower in coming than usual. How many thought cascades did the geologist have running? "You okay?" he asked, patting a knee-headlight. Miles looked up, processing his friend's expression in human terms, though the tells involved drooping antenna masts and unusually motionless optical mechanisms.   
  
"Mmm. Just thinking."   
  
"Uh huh. Homesick?"   
  
"Not really. Home is where we are together."   
  
Miles didn't have to be able to hear the harmonics to know which kinds of "we" Beachcomber meant. It first meant he and Perceptor, and then also their Oregon team, and the Autobots in general and their human friends, and probably humankind and dolphins and whales and the last few gorillas and chimps and bonobos, and eventually all people of good will. Or something like that.   
  
"You're worrying at something, though."   
  
Beachcomber chuckled. "I guess I am."   
  
Miles waited. For about five minutes. "Well?"   
  
"...When we left Cybertron to search for the Allspark, I thought we  _all_  left. Or nearly all. I thought there were only Decepticons and maybe a few well-hidden holdouts too rusty to be moved."   
  
"Aaand that's not the case, huh?"   
  
"No. We left at least one person behind. Shouldn't have." He looked down at Miles, earnest and distressed. "Miles, please understand, it was so chaotic then. Launching the Allspark was an act of desperation."   
  
"Figured that, bro."   
  
"Did you know Perceptor was on that team? He picked the Alkaris Anomaly wormhole net because then even he wouldn't know where the cube would end up. "   
  
Miles grinned. “Not surprised.”   
  
Beachcomber wrapped his arms loosely around Miles and rubbed his cheek spar gently over the top of his head. “I’m thinking of going to Cybertron. We shouldn’t have left anyone there.”  
  
“Who is it? Friend of yours?”  
  
“His name’s Kalis, or his city is. Or was. He’s an AI. I never lived there, though, so I didn’t really know him in the way you mean.” Communication was integral to Cybertronians, and they had long enough lifespans that an individual could, hypothetically, be directly acquainted with every other person on the planet. Playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the robots was incredibly tedious. “During the war he was cut off from all the other cities – cityformers and AIs. Somehow he’s survived all this time alone, without inhabitants. Silverbolt says they give Kalis’ airspace a wide berth. He’s not even remotely sane now. But I can’t… I hate the thought of anyone trapped, alone like that. We should have… Well. Anyway, I think we should at least try to recover him.”  
  
“And I can’t come with you this time.” Miles laid his cheek on a smooth section of Beachcomber’s forearm.   
  
“No. I wish you could; it was beautiful, once. I’m glad you can’t; it’s a terrible place now. If Prime lets us go…”   
  
“On a rescue mission? Come on, of course he will.”  
  
“Heh. We’ll be back as soon as we can, I promise.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The big protoform slipped into the new tank sleek as an octopus.   
  
“Nice work,” Ratchet told Trailbreaker, patting the mech on the shoulder. “Very well done.”  
  
“Not even a splash, TB,” Wheeljack added, impressed. Trailbreaker ducked his head, sensory fins flushing red under the praise.   
  
“You’re sure she’s gonna be all right?” It had taken him longer than he liked to maneuver the unwieldy form through the new passageway from the inner cavern of the med-bay where the rest of the growth and CR tanks were. Ratchet kept assuring him that rolling all those big arms and trailing limbs into a ball with his fields hadn’t harmed her in the slightest, but Trailbreaker still felt as though he’d stuffed a baby into a suitcase. Wheeljack hugged him in passing as he went around the room, checking and rechecking the maintenance systems, scanners sweeping for structural stress or leaks.  
  
“She’s totally fine,” Wheeljack said, clambering over Borealis’ feet as she came in and continuing his circuit. “Am I in your way?”  
  
“Sorry, Jack. Wow, aren’t you gorgeous!” Borealis crouched, peering into the tank. Five meters of transparent plex rose above the chamber floor, but Borealis had gotten used to not  _leaning_  on things (after putting a hand or elbow through the third or fourth skyscraper window) and curled her neck and shoulders above the rim, looking down through the growth medium.   
  
A fragile little tentacle that would someday be the sensory network covering the equivalent of a city block extended toward her, breaking the thick surface of the medium. Borealis held out a fingertip and the wirelike appendage wrapped around it for a moment before being withdrawn. Ratchet observed them closely.  
  
 _Is there a…bond between Prime-kids?_  he asked.  
  
She sat back in her sphinx pose, considering.  _I don’t think so; not like a gestalt, not like twins._  She looked at him.  _Ratchet, you made me in a certain way, and I therefore have certain biases. Rio and the P-bots and this one and I are no more or less connected or special than any other set of half-siblings._ The scientist in her made her amend,  _I think. As far as I can tell, anyway._  She didn’t mention Skuld, Verthandi and Urthr, proud that Prime had entrusted her with their names – although it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what he and Elita had been doing. The way the waves of heavy neutrino radiation had fizzed through the walls of the base at the climax of each merge had been hard to miss.   
  
(Somewhere, Borealis thought to herself, out there in the far reaches of space millions of years from now, a young species would become advanced enough to detect those pulses of heavy neutrinos. Figuring out their source would give their physicists collective conniptions. They would never guess it was the result of robots having sex.)  
  
 _Uh huh,_  said Ratchet, not entirely convinced. “Watch your heads everyone, we’re closing the lid.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There were several methods of tagging memories that ensured one did not reveal secrets accidentally, and layers of possible secrecy that could be maintained in complex, interrelated ways. So while it was impossible to conceal from the rest of the Autobots that Borealis had taken Prime somewhere for the better part of a year, and returned with the Aerialbots, only a handful knew they had been to Cybertron, and no one else knew who they had met there.  
  
Borealis had had plenty of time on the journey back to Earth to think about what she’d experienced. And exchange a lot of files with the Aerialbots. The close brush with Kalis, informed now by what Silverbolt and the others had observed over the last vorn or so when Elita’s team had been close to the mad AI, bothered her almost as much as it did Beachcomber and Perceptor. Silverbolt had told them about the city – an anecdote passed along with the larger data package Perceptor had requested.   
  
She also knew what Perceptor was up to. She and Skyfire were alternating for scouting missions along Cybertron’s projected trajectory – Prime didn’t trust the Decepticons and didn’t want both deltas out of the Sol system at the same time if they could help it.   
  
The rest of the Milky Way’s galactic community wasn’t going to be thrilled, but the Alpha Centauri system was considered within Sol’s potential sphere of influence and off-limits to development without the permission of the dominant Solar species. Which Prime, secretly, already had. No other intelligent species lived within ten parsecs of Earth anyway. For now. Borealis wanted to sing and dance and hug everyone with joy.   
  
There  _had_  been microbes on one of Alpha Centauri A’s planets, but a rare conjunction of the three companion stars had fried everything half a billion years ago. She and Skyfire had been extremely careful to verify this. Perceptor had insisted – and modified some of their sensors to make sure.   
  
If all went well, Earth would soon (for Cybertronian values of “soon”) have a neighbor to talk with, only 4.37 light years away.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Rubbing his face, Sam leaned back in his chair. Stupid email. Why did people insist on using such tiny fonts, anyway? The fact that he was closing in on forty hadn’t yet really dawned on him. Despite what amounted to a desk job interspersed with the occasional frenzy of meet-and-greets, Ratchet and Bumblebee made sure Sam kept active and flexible of body and mind.   
  
He looked out the window at Optimus. “Am I reading this right? Epps isn’t reupping?”  
  
“That is my understanding,” Optimus said. “He has acquired a teaching position at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.”  
  
“Wow. Well, okay, that’s good, that’s cool.” Epps and Lennox were both in their late forties now, long removed by rank from the front lines and field work, though both had been involved in major battles for far longer than would normally have been the case. This had hardly been a normal war.   
  
Lennox was only a step away from General Morshower's old job. Keller had finally retired in 2018; replaced by a man called Leonard “Sabertooth” Williams, who had been a SEAL until losing a leg. It was now twenty-two years since the battle of Mission City. How had it gotten to be twenty years? It didn't feel like very long to Sam, but was that the outlook of anyone whose lifespan encompassed almost twice that many years, or was it because he had gotten used to thinking like the robots? He got up, stretching, and walked over to the window to lean on the sill. Watching Optimus' optics refocus was mesmerizing.   
  
Speaking of Mez. "Any further word from Countermeasure?"   
  
"Not yet. Ultra Magnus and Silverbolt are keeping sensors calibrated."   
  
Sam smiled. "Can I ask you something?"   
  
"Of course, Sam." Optimus forbore the standard answer that Sam already had asked a question, and Sam, understanding the unspoken quip, grinned more broadly.   
  
"Is there anyone else out there? In our galaxy I mean. In the Milky Way. I know you guys have mentioned things before about other space-faring races in your home galaxy..." He remembered Dr. Chase had tried – unsuccessfully – to winkle a quantitative answer out of Ratchet.   
  
Optimus cocked his head. Considering how to phrase the answer or communicating with someone? Newscasters and scientists and heads of state had been asking the Autobots that question since their cover had been blown. The knowledge that Cybertron's home galaxy - designated NGC 4321 or M100 by Earth's astronomers - held numerous space-faring civilizations, and an even greater abundance of life-bearing planets, implied that the Milky Way did as well. The Copernican Principle in action. But the robots were unusually cagey in their non-answers.   
  
 **The accords in this galaxy are more specific regarding contact with "nascent" planetary cultures. The civilizations here are more careful, more clannish. And they are not, I might add, particularly pleased by the presence of my people on your world.**  
  
 _Oops,_  said Sam.  _Sorry about that._    
  
 **That is hardly your fault.**    
  
 _I know, but I feel like a rude host anyway. Mi galaxy es su galaxy. Or something._    
  
Optimus threw his head back and laughed.  **Sam, I predict an 89% probability that your species will attain contact with fellow sapients in this galaxy within your lifetime. And I mean to be there when it happens. The looks on their faces ought to be priceless.**  
  
“Hey!” Sam still found it easier to speak aloud than think his sentences clearly enough to transmit. Especially when he was laughing.  
  
 **Ah, Prowl estimates the probability at 92%, and further states a 78% probability that encountering humans will cause a certain, highly logical, semi-robotic race to crash their hard drives.**  
  
“Prowl does, huh?” He’d expect commentary like that from Ratchet, but not the somber tactician. Gotta watch the quiet ones, he thought.   
  
 **Yes. Oh dear, now Smokescreen’s starting a betting pool.**  Prime rolled his optics expressively.  **It is a little known fact that Prowl is as big a smart-aft as Jazz.**  
  
 _I resemble that!_  Jazz said, joining the channel.  _Optimus, have you told him yet or have you two just been jawing this whole time?_  
  
 _Jawing, as charged,_  Sam said.  _Actually he’s reading my email._  
  
 _So not asking,_  Jazz said.   
  
 **Heh. Sam, we have some news and a proposal and I’d like to vet it through you first.**  
  
 _Great, go ahead._  Sam mimed putting on his Ambassador Hat.  
  
 **One of our newest protoforms is a cityformer. We would therefore like to obtain permission to build an Autobot city here on Earth.**  
  
“Wait a minute. You mean a whole city. That can get up and transform and walk around on two legs.”  
  
“More often four legs, but sometimes two, yes.”  
  
“Where are you going to…build it?”  
  
“I will shortly begin talks on that subject with the UN. She will of course be mobile if necessary, but Beachcomber thinks she should settle down in northern Africa. Somewhere in the mountains.”  
  
I guess that would keep the collateral damage down, Sam thought to himself but wasn’t about to say to Optimus. “‘She’, huh?”  
  
“The cityformer pronoun might be rendered as ‘tche’. And a city nurtures her inhabitants in what most of your species regards as a motherly role.”  
  
“Fair enough. She have a name?”  
  
Optimus switched back to tight-beam.  **Not yet. Ratchet thinks she may yet be another several years in the growth tank.**  
  
 _Gotcha. By the time you get through the red tape over the site, you’ll be ready to start building._  
  
“Precisely.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Borealis?_  
  
 _Hiya, Beachcomber! What can I do you for?_    
  
He chuckled at the definite leer in her harmonics.  _Would you mind taking a small team and me to Kalis?_  
  
There was a pause as she conferred with Prime.  _Uh, sure. Yeah, that works out quite well. Can you guys be ready to leave by Thursday? I’ll meet you there in Oregon._    
  
She was going out to Cybertron anyway. Beachcomber had expected as much. Prime always had a lot of plates spinning. He wondered idly if it had anything to do with Perceptor’s secret project.   
  
Thursday dawned cool and misty but clear above the fog. Beachcomber, Seaspray, Atrandom, Smokescreen and Hound stood on the beach. They were expecting Borealis from the west. Miles stood on a rock near Beachcomber to see them off, huddled in his jacket more from unhappiness than cold.   
  
“There she is,” Hound said, pointing at nothing, as far as Miles could see, in the sky still beneath Earth’s shadow. By the time he could see her, they could hear her as well, twin engines powering down, then abruptly shutting off as she transformed to robot mode, pulling her arms and legs in tight as she dropped.  
  
“CANNONBALL!”   
  
Seaspray cracked up as an enormous fountain of water geysered up from her impact.   
  
“Hope there weren’t any fish in the way,” Atrandom said.  
  
“She wouldn’t have done it if there were,” Seaspray said.   
  
“Hello, Venus,” Beachcomber hailed as she emerged from the water, striding carefully up the beach toward them. Borealis struck the famous Botticelli pose, but she’d need much bigger arms if she wanted to cover that chest. Miles wished he hadn’t thought that.   
  
Steaming like a locomotive, she stepped past them onto the beach access road and transformed, lowering her boarding ramp.   
  
“Sure you don’t need to refuel?” Smokescreen asked, patting the hydraulic lift mechanism of the ramp. He was carrying the backup drive into which they’d load Kalis, if feasible.   
  
“Nah,” Borealis said. “Fuelled up yesterday, and I did a polar orbit around Mercury as I came in-system. Got a nice tan.”  
  
Beachcomber held Miles close as the others trooped aboard. “We’ll be back in a year at the latest,” he whispered, spinning his spark faster to warm his friend. Miles hugged him hard.   
  
“You be careful,” Miles said. Sounding an awful lot like Perceptor, who was on Mount St. Hilary’s peak, watching.  
  
“I will,” Beachcomber laughed, leaning down to kiss Miles’ forehead. And then they had to let go. Miles waved as Beachcomber scampered up the ramp, kept waving as it closed behind him and Borealis powered up her engines. The cloud mind was a chorus of admonitions and farewells. Miles listened, as Mirage did, in a small circle of personal silence.   
  
“Everyone ready for three months of togetherness?” Seaspray asked, grinning, from his place close beside Hound in Borealis’ hold. Hound quirked half a smile to humor him, but was preparing his systems for light stasis. He didn’t want to spend the entire transit time online.   
  
“Lissi row the boat ashore,” Atrandom sang. “Halleluuuuuujah…”  
  
“Oy vey,” Borealis groaned. “If you guys start in on ‘99 Bottles of Beer’ I’m dumping everyone out the airlock.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Evening swam down gentle and blue, spangled with stars. Mirage sat on the mesa top as he had all day, since Beachcomber’s team had left. He didn’t stir as Prowl and Wheeljack approached and sat to either side of him. First Countermeasure, now Hound. Hound had asked him to go with them, but Mirage refused. He couldn’t bear the thought of setting foot on Cybertron the way it was now, a corpse of a world.   
  
“We haven’t been apart, on separate planets, for over a million years,” Mirage said finally. Wheeljack and Prowl exchanged a look over his head.  
  
Mirage would never emit so uncivilized a noise as a squawk, even when suddenly mashed between two rather hefty mechs.   
  
“Mind if we do our best to distract you?” Wheeljack whirred, his voice gone deep and dark and warm, pulling Mirage into his lap, with Prowl flaring up hot against Mirage’s back in Seekerlike fierceness.   
  
Shivering, Mirage kissed Wheeljack, but curled one arm behind to caress Prowl.  _Where are your shadows?_  
  
 _Recharging. Bluestreak is scheduled to take up their supervision once they come online._  Prowl nibbled on the edge of Mirage’s temporal flange where the curving inlay of white metal that was part of his invisibility net made their fields sizzle in an interesting way.  _Hm. Prime seems to want me to take a couple of days off._  He stiffened abruptly, optics wide.  _And when Blue’s in recharge Prime is handing Strake and Thundercracker’s supervision to the Protectobots._  
  
“Oh boy,” said Wheeljack.  
  
“I’m…not certain that it isn’t Thundercracker and Strake I’m more worried for,” Mirage mused. Prowl briefly rested his forehelm on Mirage’s shoulder.  
  
“In any case,” Prowl continued, “it seems I have some free time. Wheeljack?”  
  
“New tank’s running great, got nothing set to explode until next week, and I can’t think of much else I’d rather do than clang you two anyway.”  
  
“Mmmmmmm,” said Mirage.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Somewhere, on the rim of their galaxy, Autobots were killing Decepticons, and being killed in their turn. Galvatron roared in disgust, clawing at his chest, feeling polluted with each spark exploding within the Allspark, diluting him, bludgeoning him with their thoughts and memories when they did not dissipate immediately as they ought, releasing their power to him and him alone.   
  
Die, die they should all die, he thought. Wipe them out, get them out of me, no I want everything, everything will be mine. Everything! Conquer, unity under my rule – alone, alone – no, get them out of me, stop,  _stop_   **STOP**! Curse the Autobots. Their resistance has caused nothing but wasteful destruction, brought us to this brink. The strong must survive, overcome, must not let the universe be overrun with inferior forms!  
  
Recovering, Galvatron leaned out over the edge of the observation platform, surveying the expanse of hive-like activity going on below.  **Mmmm lovely work, Shockwave – the grand project will end this war. All resistance will crumble before my might.**    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2029 - April  
  
The move to Colorado hadn’t been the easiest. Bobby’s ambitions, overt and covert, made Theresa Epps proud of him, but what of her tenure at the university? His military career had meant they spent a lot of time apart, and she had accepted that, accepted the larger ideals for which they both worked. It bothered her, though, that she was always the one who had to adapt, change her life – especially now that Uncle Sam was no longer calling the shots.   
  
She was determined to make the best of it, despite her discontent. She and Bobby would finally get to see more of each other, the eldest four of their daughters were out of the house and the youngest was old enough to drive herself to school. And Theresa had books in her that wanted writing.  
  
The Veyron parked courteously on the curb was a surprise, but a welcome reminder of their old home and of friends who would be with them no matter where they lived. Theresa opened the garage door, keys to her electric Civic in hand.  
  
“Good morning, Mirage! I haven’t seen you in a while. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Talking with the Towers bot was a fun excuse to break out one’s best manners.  
  
“Good morning, Theresa. I trust you and your family are well?”  
  
“We are. And you and yours?”  
  
“Well enough, thank you. Is there anywhere I can take you?”   
  
“Oh. Thank you, Mirage, but…I’m going grocery shopping, and you don’t have much trunk space.”  
  
“Ah. True.”   
  
Theresa bit her lips. Hitting the garage door’s close button on the fob and pocketing her keys, she walked around to the driver’s side door and gently touched the handle. He opened the door for her and she slid inside. “Come to think of it, though, with only three of us in the house I don’t need to get that much.” Two or three bags would fit in the passenger seat and foot-well. She had to remind herself that she didn’t have to buy everything in bulk now. “I’d like to go to Sunflower Farmer’s Market, please.”  
  
“At your service, milady,” Mirage said and started his engine.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2029 – June  
  
 _Everyone secure for landing. Depending on what the sentry drones are doing I might have to pull some maneuvers. Stealth mode engaged – Atrandom, turn your music down please._  
  
“Aye-firmative.” Atrandom saluted the air and shut off her alt-mode speakers.  
  
Hound and Beachcomber went forward to the cockpit and locked themselves to the seats, peering out the canopy for their first look at their homeworld in a very long time. Borealis activated a screen in the hold so the others could see as well. Per Prime’s orders, she took a north polar route, hiding from her passengers the gaping crater where most of Kaon had been.   
  
“Primus. There’s…nothing left,” Hound murmured.   
  
Beside him, Beachcomber sat silent and unhappy, trying not to curl up within himself. This had been his idea. He had to face whatever they found. Borealis took up a geostationary orbit, matching her velocity with the planet’s precisely, then dove, accelerating toward the spot she had chosen a short distance outside of Kalis’ borders. Five kilometers from the surface she cut engines, rotated, and re-engaged engines to decelerate hard and fast – a maneuver no human would have survived. When she set down on the ceramic roadway she and Firestar had used five Earth-years ago, it was with hardly a bump.   
  
They let Atrandom be first down the ramp, and she stood looking around as the others disembarked. She was the only one who had never been to Cybertron before. With the map overlay she knew exactly where she was, but nothing was familiar. It was cold and dark, and reminded her of the photos she’d seen of Hiroshima. A whole planet’s worth of Hiroshima. Creepy as slag. Given the dismay of the others, she was glad she had no emotional attachment to the place.  
  
Borealis retracted her ramp and took off again the moment everyone was clear.  _I’m going to be in-system, so to speak,_  she told them.  _Ping me when you’re ready to leave. Good luck!_    
  
“Beachcomber?” Hound said, as he and the others gathered around the geologist. He had old files regarding the substructures of most of the major cities.  
  
“Everyone transform,” Beachcomber said finally, shaking himself. “We’ll take this road six kliks in, then there’s an access tunnel to the southeast that’ll let us into the older layers. If we’re lucky the defenses won’t be as tight down there.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Defenses not as tight down here, huh?_  Seaspray grumbled, clinging desperately to Hound as they bounced along at top speed in the opposite direction to the one they wanted.   
  
 _Here!_  Beachcomber shouted, slewing around in a tight left-hand turn into a side branch no-one else had seen. The way sloped sharply upward – exactly what they needed. Kalis had apparently been storing the acid rain in cisterns and was flooding the tunnels with it.   
  
The branch took them to the next ring-tunnel out, farther from their goal of one of the main processing nodes, but the acid rose no further behind them so they continued clockwise for a couple of kliks, then turned inward again. So far they had been able to avoid the disturbing, mutated maintenance drones – Beachcomber’s geo-sensors could detect the energon in a mech or drone’s fuel lines, though his range was limited.   
  
 _I’m not sensing any visual or EM pickups out here,_  Hound told them as they sped on.  _There might be passive vibrational sensors. Hard to tell, a lot of these repaired sections are…weird._  It was as though Kalis’ self-repair programs had been damaged, then tried to rewrite themselves. Like the drones, put to uses they had not been built for as more and more fell to the passage of war and time.   
  
 _Where’s he getting the power for all this?_  Seaspray wondered. Drones flanked them, with arms where heads should be and far, far too many legs, closing in as Beachcomber led them into another side-tunnel to avoid a falling emergency partition.   
  
 _I’ve been worried about the same thing,_  Beachcomber said.   
  
 _There’s a processing node half a klik to our east,_  said Smokescreen.  _I’m guessing Kalis won’t let us get near any of the primary control towers or memory cores, but I should be able to pull him out through the node with Ratchet’s gizmo._  
  
 _We can’t get over directly,_  Hound said.  _I caught a glimpse of this section as we were landing – that bridge is out._  
  
 _It certainly is,_  Seaspray commented, as they passed it. They could still make out the moorings on either side of the urban canyon, but the entire span had been corroded by the rain and had fallen. They were above “ground”, which put them in danger from the sentry turrets. Most of which were no longer working, fortunately; but they found out right away which ones were.  
  
 _At this next intersection I’m going to risk a full barymetric pulse,_  Beachcomber said. It would give them a clearer idea of the current layout of the area. It would also let Kalis and anything else with half a sensor know exactly where they were. With Seaspray and Atrandom blasting away at the drones behind them, though, there was already little chance of them being overlooked.   
  
Skidding to a halt in the center of the crossroads, Beachcomber transformed. Placing hands and feet carefully equidistant on the ground, he waited for the emitter to build a full charge. Hound huddled behind Smokescreen and offlined half his equipment.   
  
There was a sound – had any elephants been in attendance they would have been displeased – but mostly the bots felt the pulse across their shields; ringing outward, bouncing back. Large portions of even complex cave systems could be mapped in this way. Beachcomber leapt back into his dune-buggy mode the instant his CPU processed the echoes.  _Got it. Let’s go!_  
  
North; through gaping tunnels of ruined towers, down a level, skidding across a debris field – fortunately both Smokescreen and Atrandom had rally cars as vehicle modes – running along a collapsed skyway, using the fallen buttresses as cover from the turrets.  
  
 _We passed it,_  Atrandom called out, slowing.  
  
 _He knows what he’s doing,_  Hound said.  _Stay close!_  
  
East; down again into a transit hub, zigzagging around smashed columns, with a bounce of tires leaping the low sill of what had once been a store window, skidding on acid-washed scraps of merchandise, then out the other side into the open, where the corroded hulk of a toppled building shielded them. South; across a narrow but deep chasm, a hard jog to avoid a twisted spray of bare metal support beams, down yet again, and down, smashing through a broad set of doors turned to lace with projectile holes. There seemed to be fewer drones here, maybe it would take a while for the others to catch up or larger numbers to be redirected.   
  
At the end of a narrow hallway that was more or less intact, Beachcomber transformed. “Behind this,” he said, indicating a nondescript set of sliding doors.   
  
Atrandom extended something that looked like a cross between a welder and one of Ironhide’s cannons. Scanning carefully, she considered her options. **Zzraang-zzraang-zzraang-zzraang!**  Three shots to precise spots on the walls around the doors, and one in the middle of the central seam. The doors shuddered open, revealing a dim, semi-circular space beyond.   
  
 _Now we can’t secure the doors behind us,_  said Seaspray.  _But at least the drones can only come at us from one direction._  
  
 _Oh slag,_  said Atrandom.  
  
Someone had blasted the main comm console, but faint operation lights twinkled on the auxiliary.   
  
“Kalis?” Smokescreen moved to the aux console, flipping a small cutting tool out of his left wrist. “Can you hear me? My name’s Smokescreen. We’re here to help you.” There was no answer. He and Hound surveyed the room. The only speakers they found had been smashed. Smokescreen wondered if any remained functional in the city, or had Kalis been left voiceless as well as alone? This could be more complicated than he’d thought – and the psychologist hadn’t fooled himself that retrieving the AI was going to be anything but wrenchingly difficult.   
  
The seals on the access panel had corroded. Smokescreen cut a new access, quick and dirty, but it would gain him a better angle on the processor sub-net.   
  
 _No offense to you or the others, Hound,_  Smokescreen muttered,  _but I wish we had Prowl with us._  With the last cut, the panel came away. Smokescreen scanned the interior. He wanted to be very certain he was connecting to the right thing.  
  
 _So do I,_  Hound laughed. A group of drones rushed the door, getting in each other’s way, but Hound and the others were kept busy. A spot on one of the walls began to glow a dull red.   
  
 _Can only come at us from one direction, huh?_  Atrandom said, grinning at Seaspray’s dismayed expression.   
  
They aren’t people, Beachcomber told himself, firing steadily. They’re just tools, not sentient. His body couldn’t support the kind of firepower larger bots could, so Perceptor had made sure Beachcomber’s targeting systems were top notch. He aimed for legs or treads, hoping to immobilize rather than destroy, but the drones crawled toward them with arms and pincers.   
  
Hound braced himself close to Smokescreen, picking off any drones that were in danger of getting through the others. Retrieving the portable memory core and the logic sink Ratchet, Prowl and Wheeljack had created, Smokescreen made the necessary physical connections but hesitated a moment before sending power through. He couldn’t think of a better way, of any way that wouldn’t be cruel, however briefly. The logic sink would forcibly download Kalis into the memory core, where he would remain in a kind of programmatic stasis lock until they figured out what to do with him. Built him a new city maybe. Kalis was one of the eldest city AIs, the last one, as far as Prime knew, and Optimus would rather not destroy him if there was any chance he might be saved.   
  
 _Hound? Hang onto me, I’m going in._  
  
“Hurry,” Hound said, winding one arm around Smokescreen’s waist, still firing with the other. More drones were coming. Far away he could hear heavy walls shifting, machinery powering up. Or trying to. Not all of it was working, by the brittle-sounding clanks and crashes. Kalis was shattering his already broken city trying to defend against them.   
  
Extending a single cervical cable, Smokescreen reinforced his firewalls and plugged in. Data slammed him, immense, incoherent, a million years of screaming condensed into a few milliseconds. Smokescreen condensed himself, offered no resistance. His body jerked in Hound’s embrace, twisting, optics dark, flinching as though evading savage punches.   
  
 _O Kalis, O faithful one, ancient one,_  Smokescreen sent, mourning.  _I am so sorry._  He triggered the sink.   
  
A last sizzle of plasma fire lit the room before the Autobots saw that the drones were offline.   
  
“Whew!” said Atrandom, pretending to mop her brow. “One more volt and I’d have been too pooped to zap.”  
  
“Smokescreen?” Beachcomber’s voice was anxious.   
  
Leaning heavily on Hound, Smokescreen retracted his cable and nodded. “He’s a mess, but we have him. What’s left of him.”   
  
“All right. Let’s…” Beachcomber moved his feet deliberately, optics unfocused. The removal of the AI hadn’t shut everything down. Power yet flowed from somewhere.  
  
“Come on,” said Seaspray. “We got what we came for. Let’s get out of here.”  
  
“No. There’s something else.” Beachcomber transformed and drove off at top speed. The others scrambled to follow. Without Kalis’ direction, the remaining drones throughout the city stood quiescent, lifeless. Though of simpler designs, they looked like battered, broken people to Atrandom.   
  
Near the center of the city, another two levels lower, Beachcomber stopped. The tunnel was blocked by a wall of what almost looked like organic matter. Nanocells gone wrong perhaps, though that was a terrifying thought. Cybertronians did not get cancer. He touched one of the cable-like formations.  
  
“Careful!” Seaspray hissed. Primus, Beachcomber was always  _touching_  things! Usually things that shouldn’t be touched. Perceptor was going to have Seaspray’s aft…  
  
“It’s not solid,” Beachcomber said, poking carefully, finding gaps between the curtains of metallic but flexible material and suspended conduit. He sensed an open space beyond – and that this was where the city’s power was coming from. He pushed himself through.   
  
“Beachcomber!” Seaspray’s grab was too late. Struggling wildly against the creepily flexible wall, the others followed, crashing into the geologist on the other side.  
  
Kalis hadn’t been trying to kill them. He had been herding them.  
  
“Oh Primus.” Hound activated his full sensor array, though a part of him didn’t want to. Twenty-two robots hung suspended, eaten, in the walls. Enormous conduits snaked between their chest plates, siphoning off the sparks of the five who were still living. The rest gaped cold and grey, dead.   
  
“These two are Decepticons,” Seaspray said, but he didn’t raise his gun.  
  
“I don’t care,” Beachcomber said. “Con or Bot, let’s get them down.”  
  
“Looks like there were three other chambers like this one,” Atrandom said from a half-obscured comm pylon. “But…they’re dark. No power’s coming from any of them.” The mechs trapped in the walls were dead.   
  
“Be careful, Dom,” Hound said. “Don’t plug into that.”  
  
She shot him a look. “Of course not. There  _are_  buttons.”  
  
The larger of the Cons – a Seeker, but no-one any of them could put a name to – stirred as Beachcomber cut away the material binding him. With a strangled roar, the Seeker tore himself loose, pouncing on the little geologist. Laughing, he ripped Beachcomber’s gun from his forearm and pointing it at a precise angle against his helm, shot himself.   
  
Molten alloy spattered Beachcomber’s face as the body crashed on top of him, pinning him. The others leapt to free him, Seaspray hauling him out by one leg in his haste. Both were trembling as Seaspray embraced him.  
  
“I’m…I’m all right,” Beachcomber said.   
  
You’re not, Smokescreen thought, but they couldn’t do anything about it now. The other Con was waking up.   
  
This one was near Prime’s size, and collapsed to the floor for a moment, glaring at them, crimson optics flickering then steady with rage and pain. The Autobots raised their weapons or froze, according to their temperament. After long minutes, the big Con rose unsteadily and turned his back on them, tearing at the curtain wall, roaring wordlessly until he had made a gap large enough. Without a backwards glance, he lunged through and down the corridor beyond.   
  
“Guess he’s all right, then,” Atrandom said, wide-opticked. Seaspray and Hound laughed as they turned to finish extracting the rest of the survivors.   
  
Beachcomber pulled conduit away from the face of a small blue mech about Bumblebee’s size. “Glyph!” He scrabbled at the remaining material, Atrandom helping. “I never knew what happened to her. She’s a…I guess you’d call her an anthropologist, Dom.”  
  
“Studies more than anthros, huh?” Atrandom said, grinning as she lifted the offline mech down.   
  
 _Glyph and this one are in bad shape,_  Hound said, scanning a slim but tall white and red mech who reminded him of Infusion. The largest of the three, a vivid red, rather feline-looking mech, seemed to have fared slightly better, or hadn’t been enmeshed for as long. “Dom?”  
  
“I concur,” she said. Like Wheeljack, she was a good field medic, though she hadn’t completed her experiential training. She checked all three, closing their spark chambers and chest armor. No leaks, no major structural damage, but all three had been drained cold. “I’m putting them into stasis lock. We should ping Borealis now.” She and Beachcomber carried Glyph to Hound as the latter transformed, placing her across his back seats. Seaspray would have to hoof it.  
  
Smokescreen took the largest mech and Atrandom had the tall one, Seaspray and Beachcomber struggling to fit the gangly limbs inside without pinching anything in Atrandom’s doors. Atrandom rolled the windows down – one foot stuck out but things were otherwise secure.  
  
“Lissi says she can meet us at the debris field,” Hound told them. “And to be ready for a fast dustoff.”  
  
“Wait, Beachcomber,” Seaspray said, stooping. “Here’s your gun.”  
  
“Don’t want it,” Beachcomber said and transformed.   
  
 _Beachcomber,_  Smokescreen tight-beamed.  _You might need it. We still have to get out of here and we may need you to help us defend the wounded. When the war is over we can come back and retrieve the bodies—_  
  
 _When the war is over. When the war is over. Everyone says that. This war will never be over. Not until we’re all dead._    
  
Seaspray cached Beachcomber’s pistol and patted the geologist’s wheel well. “Let’s go.”  
  
“More of those Franken-drones between us and outside,” Hound reported. “Not moving around much, though.” They retraced their route, slowly this time, mindful of the wounded. Seaspray and Atrandom both had taken some damage, amounting to dented armor and a severed fuel line in Seaspray’s left arm that Atrandom had already capped.   
  
The dark jet hove into view, whirling around for a hard stop, barely touching ground before her ramp lowered. Atrandom grinned as she gunned her engines and skidded aboard. “Hi, Borealis! Are we in a hurry?”  
  
Smokescreen paused on the ramp. She had fresh laser burns across her underside. Big ones, some of them. “Who’s been shooting at you out here?”   
  
“Never mind, Smokey! Get IN!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2029 – October  
  
 _Welcome home! That didn’t take long._  
  
 _Ratchet, we’re coming in with wounded._  Passing Saturn’s orbit, Borealis chirped him the data – three grave. Seaspray and Atrandom’s dings had been repaired. Ratchet was going to chew Borealis out later for not including herself, but the blast marks were hardly visible any more and he’d be too distracted with the three in stasis lock for a while. Maybe she could arrange to be orbiting Alpha Centauri B…  
  
 _Catscan! You found Catscan!_  
  
 _What the who now?_  
  
 _Oh Lissi, we thought he was deactivated vorns and vorns ago. I’m so glad you found him. He’s the big, red fellow._  
  
 _Do you know who the other one is?_  
  
 _Lifeline. Not one of mine but I think she was forged about the same time as Catscan. And I didn’t know Beachcomber knew Glyph but I guess I’m not surprised. They’ve been missing for a long time. How did they…well, I can wait for the reports. Med-bay standing by and ready as soon as you land, Little Bird._  
  
 _Roger that. ETA fifteen minutes._  She didn’t want to jar the injured with a hard deceleration.   
  
A huge group of bots, spiced with a few humans, were there to greet them as Borealis landed on the road in front of the Nevada embassy. Ratchet, Hoist and Wheeljack were the first up the ramp, towing anti-grav stretchers. Once the wounded were clear, Beachcomber’s team disembarked so Borealis could transform.   
  
Smokescreen went directly to Prime and gave him the memory core. They linked arm cables and Smokescreen gave the team report, since Beachcomber had his arms full of Miles and Yasmina and Grapple; their pile merging with Bumblebee, Atrandom, Jazz and Rio,Inferno and Seaspray, Powerglide and Warpath. Rutile and the Protectobots cheered across the cloud mind from Mars and Kuala Lumpur. Hound was soon invisible under a pile of Mirage, Prowl, Tracks, Maggie and Chipchip, Glen and Icon, Trailbreaker, Windcharger, Cliffjumper and Arcee.   
  
Strake and Thundercracker observed from the mesa top. Having made her own private report to Prime, Borealis made herself climb up to join them. Thundercracker offered her a large cylinder of energon.   
  
“Thanks.” She couldn’t entirely hide her wariness, but she needed the fuel. Besides, the alphas were less than half her height, and Thundercracker, she had decided, would look good in a peacock feather hat and gold pasties.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Miss me?” The three-month-long Autobot cuddle-pile in Borealis’ hold had done much to restore his emotional equilibrium.   
  
“Don’t be absurd, Beachcomber,” Perceptor said absently. “You’ve only been gone for a few months. The resultant quiet was pleasantly conducive to getting a reasonable quantity of work done for a change.”   
  
Beachcomber smiled ruefully. Because what that really meant was that Perceptor hadn’t recharged more than two or three times a month since Beachcomber had been gone.  
  
In three strides Perceptor crossed the lab, catching Beachcomber up, lifting him off the ground – which Perceptor rarely did – to hold him tight. Every tendril and vane and sensory quill on Perceptor’s head fanned forward over Beachcomber’s helm, and Perceptor’s fingers extended, telescoped deep into little spaces in Beachcomber’s body. Perceptor’s mouth moved over his face and neck and chest, tasting traces of cold metals from the homeworld.  
  
Beachcomber laughed as they sank to the floor. “Aww. You missed me.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Borealis was flopped over the northern end of the mesa top, heavily in recharge. Blurr went up to check on her, but ended up having Cliffjumper take vids of him sticking his head into her open mouth. And then the rest of him, in various dramatic poses, since there was room. And then Cliffjumper wanted a turn. Inferno finally chased them off, saying they were lucky Borealis didn’t twitch while in recharge.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The doors to Prime’s office closed and locked – an unusual occurrence. Prime set the memory core on the edge of the holo table. “Teletraan, Event Horizon, your thoughts?”  
  
“If his code is irreparably corrupt,” Event Horizon said, “he should be deleted for the safety of others.”  
  
“How can you say that?” Beachcomber protested. “He’s one of you – one of few.”  
  
“All AIs are one AI,” Teletraan said.  
  
Prowl lifted an optical ridge. “That’s rather a vast oversimplification.”  
  
“For the benefit of the embodied,” Teletraan replied primly.  
  
Prowl laughed, well remembering that flavor of innocent superiority. Smokescreen grinned, appreciating the note of humor in what might otherwise become a grim conversation. And he liked the sound of Prowl’s laughter.   
  
“I want to try to salvage him,” Smokescreen said. “Wheeljack’s working on a proxy system – give him optics and audials, and a voice. Start with that, keep him on a small circuit for a while.” Maybe it wouldn’t work, the code might be too far gone, but it was worth the attempt.   
  
Prime nodded, and stroked Beachcomber’s back with a fingertip as the geologist looked gratefully at Smokescreen. “Is that acceptable, Tel and Ven?”  
  
“Yes, Prime.”  
  
“Anything else? No?” Prime beamed down at his people. Practicality and mercy, hand in hand. “I’ll keep the memory core here until Wheeljack’s ready for it.”  
  
 _Thank you, Smokescreen,_  Teletraan said quietly.  
  
 _Any time, Tel._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Of course I know him,” said Ratchet. “I built him! We needed a replacement med-bot for one of Xenon University’s field teams. The old one got himself eaten by giant metallivorous worms.”  
  
“You’re kidding.” Mikaela had the feeling she should have been watching a lot more sci-fi movies all her life. Or maybe that wouldn’t have helped. The real universe seemed to be a lot weirder than anything Hollywood had imagined so far.  
  
“Unfortunately not.”  
  
“Mmh.” Catscan’s optics flickered on. “Ratchet?” His voice had the odd, detuned quality of a long-unused vocoder. Mikaela recognized the sound of Ratchet’s name in Cybertronian, and the nonverbal groan needed no translation. She liked listening to them speak their own language – they did so so rarely any more. The sounds, to her ear, suited them better than English, having their own extraordinary, electric beauty. Especially when Prime or Mirage or Tracks spoke it.  
  
Ratchet laid a hand over Catscan’s chest, over his dim but recovering spark. “Don’t try to sit up. You’re stable but we’re still transfusing you.” The med-bay was heavily shielded. Ratchet didn’t want to overwhelm the rescued Autobots, whose psyches would likely be fragile after their ordeal, with the vast rollicking nonsense and data overload of Earth’s nets. Nor did he want to chirp them the language files yet – the context matrices might also prove confusing. He provided a running translation for Mikaela over a private channel.   
  
“Where is this?” Catscan covered Ratchet’s hand with his own, staring up at the CMO intently, but with a peculiar reluctance.  
  
“Barred Spiral Galaxy 84.23, same supercluster, different local cluster. Don’t reach for nets or cloud yet. Just take it easy. Recharge if you can.”  
  
“Glyph—?”  
  
“Somewhat worse off than you, but alive. And Lifeline as well. None of the others on your team survived. I’m sorry. When our group found you, everyone else was deactivated, except for a Decepticon named Turmoil.” Prime had identified him from the team’s optical records. The incident with the Seeker and Beachcomber’s pistol could wait.   
  
Catscan shuttered his optics, letting his hands fall slack at his sides. “Kalis, please. I know you’re trying to be kind. I know you only wish to survive. Please stop. Please. Let us go.” There were no harmonics. His voice was flat and dull, reciting the same plea for thousands of years.   
  
Ratchet whirred, kept his hand where it was. He’d anticipated this. “Will you come down a moment please, Mikaela?” Ratchet extended his other hand out to the gantry and Mikaela stepped into it with the grace of familiarity. He brought her to the repair table near Catscan’s head.  
  
She couldn’t feel it, but she was pretty certain she was being scanned.   
  
 _They call themselves “human”,_  Ratchet explained.  _Homo sapiens. The technologically dominant species on this planet; our allies. Neither you nor Kalis has ever seen them before._  How well any of this worked would depend on how vivid Catscan thought his own imagination was.   
  
“Hi, Catscan,” Mikaela said, waving. “My name’s Mikaela. Nice to meet you.” Ratchet translated.   
  
 _I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’m truly here, I’m truly me. And we are not on Cybertron. We have Kalis’ persona in a portable core. You and the others are no longer being drained._  Ratchet smiled and stroked Catscan’s helm.  _My friend, I will tell you this every day for millennia if I have to._    
  
“Allies. With organics? The war is not over? You have converted the EMP generator in your right arm to a rail gun.”  
  
“Yes. They’re brave little things.” Ratchet made as if to poke Mikaela and she swatted his finger. “Not yet. Yes, I’m afraid I have.”  _Kalis had you in a VR, didn’t he. Keeping you alive, and quiet._  
  
“Kalis gave us everything we longed for. The war over, loved ones restored.” Catscan’s optics took on a more vivid hue for a moment. “Even the comfort of old friends.”  
  
“I can’t offer you anything better. The war isn’t over, but it has taken a strange turn. We have hope. We have Optimus. Cat, you can treat the reality I exist in as a dream, you can ignore it, or you can engage with it, live with us. Even if you decide it’s another hallucination, we could use your help.” He sent Catscan a précis of recent events. The Allspark, Jazz, spark-merging, the Graveyard Legion, certain defections, the new cityformer growing in her tank.  
  
Catscan’s optics flared as he processed this. He stared at Ratchet, trying not to believe. “And if this is another illusion I cannot bear to have broken?”   
  
“It’s up to you. I can’t make you choose.” He parted his chest armor. Kalis had forced himself into his captives through cables, which was why Ratchet had disconnected even the monitor at Catscan’s arm port.  _Judge me by my spark._  There was a chance the simulation had not been perfect in every detail. Ratchet was not entirely the same person he’d been the last time he and Catscan had met; the change itself might grant Cat the data he needed.   
  
And then Ratchet would get Borealis in here, show him  _her_  spark – and the Ixchel memories. Let him scan her closely, spark of Ratchet’s spark, of Prime’s. See if he could think  _that_  an illusion.   
  
Lip components parted, optics wide, Catscan touched the exposed sliver of Ratchet’s spark chamber, and pulled him closer.   
  
“Mikaela, I love you like a daughter,” Ratchet said, grinning. “But it’s about to become very radioactive in here. Get!”  
  
Smirking, she got.


	64. Interlewd: Interior Cartography

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Rutile has a crush, Prowl and Silverbolt are charmed, and they shag him senseless.

2029 - January  
  
“I’d like to note that Rutile’s maps were critical to the success of our overall strategy,” Prowl said, completing his report to Prime. Rutile’s lateral temporal fins turned crimson.   
  
“I agree,” Silverbolt said. “Given how Soundwave was fritzing our sensors and comms, there’s no way we would have found the back entrance to that gully, or the dead end of the larger cave system without them. That we knew the layout and the Cons didn’t was key.”  
  
“So noted,” said Prime, smiling. He could see the young bot behind the two officers. “Well done, Rutile, and thanks. Prime out.”   
  
“Now,” said Prowl, turning to look at Rutile. “We’re going to have to scour the area for any ‘surprises’ the Cons might have left behind.”  
  
“Of course,” Rutile said, voice quiet but steady as always. “I can reconfigure the secondary geo-scanner to a finer scale. It should be able to pick up even those new meta-ceramics Soundwave’s been using.”  
  
“Excellent,” Prowl said. “The sooner we can clear this mess the better.” It was, after all, technically the humans’ planet, their system, even if they hadn’t quite gotten to the point where they could colonize it themselves yet.   
  
As Prowl and Silverbolt continued to discuss other matters, Rutile returned to his lab. Work was good. Work was interesting. The adjustments wouldn’t take long and then he could get back to extracting and cataloging the fossil microorganisms he’d found. That was painstaking enough to distract him from wishing he had the temerity to approach Prowl and Silverbolt directly. Autobots weren’t like humans, he reminded himself for the 543rd time. They didn’t have hang-ups about this sort of thing.   
  
They don’t, Rutile thought, except for me.  
  
..ooO0Ooo..  
  
“You guys are either mean or idiots,” Fireflight said, leaning heavily on the portable holotable with one hand, the other propped on his hip.   
  
Silverbolt smiled. Prowl, watching him, took no offense. “Very well,” Silverbolt said, hoping to cut short the usual guessing games. “What is it?”  
  
Fireflight’s wings took on a pouty angle, but he relented. “Rutile. Kid’s got a crush on you guys about ten light-years wide. The way his fields go whenever either of you so much as glances at him I’m surprised he hasn’t just tackled you.”  
  
“Not everyone is as fond of that approach as you are,” Silverbolt pointed out. Fireflight had even tried it with Prowl – who had narrowly avoided shooting him. Only Silverbolt had seen the pistol retract, the recovery had been so smooth.   
  
“Hm,” said Prowl, and exchanged a thoughtful look with Silverbolt.   
  
..ooO0Ooo..  
  
“Stay back!” Air Raid whooped, charging his main guns. “We’re gonna do this the old fashioned way!”   
  
Prowl’s chevron flattened against his helm as the last device in this leg of the canyon exploded, bringing half a metric ton of rocks and sand down with it. They no longer needed to salvage every bit of processed alloys for reuse, not really; but habits ingrained over the course of a hard-fought war made the waste of a perfectly usable bomb seem profligate.   
  
“That’s it for this sector,” Rutile said, bringing up the projected image again. “The next set is—”  
  
“Whoa, there,” Silverbolt said, smiling. “We’ve been at this for two days. I think we could use some rest and recharge. We’ll move on to the next area tomorrow.”   
  
“Oh.” Rutile deactivated his holo projector, shuffling his feet reflexively to get another little scan in before they left. “You’re right, of course, I’m sorry.” Looking at the ground, he didn’t see Silverbolt’s brothers taking off with a particular waggle to their wings, leaving him alone with Prowl and the Aerialbot leader.   
  
“Rutile?” Prowl placed a hand lightly on Rutile’s shoulder, taking a step closer.   
  
Attempting to maintain his composure, and keep his fields leashed, Rutile looked up. Prowl’s expression was one of gentle inquiry. How marvelous, Rutile thought, that such a lean and predatory face could somehow soften. He’d tried to imagine that face regarding him with tenderness many times, but he realized he’d never gotten it quite right. And that voice, speaking his name. Rutile replayed it, swaying a little.   
  
Prowl’s hand moved upward to the back of his helm, thumb stroking slow half-circles. My helm is heavily armored, Rutile thought. I shouldn’t be able to feel that. But he could. It felt nice. And Prowl was warm in the cold Martian air, the warmth drawing Rutile closer. The light changed, dimming. Rutile looked over his shoulder. Silverbolt was now lounging on his side, curled around them beneath the overhanging stone, his knife-edged wings raised like spines against the outside world.   
  
 _Is this what you want?_  Prowl asked.   
  
“Oh. Oh, I…yes.” He leaned into the touch as Prowl brought his other hand up to follow the curve of Rutile’s cheek spar.   
  
Prowl bowed his fierce head and touched his lips to Rutile’s.   
  
So this is a kiss, Rutile thought. Bare metal touching metal, as intricate or uncomplicated as their lip components might be. A simple thing, with little meaning among Cybertronians, surely, who had no primordial tradition of feeding the young with premasticated food, learning from the wolves as each species domesticated the other. It was the barest of contacts. Rutile felt it like a sweep of cool rain, lighting up every haptic wire down to the tips of his toes.   
  
A wash of heat from behind him grew steadily in his awareness. Silverbolt! How could he forget? And though he knew it was possible, how could they include someone so big? It was hard to think with Prowl kissing him like that. A thousand and one small kisses, their lip components intersecting in precise arrangements. No two the same. How was he doing that? Wait, what had he been…Silverbolt!   
  
Prowl’s kisses wandered. The crest of Rutile’s helm, major and minor cheek spars, the edges of his mandibles, even the lateral tips of his optical shutters. Prowl tipped Rutile’s chin up and nibbled intently on the exposed cables of his throat as though hunting for something. Step by step, they encroached upon the boundaries of Silverbolt’s fields. Rutile shuddered, tracking every flux and interference pattern, even as they sent unfamiliar sensations pinging wildly through his systems. Silverbolt’s chest behind him was like a wall, Prowl’s powerful body pressing him into it. The heat of them was amazing!   
  
Thought cascades stuttering, Rutile tried to keep ahead of the torrent of datastreams. Everything seemed to plunge directly into his pleasure centers. The scent of exotic ions that meant  _starship_  which clung to Silverbolt’s hull. The heady, complex aroma of Prowl’s lubricants, formulated for a heavy combat mech. Silverbolt’s pleased chuffles and hums; making it clear he – far from being left out – was enjoying watching them. The low revving of Prowl’s engine, felt as much as heard, the vibration transmitting through armor and protoform to Rutile’s spark chamber.   
  
Prowl’s hands moved slowly down Rutile’s sides, down and in, curling around his hip gimbals. With a single smooth motion, he lifted Rutile up so they were of a height. Rutile at last found the presence of mind to touch him in return, tracing the severe lines of Prowl’s face, the sharp-armored shoulders, and trembling upon the broad chest plates, shyly avoiding the central seam.   
  
 _Where do you like to be touched?_  Prowl asked, pressing his mouth more deeply to Rutile’s, so that their internal fields meshed.   
  
 _I…aah… oh, I don’t know... anywhere, anywhere…_  Rutile fumbled at Prowl’s helm, movements uncoordinated. One of his sensory fins bashed against Prowl’s chevron hard enough to send feedback zinging uncomfortably through both their sensory nets. Prowl didn’t flinch but Rutile reared back, almost banging his head against Silverbolt.  _Oh! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I don’t…I’ve never… I see this activity requires more coordination than I anticipated…_    
  
Prowl and Silverbolt exchanged a fast, speaking glance, and Prowl lowered Rutile lightly to his feet.  
  
 _Rutile, you were decanted three years ago,_  Silverbolt said gently.  _Do you mean to tell us you haven’t interfaced with anyone?_  
  
Rutile looked at his hands, fingers spread across Prowl’s chest. So intimate.  _I thought it would be interesting to wait. There will be my entire life for everyone I could want, who would want me. I thought it would be nice if the first time was with someone special._    
  
 _We are honored,_  Prowl and Silverbolt said. They did not say there were no guarantees Rutile’s life would be any longer than an ephemeral’s. They embraced him, moved by that knowledge, tenderly and wildly, embracing as well his inexperienced joy and astonished fervor. They welcomed him with hands and lips and exquisitely tuned fields, ready and willing for him to explore them, to send their precision scattering to the harsh Martian winds. It was traditional, this book of threes – touch, cable and spark. Rutile, overwhelmed by their touches, their scents, the low sounds Silverbolt made, the awareness of Prowl’s silence, the ways his silence had different qualities, though he did not know Prowl well enough to read the subtle palimpsest of signs, Rutile eagerly lost himself, surrendering to their methods.  
  
 _Place your hands on me like this._  Prowl drew Rutile’s hands to where his torso began to angle outward, heavy armor overlapping in acute diagonals toward his shoulders.  _Extend your fingertips… yes, like that. Now feel past the oblique plates, inward and down. There are a pair of afferent bundles—_ Prowl’s transmission cut off abruptly as Rutile found the bundles and stroked them, simply assessing their shape and position, but the tactician’s body went taut, curling forward, silver hands clutching at Rutile’s dorsal armor. Silverbolt chuckled.  
  
 _There should be two more up higher,_  Silverbolt said, extending fingertips to either side of Prowl’s neck to illustrate.  _Beneath the lateral sections of pectoral armor, not so deep as the spark chamber, but close to the mechanisms of the shoulders._    
  
A new revelation, that something Rutile did could so affect another. That pleasure received could be given with equal intensity.   
  
 _That’s nice, isn’t it,_  Silverbolt agreed.  _Watching him like that. He’s so calm, so reserved. Yet such a little thing can undo him._  It had been a surprise to Silverbolt as well, how sensitive Prowl was. The noise and clamor of battle, the filth and spilled fluids and the pain, endured so stoically, must be nothing short of torture for him, hyperaware as he was. Sometimes it was funny how the biggest, baddest mechs were the most tender of lovers, but in Prowl it made an aching sense. Silverbolt opened his ports, offered cables to both of them. Prowl accepted swiftly, reciprocating, linking smoothly with Silverbolt. Their cables hovered near Rutile’s thoracic ports, teasing, but also giving Rutile time to acquiesce in full knowledge. It was one thing to cast thoughts back and forth within the cloud mind; another entirely to open their wiring directly, connecting in the ancient way as had been done when most of the structures on Cybertron had been made of Cybertronians.   
  
 _Remember to set your firewalls first,_  Prowl murmured, nuzzling Rutile’s temporal spar.  _We won’t push anything through until you’re ready._    
  
Rutile rested his head on Prowl’s chest. It was an irrevocable moment, he felt. Once the links were established, he would know things, know Prowl and Silverbolt, and they would know him and he would be changed. He wanted to remember everything as the seconds spiraled by. Prowl’s hands and Silverbolt’s fingertips moving slowly over his body; the shifting wind as evening fell, bringing with it the scent of rust, and water and CO2 ices; the thrum of the others’ engines, the laboring of his own cooling systems; the strange, on-tiptoes-at-the-edge-of-a-cliff feeling of the seated cables, hot in his ports, his cables hot in theirs. He swayed between them, tossing up a couple of hasty firewalls, then opened himself to the link.   
  
The triplet, braided streams began gradually. Soft, nuzzling glyphs evolved into polygons of desire, splashing through their CPUs like electric rivers. Rutile writhed in timelapse, reigniting, astonished by his own passion. He had wondered, before, how people could overload via cables, how could thought alone bring about the necessary uncontrollable cascade?   
  
Rutile scraped his cheek spar across Prowl’s armor, biting the edge of the heavy pectoral plate.  _Oh the stars!_  
  
Two of them had travelled the folded ways between galaxies, between stars, felt hard radiation sizzling on their hulls over hundreds, thousands of years. How did Prowl know that feeling? Rutile withdrew the question – unanswered with a small smile – coming up against impressive firewalls. Ah, Prowl partnered the Seekers, learning from them, hiding things from them. Rutile didn’t press. Memories of the sensations of gestalt opened to distract him, drawing Prowl in as well. Oneness, wholeness, converging disparate minds into a greater, atavistic unity. Tendrils of sparks reaching out, connecting with bonds only terrible violence could sever. Superion’s flight mode, massive, bristling with weapons, nevertheless reveled in more than battle, singing the songs felt and navigated by between stars.   
  
Their minds flitted over the old game the deep-seekers played, Chasing Expansion’s Edge, and of course they knew it was impossible, the universe did not have edges, the nineteen dimensions curved or recurved and expansion was taking place everywhere at once, but still they played and pretended out in the alone dark; because, the arcane delta lore said, what if someone  _caught_  it? And Prowl, shadowy, much of him hidden, concealed to spare them, protect them, the need to protect so central to his programming they didn’t have to see into his core, it was everywhere in him and they knew why Prime had set him the task of shepherding the former Cons. He was what they had once been, he was what they intended to be. Rutile longed for such depths, such ages, and gathered the knowing, even the pain and loss, learning how the bite of it could shape kindness, shape compassion, cut a being down and down until there was nothing left but the singular spark and how even a guttering spark might be rekindled, given the proper fuel.  
  
Prowl ran his thumbs over Rutile’s central seam. It was the unexpected, wholly physical distraction of it, the sheer suggestiveness of the gesture that sent Rutile curling into overload, Prowl holding him, Silverbolt holding them.   
  
Returning to consciousness was a shock. Rutile had never been so entwined before, never had to disentangle his self from another, stretching limbs that no longer felt entirely like his own.   
  
 _Where is my body?_  he said, or thought he said, and Prowl and Silverbolt laughed kindly and helped him sort out the feeds. Silverbolt had rolled onto his back, optics longing for the sky, wing-segments folded neatly. Prowl and Rutile wound together atop him in a nest made of his hands.   
  
 _Now, young one,_  Prowl thrummed, repositioning him as Silverbolt opened his spark chamber.  _A wonder of the universe. Prime thinks there are only seven deltas left in the entire cosmos._    
  
 _Oh for Primus’ sake,_  Silverbolt said. Night had descended, icy but shimmering with stars through the thin atmosphere. Silverbolt’s spark shone blue as Earth’s sky from the tops of mountains. Prowl instructed Rutile on how best to arrange himself and his articulation locks so that their much smaller chests formed a wide triangle with Silverbolt’s. Prowl braced himself and opened – silver spilling across the deep blue. Every fin and antenna on Rutile’s head fanned forward, rapt. He almost forgot to open his own chest, baring a spark only Ratchet and Perceptor had seen.   
  
Trinary suns, blue, silver and warm red, spinning their way to synchronicity, collective consciousness, coronae bright and hot. Rutile wavered, equating sparks and stars too literally, afraid of being drawn too close. The gravity of sparks, they soothed him, is immense but exists in the other seventeen dimensions, every single one of them in a kind of orbit around the Allspark; Silverbolt’s would not consume them. Only an actual merge was dangerous. Prowl promised he would convey his memories of such to the others. Later. Prowl pushed heat, opened wider, pulsing faster, drawing them down beyond words and glyphs until they existed burned sublimated into an overload like the dawn.   
  
Rutile came online to find himself cradled against Silverbolt’s warm chest, with Silverbolt sitting upright and Prowl balanced on Silverbolt’s shoulder, looking outward into the canyon. Watching. No, keeping watch.   
  
“There you are,” Silverbolt said, optics bright. “We were beginning to think you seduced us just to get some rest.”  
  
“…I’m not sure that’s…” Rutile said, blinking.   
  
Silverbolt chuckled. “You’ve had everyone thinking you were an ascetic,” he said. “In fact you’re quite a sensualist.” He stroked Rutile’s shoulder with a fingertip and Rutile leaned into it, almost purring. Climbing down from Silverbolt’s shoulder, Prowl wrapped a hand around Rutile’s ankle, perilously close to some of his geo-sensor arrays. Rutile shivered and spread his armor.   
  
“It is easier,” Silverbolt pointed out in a slow, languorous drawl, “to accomplish a wider variety of docking maneuvers in low-g.”   
  
“!” said Rutile. Prowl and Silverbolt laughed, and Silverbolt, transforming around them, held them close and safe and leapt for the velvet darkness above the sky.


	65. Interlewd: All the Moons of Saturn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein scientists do the hibbety-jibbety, and Borealis is persuaded to try for a little second-generation spark-making.

2029 - November  
  
Kneeling, Borealis drew a box from her right shoulder cache and handed it to Perceptor.  
  
“Hello, Borealis. What is this?”  
  
“Open it. They’re for you.” She paused. “And Beachcomber.” Technically they should primarily be for Beachcomber, but the thought of the two of them studying the samples together was too cute.  
  
Perceptor carried the box to a section of worktable that didn’t teeter and teem with oddments and experiments in various stages of incompletion and opened the lid. Inside were about three dozen wrapped, sealed and meticulously labeled packages. He removed and scanned them one by one. “Pan? Atlas. Prometheus. Pandora. Ah! Janus. Epimetheus. Mimas. Enceladus… Even Titan?”  
  
“That wasn’t fun,” she said, making a face. “Even with shields the atmosphere’s nasty. Not to mention the hydrocarbon bogs. Blergh!” She had sunk to her knees in one place and only the frantic application of thrust from both engines had gotten her out. She was glad she didn’t wear shoes.   
  
“I can imagine.” He laid them out in order. Rock samples from all the moons of Saturn, and the major ring systems, since the distinction between moons and rings was sometimes blurry. “Thank you very much indeed,” he said, beaming up at her. “Beachcomber is off surveying – enjoying, rather – the eastern Canadian coastline with Miles and Joey so I don’t expect him back for weeks. He’ll be delighted!” He began setting up analyses immediately, as well as resuming the work he’d been doing when she had come in.   
  
His energy and focus reminded her of old friends who would no longer recognize her. She grinned to herself. Perceptor had such beautiful hands. And a nice aft. Nicer than Prime’s, and that was saying something, though she felt a little weird for having noticed Prime’s aft.   
  
“Perceptor,” she said.  
  
He unwrapped the first sample with sterile instruments and placed it in a vacuum chamber, mumbling to himself in his rapid-fire, polysyllabic way. Once he had the multi-band analyzer running, he turned back to the lattice core he was repairing that had been damaged in one of Wheeljack’s less successful trials. Catching sight of Borealis taking up most of the doorway, he smiled.  
  
“I’m sorry, was there something else?”  
  
“Oh, just that top secret data packet you wanted.”  _How long has he gone without recharge this time?_  she tight-beamed to Hoist as she extended an arm cable to Perceptor.  
  
 _Two weeks and three days. He’s gone longer, but if you feel up to wheedling I’d be grateful._  Borealis probably needed the rest as well, since she’d just come back from M100, with that detour around Saturn before returning to Earth, Hoist thought. Good for them both.   
  
 _Two weeks?_  Perceptor’s left optic widened. Borealis had shot him part of the exchange with Hoist.  _Has it really…? Oh. I suppose it has._  He processed the data she’d given him swiftly.  _Another system ruled out, then. I’d prefer to have at least two backups, but I suppose we must work with what we have._  
  
Skyfire would be back with the rest of that sector’s scouting data in a year or so, and then Borealis would go out again. Turn and turn about. She remained where she was, hand curled gently around Perceptor’s body, as she retracted the arm cable. “Recharge, Perceptor.”  
  
“Yes, yes,” he said, pushing at her thumb. It didn’t budge. “I must finish one more thing tonight, then—”  
  
“Uh huh. What one thing, and are you sure it can’t wait until you’ve rested?”  
  
“You could stay and help,” Perceptor said, an odd half-smile on his face as he petted her thumb. “If you have time.”  
  
“Sooner to recharge, sooner to rise, eh? Ratchet informs me I have all weekend before I’m needed to ferry another Coalition brigade up to Mars.” She opened her hand and he scampered toward a large, roughly cuboidal jumble of parts hunkering in embarrassment on the floor as though it had tried to explode and failed. He chirped her the design schematics. This was a piece of their crashed starship’s engine that could be salvaged and used aboard either of the ships that the Twins or Smokescreen’s team had come to the Sol system in. “What can I help with?”  
  
“Well, we need to turn this assembly 45 degrees on this axis here… Right, and I’ll get the clamps in place…now. If you could use those wonderfully long medial digits of yours to reach in and disconnect the oscillation overthruster while I hold the backflow iris mechanism open? Lovely. This way we don’t have to disassemble the whole thing. Sometimes I feel as though I should have Ratchet refit me with one or two extra sets of pectoral appendages. But he and I both have the time at the same time so rarely…so there it is…”  
  
“The oscillation overthruster. You’re kidding.”  
  
Perceptor chuckled. “I liked the name. It’s an amusing notion. Lord Whorfin reminds me of someone we know.”   
  
“Just as soon kill you as go fishing,” she said, grinning. She withdrew the overthruster and set it on the workstation Perceptor indicated with a nod.   
  
“How are you doing with the Thirteen Meso-composite Tesseromacular Proofs?” he asked, sticking three or four sensory vanes and his entire right arm inside the cube as Borealis changed the orientation per his directions.   
  
“Urgh.” The kinds of maths Perceptor did weren’t just a matter of software. She was beginning to think she didn’t have the right kind of hardware. Perceptor’s CPU was unique. Not because of the dual memory cores – and Borealis wished with all her spark she had known him before. He was lovely now, but the glimpses from Beachcomber and Skyfire made her want to travel back in time to meet the eccentric, sharp-vocodered but popular, ambitious professor at Xenon University. In any case, the kinds of maths he did, the theoretical stuff with no foreseeable practical applications, which he did for his own personal amusement, were so out there no one else could follow every convolution.   
  
She’d thought she had a pretty good CPU for physics and math, given the kind of person Ixchel had been, and how her memories had influenced the spark, which thus influenced the protomass as it became her protoform. There were still mysteries about her creation, about Cybertronian life in general – mysteries that were brought into glaring focus with each new filled growth tank.   
  
“What part exactly is giving you difficulty?”  
  
“The hyperflexion of the 14th dimensional co-nonlinears. I  _know_  there’s another step in there, but I just can’t figure it out.” They chirped equations at each other via tight-beam as their hands continued to move over and inside the device they were repairing. “Augh! Of course! Dammit. What kind of processors are you running, exactly? What  _is_  it about your brain that makes this stuff look easy when you do it?” Out of sheer frustration, she transscanned his head. It was fairly rude, but after a startled pause, he threw said appendage back and laughed.   
  
“You,” she sputtered, poring over the scan as best she could. She wasn’t used to dealing with that kind of data set consciously, and a lot of a Cybertronian’s internal parts, particularly those pertaining to their processors, were heavily shielded even from a transscan. “You have an extra…thingy! What the hell is that?” A small but giggly subroutine noted that, in a different context, what she’d said would sound naughty.   
  
Perceptor’s optics had an interesting twinkle. “Ah. You’ve discovered my primary mathematical processor. It is not, therefore, an ‘extra’, though to be sure I did install it some time after my initial construction. I’m not certain why, and I have the distinct impression that I did not invent it myself. Beachcomber didn’t know until it was a fait accompli, and I was apparently less than effusive in my explanations to him.” He shook his head, but it was an old, worn-out sadness. They were all so tired of wishing for things to be as they were before the war and what they’d done because of the war and tallying the losses and asking Prime who was still alive, because the list of those who weren’t was so many orders of magnitude longer.   
  
“Are you telling me you did brain surgery on yourself?”  
  
He laughed again. “Nothing so dramatic! It is physically merely an addition. I didn’t have to rewire my entire CPU whilst conscious. Or poke about in squishy cerebral matter with a bony skull cut in half, as you imply.”  
  
“Does Ratchet know, or should I put this under a level 3 encoding?” Data not to be casually blabbed in conversation, flagged for deliberate assessment before being sent to a vocoder or over cables. Level 7 would be don’t even  _think_  about this unless a code word is given by the person who is supposed to give it.  
  
“Ratchet knows and has conveyed his opinion on University hacks and rebuilds quite thoroughly and at length. Fairly typical of a classically trained and programmed physician-mechanic, though Ratchet’s vocabulary is more vivid than most.”   
  
“I don’t suppose you have a spare lying around.”  
  
He paused. “Borealis. I think we want to keep your CPU just the way it is.” He held up a hand to forestall a protest. “For now. I base this on the fact that the Matrix bestirred itself to demand your construction, and the integration of the Ixchel memories. It, Prime, must have had reasons. You have ways of thinking that are new, unique in a different manner than mine. I don’t want to lose your individual approach to things only so that I might have the dubious pleasure of someone else who understands the esoterica in precisely the same way I do.”   
  
“Oh god, it’s like string theory all over again. Everyone working on different versions of the equations, trying to push the middle in.”  
  
“Precisely. And incidentally the hyperflexion of the 15th co-linears hasn’t been solved yet. I will be most interested to see what you make of them.”  
  
“Dah!” She would have facepalmed, but her hands were busy. Extra arms  _would_  be incredibly useful. “Perceptor? Why  _don’t_  you have Ratchet hook you up with another set of arms? Is it deliberate? It seems like having your other arms back would make you more comfortable. Oh don’t give me that wide-eyed look. Miles noticed it too, the way your torso shifts sometimes, like you’re trying to move phantom limbs.” None of the older Autobots would have mentioned it; there was a sense in which every one of them were amputees.   
  
Perceptor’s hands never stopped, but the sensory fins he wasn’t using folded down against his head. “I suppose I could, couldn’t I. We prided ourselves on being a dynamic, adaptable, parallel-processing, distributed civilization, but it’s odd how one takes massive infrastructure for granted. Until it’s gone.” He looked up at her. “And now we have a little back, don’t we.” They had given Prowl new hands, and a new spark chamber. They had rebuilt Borealis. He stifled a grimace at the memory of holes blown in her jet mode that he could have crawled through. He’d seen worse, yet something about Galvatron’s malice, the deliberate attempt to kill someone so young, had been hard to encompass. “Once we finish this, the four solar vanes need to be repaired, but we can’t attach them in here or we’ll never get the thing out the door.”   
  
They worked through the night, heedless of time until Hoist appeared in the doorway. “You were supposed to get him to recharge!” he said, waving his arms at Borealis.   
  
“Oops. Sorry, Hoist.” Sitting in one position for several hours wasn’t enough to stiffen her joints – even after almost fifteen years, she never failed to be grateful for this – she stood easily but cautiously. Her helm barely cleared the ceiling. Hoist stumped off, shaking his head.   
  
“You have a wonderfully fine touch,” Perceptor said, standing and retracting several tools back into his arms. “Wheeljack will be surprised we finished these repairs so quickly.” He reached up, she knelt and he took her hand. Three fingertips anyway. “Thank you.”   
  
They went outside to greet the dawn. Luminous blue fog cloaked the trees and the mountainside, transfiguring the forest and turning the road into ley lines. Through trees taller than she was, sharing her optical feed with Perceptor, Borealis could see a low, bright line of sky to the east. A storm was coming across the ocean; that narrow strip of light was the last of this day’s sunshine.   
  
Climbing the mountain paths made by Skyfire and Beachcomber, they hummed in harmony with the high, wild singing of the Van Allen belts. They came to a shoulder of stone, felicitously shaped by wind and ice, and Borealis sat, half reclining, letting the ridge settle between the center two of her four dorsal supports, the various shards and segments of her wings thus kept unhampered or compressed. Perceptor climbed her outstretched arm and arranged himself neatly on her chest, facing upward into the brightening mist. The water vapor was no impediment to their vision, nor the atmosphere above. They watched the stars wheel slowly, the calls of pulsars and quasars faint but discernable as Perceptor drew a cable from his chest and offered it.   
  
Delicate manipulators recently employed in starship engine repairs slid from the undersides of her fingertips and accepted the cable, seating it in her nearest thoracic port. Pleased weariness pooled into the link from both sides, laced with laughter. If they didn’t need the defrag so bad they really ought to just skip into recharge.   
  
Rearranging himself to lie chest to chest, he sank his hands deep into her substructure, the other five pairs of cables slipping and snapping between them. He knew how to soothe the peculiar, internal jitters of a delta just down the well from starflight, easing the keen modulations of powerful engines and the anxiety from the confinement of gravity, bending the energies to another kind of arousal.   
  
Her optics faded, clicked off. The back of her helm and hands gouged the stone. Weary as he was, he watched everything intensely, observing each moment, immersed, caching every memory to build up a store against all he had lost, filling holes in his self. Every new friend, new colleague, new partner in this intimate dance was a gift. He had promised Beachcomber never to give up such gifts again.   
  
A Skyfire body beneath him, bearing him up, but not Skyfire; the still-hot engines radiating into the cool air had as yet careened only through a few narrow corridors of the universe. Sparks could grow to fit a frame. Perceptor liked the thrum of a huge delta spark roaring through his body, rattling his armor, loosening his joints; liked the way he could reach down into the big protoform, tough and vulnerable, primal, beautiful, hidden by layers of armor and alt mode and chameleon mesh, buried treasure.   
  
Her laughter through the cables warmed him as much as her spark did, flooding his mind like a jolt of high-grade blazing through his fuel lines. There was no distinguishing between her joy at his touch and the stars and galaxies flung through the forever expanding void.  _I love you thiiiiiiis much._  
  
The storm front swept up the mountain, driving wind and a wall of rain over them, ringing on their armor, pounding through them; the added sensation too much and they whooped and laughed, crashing, tumbling, falling into overload and for a long while only the rain moved in the steel blue morning.   
  
“You can use Skyfire’s recharge table inside,” Perceptor murmured as Borealis’ optics relit. She sat up slowly, holding him so she could nuzzle his body, nibble his scope. Carefully. Holding him closer, she leapt into the silver abalone sky, one long graceful curve down to the base entrance, not quite stumbling as she landed. They were going to be in recharge for days.  
  
“Finally,” said Hoist.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Seaspray  _tried_  not to track mud inside, he really did. In this climate, this ecosystem, he consoled himself, avoiding mud was nigh impossible. That’s why there was a hose near the entrance.   
  
“Morning, Yasmina,” he said, dripping but clean, leaning toward the mezzanine where the humans worked. “Where’s Perceptor? He’s not answering comm and I have a lead on that stolen  _Hydrophis semperi_  specimen he wanted to study.” Poachers for the exotic aquarium trade were still poachers when they didn’t kill their prizes. Beachcomber would take the freshwater sea snake back to Taal and release it once Perceptor had gotten the coveted scans.   
  
Yasmina’s blush and grin gave him a clue. “He’s in recharge. With Borealis.”  
  
“And Hoist will have my fanbelts for garters if I wake them up. Gotcha. Thanks!”  
  
“Hoist wears garters?” She didn’t think that was a mental image she needed.   
  
“Not really, and I don’t have fanbelts.” His turbines used magnetic induction and a couple other weird effects humans weren’t supposed to know about yet. Seaspray chuckled and gave her a sketchy salute as he headed for the recharge bay anyway. According to Ven the snoozing scientists were waking up.   
  
“Finally,” he said, walking in to see Perceptor sprawled across Borealis’ chest, the recharge cables just then retracting from the table. Normally it would be Skyfire up there with Percy; when Beachcomber was gone, Skyfire had no qualms about picking Perceptor up and hauling him down there when he needed to rest. Seaspray chirped Perceptor the info on the aquatic snake, before they got distracted.  _Hound and Mirage have volunteered to track the guy down for you. I think they’re looking for something to do that isn’t PR-related._    
  
 _Oooh! Splendid, thank you!_  
  
Borealis sat up abruptly, hanging on to Perceptor to keep him from falling. “Holy crap it’s Monday already! I have to get to Canaveral!”   
  
 _Oh no you don’t,_  Ratchet cut in.  _There’s a problem with some of the equipment for the Mars mission. They’re delaying launch for another three days while they iron that out. You stay put, both of you._  
  
Giggling, Seaspray retreated.   
  
 _Problem?_  Borealis asked.  _What kind of problem?_  
  
The kind of problem Ratchet had invited Sideswipe to engineer (and under no circumstances to get caught implementing), but he wasn’t going to tell her that.  _The usual kind with militaries. SNAFU._  
  
 _Not FUBAR?_  
  
 _No, merely SNAFU. Stay put. And refuel. Your harmonics are fuzzing._  
  
 _Yes, Ratchet._  
  
 _That goes for you, too, Perceptor._  
  
 _Yes, dear._  
  
Ratchet made a rude noise and closed the channel.   
  
Borealis settled back onto the table, adjusting the slope of the back section so she could see Perceptor, who appeared to be in no hurry to relinquish his perch.   
  
Perceptor cupped his chin in one hand, smiling. “You don’t seem disturbed by the notion that you are in a sense sleeping with your, hm, mother’s boyfriend.”  
  
“WHAAAAT? Urgh! You and Bee! You guys need to stop believing everything you read online.”  
  
“But you consider Ratchet your parent. You told Bumblebee you would not even consider interface with either he or Prime.”  
  
“No, I won’t, and yanno what? I don’t give a rat’s ass why, either, okay? You and Smokescreen and whoever can meta and analyze until the cows come home but I. Don’t. Care. I just won’t and that’s it.”  
  
“Where is your scientific curiosity?”  
  
“There are far more interesting subjects upon which to hone my curiosity, mister. Like for instance, what is this about a ‘reset button’ on your neck that Beachcomber just told me about?”  
  
“Wait…yeep!”  
  
 _Did you just actually say “yeep”?_  
  
 _Oh hush. And do that again…_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Up on the mountain, the peak this time. Perceptor could not resist the heights and Borealis was happy to oblige him. She crouched on the crater’s rim, sphinx-mode, watching him as he waved his sensory array this way and that, defiant of the wind, now and then catching the whirr of his lenses repositioning themselves.   
  
Astronomer and astronaut, she thought fondly. What was that from? Some old movie, oh yes.  _Jurassic Park III_. Beachcomber was right. Even if she sicced Perceptor on the job of cataloging the Ixchel memories, she wouldn’t do it; it wouldn’t be as much fun as letting the odd, looping associations connect themselves as they would, bringing up surprises from the depths. And Dr. Grant in the movie was wrong. Astronomers and astronauts needed each other, it was a symbiosis, and both pursued their paths to the stars, not only by hard ways but out of love.   
  
Perceptor, of all bots who might have wanted them, did not have the Ixchel memories, aside from a handful of sensory snippets picked up from the cloud mind. There was already enough stuffing his cores, Prime had said. Something about his harmonics had hinted that this…not order, exactly, this suggestion…was an act of mercy, not exclusion.   
  
Beachcomber and Hound had accepted the memories as they were, in all their joyous, terrifying tangle. Prowl had meticulously cataloged and cross-referenced, breaking the file up into discrete, chronologically ordered vignettes, discarding most of the “noise”, the apparently trivial static of the workings of the dying brain from which the scan had been taken. Beachcomber thought Prowl was missing the point, but Ratchet explained that this was more useful to the way Prowl’s CPU worked – and better that than to have to reject the entire file because it was incomprehensible. The Protectobots had begged for the memories almost the moment they had recovered from integration, and had more completely assimilated them than anyone but Borealis herself.   
  
 _The Matrix was correct,_  Perceptor murmured, climbing her leg to slip in a cable, sharing warmth and the idle wander of her thoughts.  _This is important. These are not simply human brain engrams. They have been filtered -_ translated _\- through the mind of a Cybertronian, granting our species unparalleled insight regarding our human allies. Perhaps soon the reverse translation will be enabled._    
  
 _Come to the robot side,_  Borealis intoned.  _We have_  cookies!   
  
Perceptor tapped his forehelm against her shoulder.  _I know Prime and Bumblebee wish for Sam and Mikaela to undergo the process. And Danaela…_  He blinked.  _And…Mikaela is pregnant? How lovely! Congratulations, you two!_  he sent across the open channel, joining the spreading wave of felicitations and happiness. Then he tight-beamed Borealis,  _But Bumblebee is concerned about their reaction, given they have not been told what was done with Ixchel Chase._  
  
Borealis squirmed.  _A lot of humans would object to becoming what they might see as a brain in a box, or some kind of Frankenstein monster. I – Ixchel – had a seriously defective body. She **was**  a brain in a box; she would have traded up to Cybertronian in a heartbeat, even though Ratchet was working on the cure for FOP already. It’s just that, y’know, Starscream killed her first._  
  
Perceptor sent nebulae of comfort and affection across the link at the wisps of remembered pain and fear in her harmonics.  _So the fact that Ixchel’s permission was not gained beforehand does not disturb you?_  
  
 _No. I’m sorry she died like that, I’m sorry she died at all; but I’m not sorry to be alive myself, as I am, and not as…whoever I would have been without those engrams._  She gave a one-shouldered shrug so as not to dislodge him.  _If Sam and Mikaela won’t, Dani will. Bee can count on that, at least. Maggie might, and Glen. How about your crew?_  
  
Perceptor’s sensory array expanded and whirled, brushing her chest armor as he considered.  _Yasmina possibly. Frank certainly not, Marcus and Juan probably not, Joey maybe…_  
  
 _Miles._  
  
 _Oh definitively Miles, yes. I wonder if Beachcomber is prepared for that eventuality. It might not have occurred to him. He tends to accept people as they are, especially people who belong to other species. To do otherwise would not be polite._  
  
 _Autobot Miles. Oh man._  
  
 _Indeed. And I wonder what sort of forging he’d choose._  
  
She laughed. “Something with three wheels, just to be different.”  
  
“Or a unicycle.”  
  
“Toaster!”  
  
“But would he burn the toast?”  
  
“Into paisley patterns, maybe?”  
  
They giggled. Perceptor climbed a little higher, the better to seat another pair of cables. _Have you considered merging?_  
  
 _Perceptor abhors an empty growth tank, eh?_  
  
 _Is that an evasion?_  
  
This from the guy who strung Beachcomber along for almost three million years? Maddening mech!  _Oh fine. Well. Um, no, not really. Been kind of preoccupied._    
  
 _It’s amusing how many of us expect strange results from merges, particularly second-generation. Though Oratorio did not appear to have any difficulty persuading Tracks to make the attempt._  Freeway, the result, had a marked tendency to get the giggles, but was otherwise “normal” by Autobot standards.   
  
 _Rio would have no difficulty in persuading anyone._  
  
 _True enough. Your reluctance stems from some other cause?_    
  
 _Reluc-? Listen, what really gets my engines revving is…er, my engines, not to put too fine a point on it. And your master plan of moving Cybertron into this neighborhood! Eeee!_  She jiggled him happily, then gave up on restraint and stood, holding him to her chest and spinning around on the volcano’s rim. She stopped suddenly.  _Waitaminit. Are you propositioning me?_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _Oh._  She gazed into his optics, swaying, dizzied by his mind opening fully to hers through the cables.  _Yes._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hoist wasn’t certain this was a good idea, though he would never have said so. During the preparatory spark-to-spark interface, Perceptor and Borealis had almost fallen off the mountain. They had slid several hundred meters, coming to a halt where they had only because Borealis’ body had many large, pointy projections. She’d gotten part of a wing caught between two boulders. Out on Prince Edward Island, it had taken Miles and Joey a long time to get an explanation from Beachcomber about why he was laughing so hard. Hoist clicked to himself. This was no time for clumsiness.   
  
Merges seemed to go in waves, Hoist reflected. Not long ago every tank in Nevada and Oregon had been filled, yet they had stood entirely empty since Blurr’s decantation the previous year. Hoist’s own progeny with Grapple, Theodolite, had been decanted in 2024 and was on Mars with Rutile’s team, building an Autobot base into one side of the Valles Marinaris.  
  
Perceptor instilled 0.75 metric tons of protomass from the small Well beside the three tanks. That seemed to be enough for most people to start with; the differentiation rate in the nanocells told them when a growing form needed more mass. Borealis reclined on the floor, fielding various communications from Prime and Ratchet, Oratorio and Bee and others. Skyfire was conspicuous by his silence, but she didn’t really blame him.   
  
Parting her chest armor created an aperture ten feet high and six feet wide. The actual opening of her spark chamber was six feet high and, without medical overrides, only three feet wide. Perceptor wasn’t in great danger of falling in.   
  
“Sure you don’t want to borrow Beachcomber’s rappelling equipment?” she asked, grinning. Perceptor merely arched an optic ridge at her, but she noticed he activated his articulation locks once he was in place.  
  
“Ping me when you’re done,” Hoist said, hastily retreating. The pyrotechnics when Prime merged were bad enough. He had no desire to be in the same room when a delta-sized spark lashed out.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hoist scuttled in, hurriedly collecting the new spark and installing it in the tank, scanning and rescanning as it nestled into the protomass. What were those protrusions? Sparks were perfectly spherical, always. Weren’t they? Of course they were, it made no sense for them to be otherwise. Well, Hoist thought, offspring of Perceptor, after all. No one should be surprised if there were peculiarities. And merging with a delta. Not that deltas weren’t decidedly useful, Hoist admitted, even being the strange, antisocial creatures they were. He shook his head. Everything seemed to be otherwise perfectly nominal. Perceptor was already stirring.   
  
“Congratulations,” Hoist said, deciding not to mention the little bumps on the new spark. Perceptor would be able to tell if there was something wrong. No need to spoil the new progenitors’ happy moments. He patted Borealis’ shoulder and Perceptor’s dangling foot as he left them in peace, locking the doors behind him.   
  
The room reeked of hot metal and scorched basalt. Perceptor examined his chest. The scars were no worse this time than they had been the first. Borealis, however, had deep, glowing furrows winding down one arm and up across her face, splitting lip components and one cheek spar.  
  
 _You,_  he grated.  _This was your first merge and you did what Prime does._  
  
 _Rrrgh. K-kkkcouldn’t llllllet you…melt, beauty._  She slipped back into recharge.   
  
If I say “like father like daughter,” Perceptor wondered as he unlocked his joints and let his head fall onto the hot armor of Borealis’ shoulder, will it get me stepped on?   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 - January  
  
Beachcomber returned from Canada after a particularly severe winter storm had put Miles and Joey in some danger of hypothermia despite Beachcomber’s efforts to keep them warm. Miles and Joey seemed unconcerned, saying they had known they’d be fine snuggled up to their very own little fusion reactor. Beachcomber was less sanguine. He should have planned their route better.   
  
“What are you humming?” he asked Perceptor. He already knew the answer, but he suspected Perceptor hadn’t noticed what he was doing. He’d been humming that particular tune a lot lately. Borealis had been hanging around the Oregon base a lot lately, too. No doubt the phenomena were related.  
  
“Hmwhat?”  
  
“Did you know that you’ve been humming the theme to  _How the West was Won_?”  
  
Rather than be offended, Perceptor chuckled. “Have I?”   
  
“Been a long time since I’ve seen you quite this lively,” Beachcomber said. Perceptor newly in love was a pleasure Beachcomber hadn’t had in hundreds of millennia. “It’s good for you.”  
  
“Hmm. Thank you, I think. However, I fear I now rather completely understand the human phrase ‘robbing the cradle.’”  
  
Beachcomber laughed.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 – March  
  
“Protoform, protoform, what will you be…” Perceptor sang as he dialed the plex transparent. “Hello there, how are we growing today?” There was no answer, but unlike Rutile, this one had not yet decided to speak, even over shortwave. A series of primitive optical receptors dotted the forward part of the roughly comma-shaped mass. No cityformer this time, the seams where bilateral arms and legs were forming were already visible. More segmentation was present than usual, though, and deeper scans – carefully using the least intrusive wavelengths – revealed the spark was sending out (for lack of a better term) rootlets to each of the eleven segments. The main spark itself of course rested in the twelfth, where the thorax would be. Not a cityformer, not a gestalt in the usual sense.  
  
 _Ratchet?_  Perceptor chirped him the scans. He’d scoured his own memory cores and the Archive backups stashed at the back of what was left of his ship’s engine room – still too radioactive for humans to enter without protective suits.  _What do you think?_  
  
Ratchet transmitted the sound of his fingers drumming on the repair table he was standing beside.  _I think it’s either an atavism or something entirely new, and it’s probably not the weirdest permutation we’re going to see._  
  
 _Aw, Ratchet,_  Borealis cut in,  _you’re going to be the best grandmama ever!_  
  
 _Oh Primus._


	66. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein more Autobots come to Earth, Perceptor is fascinated by Drift, Chromia gets information out of Ratchet, Ratchet doesn't know what she's going to do with it, Sam sits in on a council of war, the attempt to re-integrate Kalis begins, Arcee has a slight difference of opinion with TC, Catscan and Glyph are recovering - Lifeline not so much, Rio puts the moves on Kup, Prime meditates on the Allspark, Prowl and Drift...have an interesting time, the Structies are building stuff in Norway, and crazy Galvatron is crazy in a "this will not end well" kind of way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The part of the SecDef is played by Samuel L. Jackson FTMFW! \o/

2029 – December  
  
Leonard “Sabertooth” Williams expected a replay of the vids he’d seen of Wheeljack’s or Smokescreen’s arrival. Ramp lowering, mechs pelting down to Earth, hurling themselves laughing at friends they hadn’t seen or spoken to in 12,000 years.  
  
A blocky, utilitarian shuttle settled neatly in front of the embassy. The mother ship (more a conceptual translation than literal – Cybertronian did not have a word for "mother") was in geosynchronous orbit. Perceptor had provided the NEST commanders and senior UN officials with a visual. Big, ugly, bristling with weaponry. and in no way pretending to be anything other than what it was. It didn't strike Williams as a typical Autobot ship. His assessment, he found out later, was correct. The  _Sparkreaver_  had been a Decepticon ship, captured about 500,000 years ago, painstakingly scoured for traps and bombs and heavily reoutfitted; particularly the med-lab cum torture/disassembly/recycling center cum holding prison.  
  
Marching down the ramp three by three, the robots assembled in hexagonal formations. Williams counted about sixty, plus the three officers who lined up in front of Prime. Two of those three were larger than Prime; one blue, red and grey steel, the other a vibrant green and gold. The third, smaller and leaner than the others, bore splotches of oxidation across faded armor plating worn smooth. Williams’ HUD contact lenses scrolled data precisely as fast as he could read it. Ultra Magnus; formerly Megatron’s Ground Commander, now one of Optimus’ most valued officers and a personal friend. Springer; triplechanger, leader of the infamous floating squadron known as the Wreckers. Kup; short for Pickup. (Oh god, thought Williams, finally the attempt to keep people from calling the Killer Guppies “Kuppies” made sense!) Kup was one of the oldest surviving Cybertronians, far older than Thundercracker or even Skyfire, and proud of it. He’d been rebuilt extensively within the last thousand years, but chose to retain the appearance of his old, outmoded chassis.   
  
The Graveyard Legion – down to 414, including seven on Mars – mirrored the newcomers’ formation, falling in north of the embassy entrance. At a commed signal from Williams, the embassy contingent of military (and some ex-military) humans assembled to one side of Prime and his chief officers.   
  
As one, the Cybertronians saluted. A matter of fully erect posture and a certain precise set to their armor, optics front and bright. The human squad returned the salute their way. After a beat, the robots mimicked this perfectly – even the new group, who had never been to Earth before, never met humans. Williams understood how it was done, but it was no less impressive.   
  
At last the robots relaxed into the glad shouts and running tackles Williams had expected. Prime stepped forward to be surrounded by Ultra Magnus and the others. Arcee – probably using Cliffjumper's head as a springboard – launched herself through the air at Ultra Magnus, then Springer, before settling around the shoulders of a tall, slender, blue mech who had stood partially concealed behind them. Williams didn’t have a name for the blue one. Not for long.   
  
"Chromia!" Ironhide boomed, pounding toward her, embracing both her and Arcee impartially. Williams rubbed the side of his jaw. All right, that must be one of the genders they hadn't seen before. Not "female" in a human sense, but different from the others of that height. Of course, he'd thought Ratchet and Ironhide were the same gender at first, but they weren't. ( _De_ s, like Ratchet, Williams was told, tended to have longer, slimmer legs than  _he_ s, like Ironhide. Except for Primes, which were a species of  _he_  or  _she_ , but generally very tall and rangy.) Instead of giving in to the confusion, Williams had kept asking questions until he had almost as good a grasp of the differences both subtle and obvious as Ambassador Witwicky and his wife did.   
  
The Family Witwicky were there of course; including Dani, solemn as any frighteningly intelligent ten-year-old until Jazz picked her up and set her on his shoulder to better introduce her around. And keep her from being stepped on, Williams thought. The kid was wetwired already, and spoke less than she commed. Far be it for him to tell anyone else how to raise their child, but Williams didn’t know if they were spoiling her for normal human contact, or simply ahead of the gathering wave. He rubbed unconsciously at the slightly raised disk at the base of his own skull.   
  
Ratchet glared at Prime. “You sneaky slagger. How long have you known Elita and her team were alive?”   
  
“From the beginning,” Prime said amiably.   
  
“It was Elita’s idea, Ratchet,” Chromia explained. “We’ve been giving Shockwave six kinds of merry slag ever since your lot left.”  
  
“I bet you have,” Ironhide cackled, giving her an extra squeeze while Arcee whirred happily.   
  
Once general introductions were made, everyone retreated from the cold into the hangar. Williams scrambled up to the mezzanine with most of the rest of the humans. The Cybertronian Embassy had rarely been so full of Cybertronians.   
  
“Mind the mistletoe,” Optimus said, pointing, and no doubt transmitting a file on the tradition to the new arrivals. Lennox chuckled from one of the big screens, teleconferencing from the Pentagon.   
  
“Ruining my fun, huh?” Mikaela groused.   
  
“Hey, Dani-mechling,” said Jazz, spinning leisurely over to a spot directly beneath the sprig. “Let’s demonstrate!” Dani, careful not to touch his visor, grabbed less delicate face plates and kissed him amid applause and laughter.   
  
Williams tuned out the increasing chatter on the open channel, instead watching the robots mingle. Everyone found their way to Prime sooner or later, touching his hand or knee, or he would bend to clasp a shoulder. Oh, you couldn’t track conversations without the comms, but as with most human parties, there were those who basked in the center of attention, those who happily surrounded the popular ones, and the few who kept to the sidelines, watching with smiles or wary expressions.   
  
Instinctively, Williams watched the latter most closely, even as he accepted a goblet of the “special” wassail from one of his aides. The high-grade was going around, too. The big meeting was tomorrow, but thankfully scheduled for late morning. He’d never seen the bots hungover, but anything was possible; especially when Wheeljack had been involved in the synthesizing.   
  
It was easy for a lot of people to forget, now that the Decepticons weren’t a daily threat. Easy for politicians and journalists to forget, to question whether the militaries of the world really needed so much funding and focus. A lot of other people would never forget. Between drone spawns, full Decepticon attacks and the failures of infrastructure, starvation and disease that followed in their wake, one in seven human beings on the planet had died since 2007. Some argued this was a boon – double-edged, but a gift nonetheless – an easing of the overpopulation problem. As a SEAL, Williams had on a few occasions taken the life of a fellow man. Now he was the Secretary of Defense. War was his business; but he knew there were far better ways of handling the human population. Ways that did not involve mass carnage.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“So many new faces,” Ultra Magnus murmured, watching bemusedly as Blurr circled him six or seven times, returning the speedy youngster’s grin.   
  
“You don’t seem put off by the idea, Magnus,” Chromia said, cocking her head with a smirk. “Unlike rusty-aft here.” She gave Ironhide a shove. Ironhide merely grunted.  
  
“It is a considerable tactical advantage,” Ultra Magnus said, responding in kind to an admiring wave from Nightbeat. The young mech sported quite a paintjob.  
  
“You sound like Prowl,” said Hound, smiling up at him with an unwonted note of shyness. Ultra Magnus was rather magnificent.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
40,000 feet above the Nevada desert, Prowl opened himself wide, encompassing Strake and Thundercracker fully in the cloud mind’s jubilation. Thundercracker’s engines unstarted. At 20.000 feet they reignited and Thundercracker waved Strake – who carried Prowl on his back – away. The Autobots could still  _feel_  like that? Even after everything the war had done to them?   
  
 _Yes, TC,_  Prowl said, echoed by Bluestreak and First Aid.  _They/we can._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Slag, Arcee, what happened?_  Springer said, wisely joining the clump of Ironhide and the others rather than try to pry his friend away from Chromia.  _We thought we’d lost you with the rest at Sarpesh II. Soundwave’s troops kept us from going back for the wounded._  
  
 _Eh, the usual thing,_  Arcee said.  _Got picked up by the Cons and some glitch-head called Flatline tried to run some freaky experiments on me and what was left of my team. He made the mistake of repairing us in the process. Some of us escaped, the rest died trying. Better than what they would have gotten under Flatline’s lasers._  
  
 _Slag right. Good to see ya, ‘Cee. Glad you ended up with Prime like you wanted. You know you’ll always have a place back with the Wreckers if that gets boring._  
  
 _I know, Springer. I appreciate it._  She liked her place now, as the point of the blade in Prowl’s operational squad; as well as being the mech Prime requested most often to be his bodyguard for UN meetings and the like.   
  
 _Elita would take you on board as well,_  Chromia said, yanking at one of Springer’s antennae.  _Although it looks like we’re more likely going to join you than the other way ‘round._  
  
Arcee straightened, optics brightening.  _Oh?_    
  
 _You’ll find out tomorrow._  
  
 _You could just tell us now,_  Springer pointed out.  _What difference will a few groons make?_    
  
Chromia shook her head.  _And wreck Perceptor’s surprise? Fireflight’d have my torsion bars._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Where is this Prowl?” Ultra Magnus asked, leaning close to Optimus like a cat on a hearth, barely out of whisker-singeing range.  
  
“He is with our two Seeker defectors,” Prime said. “We thought it best not to risk any unfortunate reactions until everyone was acquainted.”  
  
“Defectors, eh,” Kup said. “We got ourselves one of them, too. Hey, Drift!”   
  
A white-armored mech glided out of the crowd, blue optics brilliant and focused on Prime. The Autobot sigil on his left shoulder looked new. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” he said. Then, via tight-beam,  _Prime, my mentor wished me to convey a message._  
  
“Thank you,” Prime said. “I’m glad you’ve joined us, Drift.”  **Ah? Who is your mentor?**  
  
“I’m told there are other former Decepticons among you here on Earth. That’s good to hear.”  _His designation is Yoketron. He said that would be enough._ Many things Yoketron said still confused Drift, but the altered expression on Prime’s face told him that the Autobot leader did indeed understand Yoketron’s message.  
  
“There have been defections the other way, too,” Ultra Magnus said. “Swindle and Lockdown for certain. We think there have been others, but they’re hard to pin down.”  
  
Prime nodded. “Yes. We think Lockdown is still here on Earth, but he’s hiding very effectively. I’ve recently gotten word that Swindle has joined a group heading for Chaar.”  **Drift, you hearten me. Yoketron, hm? It’s nice to be able to put a name to the spark.**  
  
“The rubber ducky?” Kup asked, squinching his face up in perplexity. “Look, I just downloaded the human net like the rest of you, but I don’t get that. Why’d your guy shoot his message off in the form of a rubber ducky?”  
  
Hound laughed outright. “It’s his way of saying, ‘Hi, I’m okay, I’m in hot water but that’s where I need to be right now.’ According to TC and Strake, most Cons haven’t paid much attention to human culture. Even if they find a rubber duck floating in space they won’t know what it is.”   
  
 _Countermeasure is your…progeny?...isn’t he?_  Ultra Magnus tight-beamed, his harmonics contemplative rather than accusatory.  
  
 _Yep! I mean yes. He is. Mine and Mirage’s._  
  
 _Hmm._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Large mist screens had been set up around the circumference of the main hangar. Human leaders from around the world would be joining the conference via Teletraan. Event Horizon and Sideswipe were handling security for the meeting itself, under Red Alert’s aegis. The outer doors were closed for protection and against the cold. There were enough mechs assembled and generating heat that the human attendees were soon down to shirtsleeves.   
  
The United States Secretary of Defense supposedly had a certain level of formality to uphold, but Leonard Williams had his coat off like the rest of them. "Why a face-to-face meeting? You have crazy-ass-encrypted long-range communications. I get the feeling Ultra Magnus and Kup have full slates of their own. Why’d you call your guys down all the way from M100?" Williams looked like a bigger man than he was. Most SEALS weren't hulking brutes - it's harder to sneak and hide when you aren't small and wiry - but he wore a heavy musculature, given over only slightly to desk job. He certainly felt small, leaning on the mezzanine railing and still having to look up to meet Optimus Prime’s optics.   
  
"We do, but whenever we don't know exactly where Soundwave is – which has been frequently of late – we prefer hardline links. My friends and I have much to discuss; some of which concerns you and some of which does not. I'll keep you informed regarding the former."   
  
"And when it comes to the latter, butt out."   
  
"I would not have put it so."   
  
"Of course not." Williams grinned and chewed his cigar. He'd never had much patience with the sinuous and insinuating politeness of diplomats and politicians, but something about the way Prime did it was a kick and a half. Maybe it was the idea of a gussied-up semi neatly fielding everything the world political system could throw.  
  
Into the center of the hangar, Hound projected a holo of the entire Earth-Moon system in realtime to begin the meeting. One by one, the various human leaders, civil and military, appeared on the mist screens. The gathered mechs in unison went still and quiet.  
  
“Thank you all, and welcome.” The great, resonant voice of Optimus Prime rolled through the chamber. “We have only a few items to discuss, but it seemed expedient to do so in one gathering at one time.”  
  
Williams exchanged a look with Ambassador Witwicky. Politics in regards to the robots had changed over the years. Most of the experienced leaders had learned that Prime’s monumental patience could wear anyone down. Or if it couldn’t, he would outlive everyone anyway. Conversely, if Prime wanted something done  _now_ , he’d find a way to do it. The cynical might accuse him of using his enormous influence for selfish gain but that was a hard case to prove. He had never failed to take the greater good into consideration, and himself owned nothing and needed nothing materially. It was hard to argue corruption with someone who didn’t even breathe your air. Smokescreen and Prowl’s economic simulations were considered “sharing intel”, and Smokescreen’s accounts on behalf of the Autobots as a group were excruciatingly legal and aboveboard.   
  
The ultimate trump was that the Autobots would leave the Sol system if humanity asked them to; could even try to defend it from a distance. But human beings had chosen to fight and kill Decepticons, and the Decepticons were ruled and reprogrammed by a madmech who would not be forgetting any time soon.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Wow, that was quick, considering,” said Sam, that night.   
  
“Indeed,” Ratchet agreed. “I recall Council sessions that lasted several years, discussing issues far more trivial than these.”  
  
“Years,” said Sam. “Really.”  
  
“Yes, Sam,” Ratchet said. “I  _can_  do the time conversions in my head, you know.”  
  
“You guys, you  _guys_ ,” Sam groaned. Not that he was surprised. He’d heard tales from the embassy staff of hardened criminal lawyers fleeing in tears from conversations with Prowl. Ratchet had then been the one to explain that the complexity of Cybertronian law had waxed and waned over the millennia; sometimes being as simple as ten commandments (or thirteen, as the case was – Cybertronians had a thing for prime numbers), during other eras comprising an order of magnitude more bits of data than every written word in every language through the entirety of human history, requiring specially programmed mechs (like Prowl) to even read and interpret the convoluted dialects. Sam could imagine that the political scene – especially the highest authority of the empire, barring the ruling diad – would have gotten equally hairy.   
  
The SecDef was happy to be sitting down. “You’re going to move the planet. A whole planet. Moving.”  
  
“And two moons, or what’s left of ‘em,” Wheeljack affirmed. He leaned on the mezzanine floor by Williams’ feet. “See, before the war, we were pretty much a Type II civilization – one that uses all the energy emitted by its sun. A Type I uses all the energy that falls on its planet from its sun or suns. We’d done that a long time ago. But it’s a logarithmic scale, so each step is a gazillion times harder.”  
  
“That a precise estimate there, Jack?” Sam asked.  
  
“Technical term,” Jack said. ”Gazillion. Anyway, we hadn’t quite gotten to the whole rearranging solar systems to suit our whims kind of thing, but we were working on it. Perceptor here just put us back on track.”  
  
“Oh  _really_ , Wheeljack,” Perceptor protested. “It’s nothing more than a logical extension of extant technology. We need a sun. Humanity would like neighbors they can talk to. Very simple.”   
  
“And you already got the President, all the kings, queens, PMs and parliaments in the EU and Asia, most of the potentates in South America and Africa with any power at all  _and_  the Premier of China to OK not only this Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood plan but Morocco is letting you guys build a city.” Williams pinched the bridge of his nose. “And this only took you a few months.”   
  
“The neighborhood thing took longer,” Sam said.  
  
Williams leaned forward in his seat. “ _And_  you got the major powers to agree to start building starships that you will help design. And you guys somehow think that taking all this on is okay, even though you’ve got a couple of badasses causing major trouble back home.”  
  
“Our troubles and yours,” Perceptor said, “are intertwined. Your people will need a spaceworthy fleet eventually. Bludgeon, Jhiaxus and now Turmoil running amok merely provides motivation to take that step sooner rather than later. We will help each other.”   
  
Drift had come forward with the information regarding the three Decepticon commanders. They were known to be particularly vicious and had taken to operating their own battalions; stealing ships and resources, terrorizing younger and more isolated civilizations, including some pre-spaceflight ones.   
  
“Speaking of Drift,” Perceptor muttered, though no-one actually had. He peered around the hangar, sensory fins waving. “I wonder if he would consider allowing me to take a deeper scan of his more recently acquired components. That design is truly remarkable. There is also something quite peculiar about that longsword…”  
  
The humans stared after him as he wandered into the crowd.   
  
“Was that—?” Sam began.  
  
“I do not want to know,” Williams said firmly.   
  
“Actually,” said Wheeljack, “since that was Perceptor he wasn’t being euphemistic.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
When Perceptor had suggested they move to one of the less-used chambers because the fields of the crowd of mechs in the hangar were interfering with his more sensitive scans, Drift had agreed, amused by the scientist's fascination. Perceptor reminded him of the one who had rebuilt him. It was possible, however, that Perceptor had had an additional motive.  
  
 _Was there…any other part of me you wanted to examine?_  Drift asked, in what from a human would have been a breathless tone. Some of Perceptor’s scans had blown through him like a storm; others had been so subtle he’d nearly missed the signs. He wondered how many of the ways in which Perceptor perceived he hadn’t been able to feel at all.   
  
Perceptor came around to his front again, head cocked, sensory vanes waving hypnotically, leaning down to bring their faces into close proximity. Drift had never met anyone with such vivid, complex optics.   
  
“Is there something in particular you wanted to show me?”   
  
According to the cloud mind, Perceptor could see most people’s sparks even through the chamber walls; no doubt he could tell exactly what state Drift’s systems were in. He touched the side of Drift’s face for a moment with his fingertips, then slid his hand along Drift’s cheek flange, cupping it, resting his thumb just beneath Drift’s right optic. Something coursed in waves from the center of the palm, from each joint, each fingertip; forming a glyph Drift could almost read, searing through every layer of armor and shielding to flash across his CPU like heat lightning.  
  
Drift scrabbled after every scrap of the bodily control disciplines Yoketron had taught him, though he didn’t think they’d been intended to help one keep from overloading. Or maybe they were. Yoketron was a sociable mech.   
  
 _You felt that,_  Perceptor murmured.  _Not everyone can detect half-phase bosons. Remarkable._  
  
Momentarily reduced to a wordless growl and revving engine, Drift pulled Perceptor’s head down the last few centimeters and kissed him. Perceptor’s fingers were deft and sure; the physical stimulation light, teasing, but his projected intent unambiguous. He brought one hand firmly against an arch of armor curving low around Drift’s side, directing another boson pulse glyph through Drift’s spark chamber.   
  
Drift’s body jerked, shuddering, optics flaring, his vocoder too glitched to produce sound for 31 astroseconds. He dimly felt himself supported, lowered gently to the sandstone, engine running even hotter. He let his helm fall back, to find Perceptor’s hand between it and the floor.  
  
 _It has become expedient for us to regard the Decepticons as monsters, not people, not our own species,_  Perceptor said. He trailed a sensory vane over Drift’s main audial antenna, flexing the interference fields rhythmically.  _Unconscionable._  
  
 _We have become monsters, some of us,_  Drift replied, pulsing sorrow and sympathy for the Oregon University massacre.   
  
 _Prowl has said much the same thing._  Perceptor seated all six thoracic cables. A complete body-link unfolded between them and Drift could now feel how aroused the scientist was as well.   
  
 _I…nnnnnhhh…would like to meet Prowl,_  Drift said, mouth open, his body flexed by a wave of trembling as Perceptor stroked a fingertip around the aperture of his own light cannon.  
  
“Mmmhmmm,” Perceptor agreed. “Delicious.” They would be delectable together – if Drift could get past Thundercracker. Prowl’s trine, and Perceptor felt they were certainly a trine whether any of them acknowledged it or not, was protective. He tipped his chin up, exposing the long cabling and peculiar mesh armor of his throat.   
  
Drift noticed the discontinuity immediately. An old wound, nearly healed. He hastily suppressed the needle of anger at whomever had inflicted it as Perceptor stroked around the area, circling in slowly but not quite touching. Drift thrashed beneath him, discipline scattered like quarks in a collider.  
  
 _Beachcomber calls that my “reset button”,_  Perceptor explained, his voice, even in transmission, pleasantly husky.  _A peculiarity of my construction; an especially responsive wire plexus resides just beneath that scar, and whilst it heals, several microfibrils enervate the nanocells there. Direct stimulation does tend to initiate instantaneous overload, I’m afraid._  
  
 _I’ll remember that,_  Drift rumbled, leering. Not to be outdone, he drew up one leg, flexing his knee sharply and resting his small foot on Perceptor’s hip. Slipping his fingers behind the white, winglike guard, he limned the edges of the laminated hinge joint. It was an odd place to be sensitive, but the touch sent hot bolts of charge up his thigh to the junction, magnified in the central bundle, splashing across his CPU in crimson bursts of pleasure. Perceptor tossed his head, fins and vanes rippling in dancelike patterns. Body-links were  _fun_.  
  
They twined and writhed; hands, mouths wandering or holding on; mirroring and magnifying emotion and delight in ever-rising loops, armor expanding with the heat. Cooling systems labored as the deep charge built, higher and higher until physics won and the excess flashed across their bodies blue and bright in the warm dimness.  
  
To Drift’s surprise, Perceptor’s optics remained lit, the scientist clinging to consciousness through the waves of their shared overload.  _That’s a very advanced technique,_  he said. Their bodies relaxed, fitting complex components together with soft clicks and scrapes, their underlying structures almost touching.  
  
 _I’ll have to tell Red that,_  Perceptor said, smiling.  _I concede it is a pleasing alternative to the usual falling into recharge, though most of my friends would proclaim that I need the rest more often than not._  
  
A fond sort of amusement wafted over the cables. Perceptor pinged a query.   
  
 _You remind me of Bump,_  Drift said, stroking his hands up and down Perceptor’s arms.  
  
 _Who?_  
  
 _Bump is the one who rebuilt me._  
  
 _Hmm. Might he have gone by another name?_  
  
 _If so I don’t know what it was._  
  
 _Pity._  
  
 _Your enthusiasm is similar. Only somewhat, though. He’s quite shy. You? Are_ not.  
  
 _Not appreciably, no,_  Perceptor chuckled. Drift laughed, until the laughter became kissing and the kissing heated into lovemaking again. They tumbled through four…five…six cycles, some leisurely, some tempestuous; only vaguely aware of the planet’s rotation, carrying them through sidereal time. Neither would surrender to recharge, too fully in the grip of mutual fascination.   
  
“It’s dawn, by the way,” Perceptor murmured, stroking his thumb across Drift’s lip components.   
  
“Dawn,” Drift said, thinking of darkened Cybertron, soon to be lit again. Thanks to the mech in his arms. They might have time for one more sequence before someone came looking for them.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Hello, Ratchet. Still hiding out in the med-lab, I see.” Chromia strode into the smaller bay where the growth tanks stood along the far wall. She stopped next to Ratchet, bumping shoulders while watching him run a calibration. The tanks she’d helped Firestar build on Cybertron were smaller – they had to be portable – but otherwise the same. On Cybertron, however, they had not attempted to recreate the lost Wells, instead using mass donation as the Earth Autobots had done at first.   
  
“Good morning, Chromia.” He finished the test and turned to smile at her. “You are making Ironhide very happy. And therefore you are making Wheeljack and I happy. I’m glad you decided to come visit.”   
  
“I am too,” she said. “I’m surprised at all the empty tanks, though.”  
  
“Perceptor’s got one going in Oregon,” Ratchet said. “I imagine we’ll have another wave once everyone forgets how much the scars hurt.”  
  
“You old crankcase. Since when has a little pain stopped us from doing something important?” She moved away from him reluctantly, walking slowly around the bay, taking in the improvised equipment and how each niche and curve of wall and ceiling had been carved into the stone of this strange world. She looked up through the skylight at stars in a galaxy she had never seen before.  
  
“Says the mech who hasn’t tried it.”  
  
“Just you wait.” Full stasis pods – seven of them! They must have salvaged those from their ships. Firestar might have saved Polychrome and Hexad, and so many others if she had been able to put them in pods until things were stable enough, and they had the materials to repair them. “Firestar would give her right arm for a setup like this.”  
  
Ratchet glanced around. He considered it alarmingly primitive compared to the mechanical research facilities he’d had on Cybertron, yet was also grateful to be regaining some of the tools he had lost over time. “Take anything you need, Chromia. You know that.”   
  
“I don’t think you’d fit in my cache, Ratchet.”   
  
“On the planet less than 48 hours and already she starts with the fat jokes. Amazing.” Which wasn’t what she’d meant, and he knew it, but it was easier than dragging out how much they had missed each other.   
  
Laughing, she almost passed the very thing she was looking for amid the menagerie of other samples in a plex-fronted cabinet. Halting her tour, she ran a quick scan. When not in use, the alloy appeared completely inert.   
  
“I would say you’d never believe what that is,” Ratchet said, noting her attention.”But no doubt you got the file from Optimus. That’s a piece of the ‘extra armor’ Trochar installed around Prowl’s spark chamber.”  
  
Chromia scanned deeper. A reasonable reaction. “That unbelievable bastard, as Borealis would put it. How’d you find it?”  
  
“I’ll give you the scans I got from Prowl and the Twins. Firestar will want them so she knows what to look for in case you run across any more of Sentinel’s deserters. And how to reverse the process.”  
  
“You had to replace Prowl’s entire spark chamber assembly? Primus, Ratchet, how’d you do something like that  _here_?”  
  
“We had help with the fabrication.” He leaned on the recharge table used by merging pairs and winked at her. “And I really am that good.”  
  
She smirked at him. “I wonder if Swindle and Lockdown know what was done to them. Or if Sentinel knows they’ve gone Con.”  
  
Ratchet stared at her. “You have a diabolical mind.”  
  
“Isn’t that why you and Ironhide love me?”  
  
 _Hate to break it to you, Mia,_  Jazz cut in,  _but old Hide loves you for your cannons._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
New Year’s Eve dawned clear and cold. Sam got up considerably later than dawn, but much earlier than he wanted to on a weekend. Glen was a maker of epic pancakes. Mikaela and Dani were already at Mikaela’s parents’ for the holiday; Sam would join them in a few hours once he polished off another round of paperwork.  
  
Before he left, he put on his own coat and gloves, plus a standard issue overcoat someone had left lying around, borrowed Maggie’s hat and scarf, and climbed up to the mesa top.  
  
Prime lay with his head in Ultra Magnus’ lap, Magnus stroking a curve of Prime’s helm with his thumb. Kup sprawled next to them, absently chomping on a rusty length of pipe. Sam approached slowly. They looked so relaxed and peaceful – three old friends enjoying the morning. One would never guess from the outside that it was a council of war.   
  
Stepping into Prime’s offered hand, Sam bent his knees slightly for the ride up and over, and dismounted to sit cross-legged on Prime’s chest. He opened his coats as Prime turned up the heat. Ultra Magnus and Kup didn’t stare, but he felt their attention keenly – imagined or otherwise.   
  
“Nice hat,” Optimus said.  
  
Lime green and orange were not part of Sam’s normal wardrobe, nor were long, dangly pom-poms, but Maggie’s hat was the warmest and least itchy. “Thanks.”  _Any news?_  
  
 _Silverbolt’s team had a run-in with Turmoil,_  Ultra Magnus said.  _They didn’t expect him to rebuild his battalion so quickly. Fortunately they were able to combine into their gestalt mode and escape._  
  
Kup nodded, leaning back on one elbow to get a better look at Sam.  _Prime was just saying how he thinks that between the three “rogue” battalions and the big group gathering on Chaar, that makes up almost all the remaining Decepticons. Too bad we don’t have the numbers ourselves to take ‘em out._  
  
 _Getting better at tuning in to Radio Free Allspark, huh?_  Sam was starting to like this comming business. He could get in, make his quip and get out. Like Zorro.   
  
 **Baby steps,**  Optimus agreed.   
  
 _When Shockwave and Galvatron finish whatever they’re doing on Chaar,_  Sam said, his smile fading,  _Do you think they’ll come here?_  He knew intimately what one Decepticon could do, what several dozen could. The thought of a thousand or more descending upon Earth was a cold even Prime’s warmth couldn’t dispel.  
  
“We don’t know for certain,” Ultra Magnus said quietly. “But it seems likely.”  
  
“You got ‘em irritated, kid,” said Kup. “Good on ya, but you better learn to duck.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 - January  
  
Drift surveyed the canyons surrounding the Cybertronian Embassy. The stark beauty of the place appealed to him. Even among these arid rocks, this planet teemed and thronged with life. Lizards, snakes, birds – closely related forms, he gathered. He liked the way organic life claimed and proclaimed kinship. Thorny brush and a few scraggly trees with deep roots. Sunlight diffused through an atmosphere felt amazing after so long in space.   
  
He settled himself on a brazenly exposed boulder and extinguished his optics.   
  
Inching around the mountain peak, Strake watched Drift, thinking of another white-armored mech he’d tried to sneak up on. Word in the cloud was that Drift didn’t carry guns, only those blades. Strake fanned his sensory and heat dispersal fins. Might be pounceable.   
  
 _SKRAANGG!_  
  
Strake rubbed his helm where Thundercracker had smacked him.  _Hey! I wasn’t doing anything._  
  
 _Don’t stoop on that slagger,_  Thundercracker said.  _I recognize his voice. Name used to be Deadlock._  
  
 _Deadl— Wait. You mean_ that _Deadlock?_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _Oh._  Strake gave a shiver, and followed Thundercracker back to the top of the sky.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Good morning, Bluestreak," said Red Alert.  _Any change?_    
  
"Morning, Red."  _Nope._    
  
"Good morning, Kalis," Red said, nodding. "Status report?" There was to be no deception about Kalis' situation. They weren't going to pretend to him as he'd done to his captives. Smokescreen thought it important that Kalis know he wasn't in his city any more.   
  
In a corner, on the other side of the partition from Glen’s computer nest, a small, but lovingly crafted column housed an optical band and audials, with a speaker grille for a mouth. The volume was kept so low that most humans would have to be directly beside the module to hear. Kalis had thus far made no voluntary noise but screaming. An adjustable, Cybertronian-sized chair sat next to the column. There was no set schedule, but somehow someone was always there, talking quietly to the AI and stroking the haptic pad Wheeljack had built into the column below the visual and auditory inputs. It wasn't a hand - they didn't really want Kalis to be able to manipulate physical objects yet. Even the module's power source was self-contained and shielded. Nor was there an antenna that would allow access to the local networks.  
  
"I'll sit by him for a while, Bluestreak, " Red continued smoothly, after waiting a beat to provide space for Kalis to reply if he could or wished to. "Windcharger and Raze were asking if you'd join them at the levees in Louisiana weren't they?"   
  
"Yeah!” Bluestreak lit up. He would have stayed with Kalis if no one else had come, but the chance to get outside and help build – or rebuild – was a rare treat. “Thanks, Red."   
  
"Not at all." Red settled himself into the chair. He and Bluestreak were the same forging so no adjustment was required. "New video of Leung Su surfing the tidal bore on the Qiangtang River was put up this morning. The humans' fascination with the water so abundant on this planet is understandable. This foolishly rash, thrill-seeking behavior in a species that is already appallingly short-lived is not. I don't think they understand it either, which doesn't help. In any case, the repairs to the Three Gorges Dam have been completed and their power output is back to normal. Twelve more solar power stations have come online in Nigeria. The planned opening of the new train depot in Toronto has been delayed due to severe storms." Red continued for some time, speaking just above a whisper but clearly, his fingers drawing idle patterns on the haptic pad.   
  
"Hey, Red, hey, Kalis," Sam yawned, clutching his first coffee of the morning. "Got anything on the screens for me?"   
  
"Good morning, Sam Witwicky," Red said. “Did you not consult the comm feeds I set up for you?”  
  
“I’d rather come talk with you.”  
  
“…You’re good,” Red said, and Sam grinned.   
  
Wheeljack rolled in from his tower and transformed, ambling over to join them. “Mornin’, guys!” The fins on his helm rippled with color as he scanned Kalis’ systems. “Looks A-OK.” He gave the fiddlehead-shaped top a pat.  
  
Sam observed this with curiosity. It struck him as strange and wonderful that the bots had gone to such lengths to help an entity they considered a “person”, but not alive. The housing for the AI was no simple Greek column, but a gently complex, curving shape, like a silk scarf tossed into the wind; entirely clad in patinaed and polished bronze. “Why'd you put him in a thing like that? Are city AI’s used to being installed, like furniture? Uh, or art.”   
  
Wheeljack shrugged. “Kalis’ programs are a lot older than I am. It woulda been disrespectful to toss him onto some little chip. I coulda made it more head-like, I guess. That'd be portable, but kinda creepy.”  
  
“Gah.” Sam wished he could unimagine that.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Arcee needed to recharge and defrag and a strut on her left side was bent just enough to twinge. Introducing the Wreckers to tackle basketball was a tough job, but someone had to do it. As she rolled into the hangar, Thundercracker was coming out, following Strake and heading for open sky. Her tired but jubilant mood instantly crashed.   
  
“Move it, Seeker,” Arcee snarled, transforming and stomping straight ahead, slagged if she’d veer off-course for some Con in her own base. Thundercracker stopped. Letting a blade slide from her left wrist, she glared at him as he crouched, mantling over her to emphasize his much greater height and mass. “Get out of my way,” she said. She routed power to her guns.  
  
“Make me, scrap,” he hissed, snapping his mandibles at her. “What crawled up your exhaust port?”   
  
“You killed my friends, my team!”  
  
Some distance behind her, Springer held on to Cliffjumper, and would have dented the smaller mech’s armor if Jumper’s shielding wasn’t active. Ironic because Springer was trembling with the effort of not bringing his own artillery to bear. The cloud mind hovered, subdued, observing. No one else in the hangar moved.   
  
“They stood against me as warriors,” Thundercracker said, low-level wariness threading his harmonics. He remembered the incident, and Arcee, very well indeed. Some of the structural cables in his neck still hadn’t mended completely. “Yes, I killed them, and they died well, with honor, as brave soldiers should.”  
  
“You’re insane! There is no honor in death, no glorious goal to be sought for yourself and everyone else! Death is only the end!” She was aware of the unstable territory she trod even as she spoke.   
  
Thundercracker reared back, staring at her. Blue optics looked strange in his predator’s face. “Death is not an ending,” he said. “There is peace, though they no longer exist in a way we can understand, I think, but…”  
  
“Shut up,” Arcee snarled, shuddering. She pushed past him, sheathing her blade to merely give his right hock a glancing blow. “ _Shut up._  I still hate you.”  
  
“You do that,” Thundercracker said. In a few strides he cleared the door and took off with a roar of engines.  
  
Oratorio rested his chin on Prowl’s shoulder.  _You didn’t step in,_  he tight-beamed.  
  
 _No,_  Prowl replied.  _Why?_    
  
 _Oh._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Later, Arcee found Prime with Ultra Magnus at the holo table in the war room. No surprise. She’d spend all her time with Ultra Magnus too if she could. Somersaulting to the table’s edge, she rearranged her wheels to lean more comfortably on Ultra Magnus’ chest.   
  
 _Prime, how can we do this?_  
  
Optimus nodded.  **If we cannot learn to relinquish the notion of revenge, if we cannot embrace the concept of forgiveness, even for terrible wrongs, our species will become extinct. Perhaps the universe will be better off without us.**  
  
“You and the Dalai Lama,” Arcee huffed.  
  
“He wasn’t wrong.” Optimus missed him. Prime had kept his promise to show Tenzin his spark before the human died, but there was no stirring in the Allspark to mark the passing of that spirit into another realm. If that was what indeed happened with humans. Not knowing that was proving more troubling than Prime would have thought. “No one ever said ending the war was going to be easy. It’s going to be a struggle; against ourselves most of all. But I am convinced it is a struggle worth attempting, worth expending all our will for.”   
  
Ultra Magnus nudged Arcee’s helm with his chin. “That’s a Prime for you. I can’t tell if he’s changed or changed  _back_.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Prowl,_  Thundercracker said, gathering his “tether” close against his chest.  _How do you turn a soldier into a civilian?_  Most of the Decepticons had been constructed and programmed as soldiers. Could they find their way back to being guardians rather than warmongers?  
  
 _That’s a very good question,_  Prowl said. He was so much smaller than the Seekers, his hands could reach interesting places. Strake sidled into Thundercracker’s embrace, too, but remained silent, listening.  _When I was placed in a body and ensparked, that transformation in and of itself was overwhelming. I don’t have any better answers than you._  
  
 _If it’s programming, between you, Smokescreen, Ratchet and Prime, couldn’t you change us?_  Thundercracker traced the lines of Prowl’s helm with a claw-tip.  
  
 _I don’t think it’s entirely programming,_  Prowl lifted his doorwings to give Strake better access to the joints.  _Our sparks generate a significant aspect of our personalities. You were given an aggressive, martial spark, as was Ironhide, Warpath, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe._  
  
Thundercracker slipped out his first pair of cables. He knew Prowl liked touching, and field play was nice, but cables were better. After more than two million years of denial, Prowl couldn’t get enough of spark interface, but once one of them had their chamber open it would be impossible to continue the conversation.  _Maybe we were given traitorous sparks as well, then._  
  
 _You’re not traitors,_  Prowl said, humming deep, wriggling delightfully into the connections.  _What Decepticon secrets have we paid you to spill?_  
  
 _Not that I ever knew any,_  Strake muttered.  
  
Prowl quirked a grin at him.  _We tried to keep you both off Mars so you wouldn’t have to fight your friends and trine._  
  
 _Former trine._  Thundercracker said firmly.  
  
Prowl raised an optic ridge.  _We know you’ve been getting subspace comm from Starscream and Skywarp. Don’t worry, if Jazz read the contents he didn’t tell me. Prime never ordered us to keep you cut off._  
  
Nevertheless, Thundercracker immediately chirped Prowl the entirety of the messages. And his rather crude replies. Prowl’s relentless honesty was getting to him, too. Prowl stiffened against him as he read them.   
  
 _Galvatron wants them to bring him your head in exchange for ensparking a new trinemate for them? That’s…_  Prowl shuttered his optics. That kind of threat was entirely too familiar.  _Do you mind if I relay that to Prime?_  
  
 _Don’t care,_  Thundercracker rumbled, pushing in another set of cables.  _Go ahead._  Strake raked his teeth across the edge of Thundercracker’s left wing, ending their failing grasp at coherence for a while.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 - February  
  
Every morning, Catscan carried Lifeline down to the beach. If he arranged her limbs, she would sit all day among the storm-rounded serpentine boulders, unmoving but upright. Every evening he or Perceptor came for her and carried her back to the forest-shrouded base. Her optics were lit but expressionless. Physically she was functional, though her spark was recovering more slowly than the other two and she could not be persuaded to speak or respond even over cables.   
  
 _She thinks this is part of the sim,_  Catscan told Ratchet long-distance. Ratchet and Mikaela were visiting an inconspicuous office building in Milpitas, California that housed one of DARPA’s cybernetics projects.   
  
 _So do you, Cat,_  Ratchet said gently.   
  
Only because I cannot bear to let myself consider it otherwise, Catscan thought. Kalis’ sims had been complex, and Catscan had believed them completely at first. Over time there had been errors. Some of the AI’s processors and programs had become damaged. Usually only small things gave the game away; garbled audio of conversations on the other side of a plaza, repeated patterns in textures where there should be randomness, strangely dronelike behavior in an acquaintance.   
  
Kalis had once had access to the Universities’ databases of the scores of other inhabited worlds with which Cybertron had had contact, but as Catscan perused the alien global nets here on Earth – if “here” really was somewhere outside his mind – it tested the limits of even Catscan’s skepticism.   
  
 _I was wrong to have kept you three isolated,_  Ratchet said. He’d wanted to protect them from the generalized crazy of the World Wide Web, but it seemed that kind of crazy was just what Catscan, and Glyph, had needed.  _I’m sorry. Let me know what you think of the Strawberry Poptart Blowtorch and Peep “surgery” when you find them. But if either of you starts speaking in lolcat I’m cutting you off._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A moment’s download enabled Glyph to identify every star in the night sky, but that catalog of foreign names and numbers did not make this sky familiar. Not like the sky of home-that-was, or the other worlds she had spent decades or centuries on, studying cultures not her own.  
  
“Evening, Glyph,” Beachcomber hummed as he and Miles emerged from the forest after their walk, trailing an arm around her for a quick hug as he passed. She caught his hand and held it.  
  
"Hey, Beachcomber, Miles. I'm thinking of driving up to Alaska as soon as Hoist and Perceptor clear me. Would you two like to come?"   
  
“Alaska in February. Maybe not,” Miles said, huddling into his coat.   
  
Beachcomber chuckled. "Collecting languages again already, hm?"   
  
"Coalescing into a global culture is most often considered an advance among organics,” Glyph said. “But it does usually mean a loss of cultural and language diversity. There are a couple of grandmothers I'd like to interview sooner rather than later."   
  
Beachcomber smiled. "Sure, I'll come." Glyph seemed to have recovered almost entirely from her ordeal, only an occasional flinch or harrowed expression flitted across her face.   
  
“I apologize, Glyph,” Perceptor said, joining them. He had returned from the embassy that day. Catscan followed him out into the clear, starry night. “I’m afraid I’ve been somewhat distracted of late.”  
  
“So we hear,” Miles said.  _He sure switches sides fast. Didn't he just make a kid with Lissi?_  He regretted it the moment he thought "send". At least he'd gotten the right private channel.   
  
 _Miles, Miles, Miles, dude,_  Beachcomber replied, amused rather than offended.  _Percy's like totally in bloom right now._    
  
 _In bloom._    
  
 _Mmyeah. Okay, you get it that Cybertronians fall in love, even though we don't pair bond, right? So, being newly in love makes us want to get snuggly with everyone, not just the one we're in love with. Normal behavior._    
  
 _Ah, sorry. Reflex. Thought I was used to Cybertronian social complexities, but I guess not._    
  
 _Hey, you're doing all right. No worries._    
  
Perceptor merely grinned, turning to Glyph, the orrery of his sensor array whirling.   
  
“Oh!” Miles said, waving his hands. “Do I need to scram?”  
  
“No, no,” Perceptor said. “I can see her spark perfectly well without having her open the chamber. There. Glyph, I’m pleased to say you’ve made a complete physical recovery. Your spark is at optimal size and brightness for your forging.” He knelt and proffered an arm cable, which she accepted. “Your emotional and psychological recovery, per Smokescreen, has progressed remarkably well.” Perhaps, his harmonics gently hinted, too well, too quickly. He retracted his cable.  
  
"Perceptor,” Glyph said, putting her hands on her hips, “neither I nor Kalis are capable of accurately portraying Beachcomber in a simulation. Even if Kalis had caught him, hooking Comber's mind up to anything would have led to all kinds of trouble. Stop laughing, I'm serious." And she was, too, which made Perceptor laugh harder.   
  
Catscan stiffened, optical shutters closing then opening slowly. “That’s true. I had not considered that.”  
  
“Heeeeey!” Beachcomber protested.  
  
“The sim Glyph would tell me the same thing,” Catscan said, mostly to himself. “I would believe her, for a while.” Having been served the horror of their capture and use by the AI, having Glyph be one of the survivors to be rescued seemed too pat. Even Lifeline’s continued illness gave him something to do, someone to care for, as per his primary programming.   
  
“Catscan,” Glyph interrupted, “you’re being emotional and stubborn. It’s not like you. Stop it.”  
  
“The appropriate response,” Miles said, giving Catscan’s ankle a friendly kick, “is ‘Yes, dear.’”  
  
“There’s another example,” said Glyph. “Do you honestly think Kalis would come up with someone like Miles?”  
  
“Hey!” said Miles.   
  
“Or even humans for that matter. Have you ever heard of another species cozying up to us like they have? An organic species no less.”  
  
“We haven’t always been well-liked among our galactic neighbors,” Beachcomber explained at Miles’ raised eyebrows.  
  
“That’s because we have historically been rather snotty about our position as first known life form in the universe,” Glyph said.   
  
“First known?” Miles asked. “I thought Prime said you definitely were.”  
  
Glyph crossed her arms. “Prime may be sure, but I’m not.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Kup made Oratorio think of an old gunfighter. The fact of his age indicating that he must have been very fast, very smart and very, very lucky.   
  
“Does it hurt to be that old?” Rio asked, noting how slowly Kup moved in the oil bath, as though wary of slipping because a fall might damage friable parts.  
  
“Eh?” Kup watched Rio approach. Lithe as he waded through the oil, with the complete confidence of the very young. “Depends, kid. Perceptor built me a new body a while ago, so I don’t have creaky joints or thin plating or anything.”  
  
“The humans’ joints can become painful when they get old,” Rio said. “The cushioning tissues grow thin and the bones roughen. I know Cybertronians don’t age in the same way, but…what happens when your memory core is full?”  
  
Kup laughed. “Yeah, it does get harder to lay down new memories, or you start losing the really old ones. Gotta sift through and delete the stuff you don’t really need anymore. What I was gonna say, though, is even our sparks don’t last forever. Every star burns out eventually.”  
  
“Except Prime’s and Megatron’s.”  
  
“You know about that, huh?”  
  
“Skyfire kind of shouted about it.” Rio hadn’t been decanted yet, but he’d heard the big white jet’s tirade from the tank.  
  
“I bet he did.”  
  
“You know how I was built, right?” He leaned forward, almost touching. “Do you think you might ever try spark-merging?”  
  
“You’re Jazz’s kid, aren’tcha?”  
  
“Oh I am,” Rio said, and kissed him.  _If every star-spark burns out, don’t you want to pass on even a little of yours? Keep some part of yourself alive._    
  
 _My pattern will exist forever in the Allspark, kid,_  Kup replied, smiling through their kiss. He slipped an arm around Rio’s waist, pulling their bodies closer.  _We_ know _that now, not just hoping in the pretty words the whatchecallems… this language polyrithm, frag… the scientist-priests at the Simfur Temple sang at us._  
  
 _But, Kup, that leaves the rest of us without you. For our sake, you really should consider it._  Rio skated his fingers in intricate patterns over the back of Kup’s helm. The old mech, he was certain, could teach him a lot. About a lot of things.   
  
 _Definitely Jazz’s kid._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"FEE FIE FOE FAT! I TOT I TAW A PUDDY TAT!" came a booming voice. Drift looked up. Deltas weren't the largest free-standing Cybertronians, but it had been a while since he had last seen one up close.  
  
"You must be Borealis," he said. He thought of Prime and Ratchet, that first time, desperately trying not to die.  
  
"I am. I'll be taking some of you up to Mars in a bit, here."  _ZOMG, Perceptor! No wonder. He's gorgeous!_  
  
 _You don’t think that is my only criteria for interest, do you?_  Perceptor retorted, pleased.   
  
 _Of course not. So he’s an impeccable conversationalist too, huh? Can he type?_  
  
Perceptor burst out laughing.  _Impertinent jet!_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Three seconds. 3000 milliseconds could be a long time for a robot. Sometimes it was all Optimus had. For those three seconds, his entire consciousness dove through the Allspark, dimension by dimension, now and then caught by the attention of the more coherent patterns within. Not as easy as conversing with those in the Matrix, but he was learning.   
  
Infighting somewhere near Chaar sent another spark winging inward to rejoin its kindred. Rage and fear dissolved, shifting to surprise, recognition - and joy. Optimus hadn't meant to intrude on such a personal moment, but he was happy to think this one might be another to remember his name, maybe remember his self; for a little while at least. So many of the Decepticons chose individual oblivion as Barricade had. He wasn't certain why, given the uncommonly strong egos many of the Cons displayed, although there did seem to be a shared longing in every spark to reunite with its source.   
  
He had once found that disconcerting. The Allspark had appeared to him to be little more than an incredibly sophisticated data gathering device. Send sparks out to acquire bodies, live lives, garnering information; then brought back to integrate that new knowledge within itself. Why? He had tried not to worry at the question – he would have eternity to think about it, and most of that eternity would be spent with no distraction but Galvatron. Prime's bravado in the face of Skyfire's outburst had been a thin veneer. The prospect of his future was terrifying, and he was very much afraid that there were going to be consequences even Skyfire had not thought of. He had to set that aside. There was much to do while stars yet burned, while sparks spun. There was enough to focus on to keep the darkness and forever at bay.   
  
In any case, he thought his earlier assessment of the Allspark was wrong. After the Allspark had made its first lunge at Perceptor, Optimus had used that feel of the movement of the Allspark's consciousness, if that was what one could call it, to explore deeper. He and Perceptor had thought to merge, after that, but the Allspark had made a slightly more determined effort to engulf the scientist's spark. This frightened Optimus so badly he refused to consider merging with Perceptor until he had better control, or understood properly what was going on.   
  
He'd been wrong, and was glad of it. The Allspark, he now felt, was a seed of life, cast as a gesture of staggering hope into this universe as it formed. Its goal perhaps to spread consciousness to this universe – to others as well? He didn't know. He suspected many things. Maybe someday he could ask Vector Prime.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Smokescreen fixed Drift with a grim look. “You don’t have to, Prowl,” he said. Prime felt that Drift possessed insights which Prowl would find useful and encouraged their meeting. It was strange that in this one case more people believed TC’s stories than Prime’s assessment. Prowl laced his fingers with Smokescreen’s briefly.  
  
 _The one person who has done the most damage to me wears the Autobot sigil,_  Prowl tight-beamed.  _It’s fine, Smokey. I interface with former Decepticons quite frequently._    
  
 _You needn’t brag about it like that,_  Smokescreen muttered, but a corner of his mouth quirked upward.  
  
It was a small bubble of a room, enough to hold two or three mid-sized mechs, kept empty and thoroughly soundproofed. They locked the door behind them. Prowl accepted both sets of cables; arm and cervical. He would bear anything Drift chose to make him relive.   
  
 _If you cause Prowl any pain,_  Bumblebee tight-beamed to Drift,  _you will earn the wrath of every bot on Earth._  There were already two angry Seekers on the mesa top, and Prowl’s voice was slowly evolving toward what Bumblebee called the “enchanting birds out of the air” end of the spectrum.   
  
 _No, no, that is not my intention._  Drift looked into Prowl’s optics and opened the link like a wound.   
  
…  
  
A battlefield, a field of slaughter. A mech. Hundreds dead. Energon glows slick on the ground, etching his armor, his hands, arms, face. He fires again, laughing, and another falls. He revels in carnage, drinking the energon of the slain, drinking his own from gashes in his stained armor. He is always so  _thirsty_.  
  
A chance transmission, intercepted from the exploratory vessel  _Reachfar_. Mintarans; peaceful cyborgs. Weaklings. They would be culled in due time. Until then, the distant world they’d found sounded…interesting. Turmoil gives him leave to do a little scouting. Deadlock’s habit of preying upon weaker Decepticons is disrupting operations in the battalion.   
  
An organic planet. Mountains rise high above purple and fuchsia trees. A structure not as concealed amid the peaks and clouds as it could be reveals the touch of robotic hands. He opens his mouth, anticipating the taste of exotic fuel.   
  
An old mech, standing completely motionless. Can’t evade laser fire, that’s impossible, how are they moving like that, won’t even let him take out a wall to escape their hands are on him he can’t break their hold but he won’t remember until later how they don’t hurt him.   
  
A kind face. They correct the flaws. The terrible thirst, his constant companion, is gone. He misses it. He misses the compulsion, the impelling force, the excuse for mayhem. He thinks he will never be able to fill the void it leaves.  
  
A dim room. He is compelled to experience the agony of the dying, the anguish of every victim. He must accept it, integrate it, take it into his spark, and he is not permitted to let it kill him. The equivalent of a century of searing awareness is compressed to a few score hours.   
  
…  
  
Prowl leaned heavily on Drift as they knelt in the center of the floor. A low sound emerged from his vocoder. Their link flickered like Prowl’s optics. Drift reinforced it, desperate to keep it open, to know whether he had helped or hurt.  _Please… Prowl? **Prowl?**_  
  
 _That was…_  Prowl rebooted his optics and a few other systems, settling his arms more gently around Drift’s shoulders to reassure him.   
  
 _I don’t know which way is more difficult, Prime’s or Yoketron’s,_  Drift said, shuddering. Prowl held him, stroking his helm.  _I never, ever want to go through that again._    
  
Drift grasped his helm hard, bringing their faces close, forehelms bumping. “I admire you so much.” It was hard not to kiss him at this distance. “You saw the wrongness in yourself. You chose a hard path because it was the right way. You are extraordinary.”  
  
Prowl had no idea what to say. He tilted his head so their chevrons wouldn’t clash and touched his lips to Drift’s. Their arm cables retracted, replaced by thoracic pairs. He felt Drift’s hand caressing his chest and parted his armor, chamber seals flicking aside, the heavy sections of the chamber walls opening. Drift’s fingertips brushed the lingering merge scars.  
  
“Oh my.” Drift bent to touch the scars with lip components and oral polyhedron, exploring each curling branch, his face warmed by the heat of Prowl’s spark. Prowl arched, shivering slightly. The scars no longer hurt, but they were sensitive. Drift took his time.   
  
He framed his question with deliberation – the light from Prowl’s spark threatened to drive every other thought from his processors.  _Are you a practitioner of Red Alert’s art as well?_  
  
Prowl smiled.  _I was the first here to learn it from him._  Inferno deliberately had not. Inferno’s single self-preservation algorithm knew it was a legitimate excuse to recharge. And he knew Red liked to watch him “sleeping”. It was the one time Red didn’t have to worry about him.   
  
Despite the cervical cables, it was difficult to maintain the higher levels of concentration they were both accustomed to.  _Want this,_  Drift sent, moaning.  _Want you._  Millimeter by millimeter, Drift opened his own chest and chamber, a line of deep amber light spilling across Prowl’s pale armor.  _You…you **understand** …_  
  
Drift moved up Prowl’s body, finding the alignment – they clutched at each other as their sparks’ coronae meshed, fierce and unfettered, revealing everything they tried to shield others from. Prowl absorbed the lancet-swift pain of Drift’s conversion; Drift endured the slow march of how Prowl was learning to be himself; and the sharing for a moment distorted these things into a singularity neither could escape, before the conception collapsed and diminished, becoming again simply another facet of their lives.  
  
Drift cried out to protect himself from the exquisite edges of Prowl’s voice as the violence of their overload slammed through them, their optics never losing their lock. After, they held on, stroking each other’s faces in comfort and gratitude.  
  
 _Thank you,_  they said, in perfect unison.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The setting sun turned the rich blues of the approaching mech’s armor vibrant against the red of the mesa and surrounding desert. Thundercracker felt ancient desires stir in the deepest layers of his programming. The slender frame was enhanced with white metal filigree, but beneath and around this were older marks, abraded and broken, but visible in this slanting light. Towers mech. Legendary, considered by some to be mythical. A ghost who could cut your fuel lines as you recharged and leave no trace. Mirage.  
  
“In the greeting hall of my consortium’s suite in Iridium Tower,” Mirage said, reaching up to lightly touch Thundercracker’s canopy, “there was a famous portrait by the master artist Lightinmotion.” He smiled at Strake, including the black and silver Seeker in his attention. “It was always one of my favorites. The subtlety of the sunlight through high wisps of condensate, the incredible detail of the city on the low horizon. The spark-stopping beauty of the subject. I enjoyed looking at it every day as I entered or departed, and when I had the time I would stand and contemplate meeting the subject. It wasn’t an entirely far-fetched fantasy, but it never happened. I suppose I didn’t want it to, really.”   
  
The Seekers moved closer, intrigued by the cadences and harmonics of his cultured voice. The Towers and Universities had been destroyed early – hotbeds of dissention and free-thinking. Mirage made no effort to disguise the sudden spike in his core temperature.   
  
“And then I thought it was too late,” Mirage continued, his voice dropping into lower registers, intimate, inviting. “I am pleased to have been wrong.”   
  
“You…I… What?” Reflexively, Thundercracker cradled the Tower mech’s delicate body against his chest, optics meeting optics. A lot of people had created representations in every media of the charismatic Command Trine, but even Thundercracker had known Lightinmotion’s work was special. He  _hadn’t_  known Lightinmotion had ever done  _his_ portrait. The loss of artist and art was another crime to be laid at the feet of the war.   
  
Mirage smiled, and kissed him.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hook stood above the entrance to the city, as the darting, streaming dance of energetic particles from this system’s sun struck the planet’s ionosphere. Coming to the surface was risky; the others were grumbling at him about it. He watched the play of photons reflected in the frozen lake to the north, and on the snow all around on the steep mountainsides.   
  
In summer, green crept up the lowest spans of those slopes. Even then there was always snow, and glaciers left over from the time when the Allspark had fallen. Sunlight in summer gleamed gold and silver through clouds, or struck so blindingly on clear days one could almost hear it. It was beautiful. This place was beautiful. Despite the creeping fingers of encroaching ocean everywhere. Or maybe because of, Hook supposed. The relatively flat, darkly reflective or milky green surface of the water was an interesting contrast to the landforms.   
  
The city they were building under the mountains was beautiful, too. Hook’s favorite area, of course, was the Mandelbrot bulb of apartments he was making. Suites of spheres spiraled up and down and out from the large just-off-central cavern in fractal elegance. It was an efficient use of space, and strong; more than strong enough to withstand this planet’s tectonic activity. His private laboratories were concealed in a side-bulb one would only look for if one knew which set of equations Hook had used to model the whole complex. They weren’t set up completely to his satisfaction yet, but he was confident they had plenty of time.  
  
Fancying himself the leader of the gestalt, Scrapper was carving out a grand central plaza, complete with a heroic statue of himself suspended from the highest dome of the ceiling. A swirl of empty fountains skirted the marble floor. Mixmaster had promised to fill them with mercury, but every time Scrapper mentioned it, Mix said he was too busy with something else.  
  
Mixmaster definitely had liquids on his mind, though. He was reproducing the famous Ii caves of Arnanra IV in corundum, complete with lakes, rivers and waterfalls. He didn’t even have to manufacture the water. Hook approved – he didn’t like limestone anyway. These caves wouldn’t be washed away by a little rain.  
  
Longhaul went deep. Down into the heat of the lithosphere – only a few kilometers down, but far enough the others couldn’t bother him without trundling down unnecessarily and annoyingly convoluted ramps. He must have put shielding in because comms didn’t work, but he wouldn’t let anyone see what he was doing past the first staging area, which was rough and dark, glittering in odd corners with crystals Scavenger said shouldn’t be there, although no one could get him to explain why. The big granite doors beyond would only open to Longhaul’s command. Hook thought they could blast through if they had to, but the complaining Longhaul would do afterward wasn’t worth it. Who cared what he had going down there anyway? It was only Longhaul.  
  
Building directly off of Scrapper’s plaza, Ruckus was experimenting with modular, gear-driven architecture. Some of the less massive features were powered by steam, since geothermal energy was so easily tapped. There was no logical reason for the rotating dwellings with rearrangeable rooms, but Ruckus was kept busy by the elaborate workings, which kept him from annoying everyone else.  
  
The twins, Tread and Trample, were collaborating on a park with a ground plan based on Cybertron’s original solar system. Crystal trees stood in for moons and a coppery-hued metal skating disk represented their extinguished sun. They hadn’t placed whatever they were going to use for planets yet because they were arguing about which arrangement to represent. A conjunction? Perihelion? Aphelion? The cobbled floor was another source of contention. Tread wanted to decorate the “orbital” paths with gravimetric equations. Trample wanted to use poetry. Hook liked Trample’s idea better, as did Mixmaster.  
  
Scavenger, unable to decide what he wanted to construct for himself, dug tunnels to connect everyone else’s projects. He lined them with mosaics of whatever minerals they found. The designs were starting to get interesting, but Hook wasn’t about to say so.  
  
Clouds were forming, coalescing seemingly from nowhere as a cooler air mass moved up the mountains from the southwest, obscuring the aurora. Hook adjusted his optics, focusing on infrared. A large, quadrupedal organic creature was crossing a snowfield below. He’d seen its kind before. Nonsapient. The broad bony flanges on their heads were interesting, but the creatures and the Constructicons had so far ignored each other.   
  
The sun would make its brief appearance soon. The grumbling of his gestaltmates rose fractionally in volume.  
  
Scavenger snuck outside sometimes, too, Hook knew. And Mixmaster had an antenna up for the humans’ musical broadcasts. That was the thing about being gestalt. You couldn’t really keep something to yourself unless you never combined; and they’d had to, to lift the columns into place in the tubular bell hall between the plaza and Ruckus’ clockworks suburb.   
  
Hook finally turned toward the disguised hatchway. The original hologram mesh had since been replaced with reconstituted stone made to look precisely like the surrounding mountainside. Scavenger had said something about dwarf doors and Jotun, which made no sense but Hook hadn’t bothered learning human languages yet.   
  
No time like the present, Hook decided. Since he was out here anyway. It only took a moment to snag a signal, and if he was careful Soundwave, or the Autobot AI, probably wouldn’t feel him.   
  
Jotun, huh? Hook laughed.   
  
 _Slaggit, Hook,_  Scrapper growled.  _Get back in here before some skier sees you._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _My Lord, please. Our effectiveness without a third is limited._  The Erbrixi knew Cybertronian elite fliers went in threes, and if the Command Trine couldn’t maintain its usual formation, they lost respect. If they lost respect, the Erbrixi wouldn’t willingly provide the materials Shockwave required. The “willingly” part wouldn’t have been a problem once, but there were a lot of Erbrixi eager to prove themselves against the much diminished Cybertronians. More trouble than they were worth, Starscream thought, but Shockwave wanted those alloys.   
  
“Your pleas are growing tedious, Starscream,” Galvatron growled. If he relented, however, Starscream would shut up, at least for a while. Struck with inspiration, Galvatron smiled. Starscream and Skywarp took involuntary steps away from him. Galvatron’s smile widened. He had access to the knowledge. Time they had, materials were ready to hand. “Very well. I shall build your third myself.”  
  
By Galvatron’s command, construction drones were temporarily diverted from Shockwave’s project to build a kindling platform. Galvatron retreated to an accessory laboratory. Starscream would want another alpha, but it was time for innovation. A new design, faster, stronger, more beautiful…yes. He drew matter from his own body, tore components from others’, obsessed over the programming.   
  
 _He’s truly mad if he thinks I’ll trine with such a monstrosity,_  Starscream tight-beamed to Skywarp, gazing up at the form as it was installed on the platform.  
  
Skywarp agreed. This whole thing was making him really nervous. The resemblance of the protoform to Megatron’s original form was not reassuring.   
  
“Behold!” Galvatron purred to the assembled Decepticons. Even Shockwave was there. Galvatron had never ensparked a full Cybertronian before – the creatures he had massed against Earth had been drones. “The first of our new army, as I promised!”  
  
He opened his chest, glyphs spilling across his armor, glowing as though his protoform was afire. The Allspark would bend to  _his_  will, not granting life as a random accident. Honed, directed, focused; it was a tool, and he the master. Blue-white lighting leapt like a jagged, tortured blade from Galvatron’s chest, impaling the body on the platform.  
  
 **No.**  Optimus staggered forward, reaching, as though his outstretched hands could stop what was happening galaxies away.  **Brother, no!**  
  
Scythes of lightning swept outward beyond the platform, tearing weapons and limbs half-melted from mechs nearby, drawing more matter into the growing, writhing protoform. Mad, red optics lit beneath a backswept helm. The arms and legs were not arranged correctly. Wing segments jutted in serrated, misshapen rows from its back. It began to crawl, hunching and lurching, toward Starscream and Skywarp. Its first transmission blasted across every frequency with a power that shattered or fused delicate receivers.   
  
 **”I AM THUNDERWING!”**


	67. Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Starscream and Skywarp are not having fun, neither is Prime, Maggie surprises Ultra Magnus, Kup confronts Wheeljack about a certain invention’s nomenclature, Ultra Magnus finally gets to meet Prowl, the Autobots make a contribution to Burning Man, Prime tries to revise Strake and TC’s sentence, helicopters get snuggly, Blurr and Wheeljack merge, Kup and Oratorio merge, and Soundwave is feeling a bit cranky.

2030 – February  
  
Skywarp grabbed Starscream and  _bounced_. Audials fried, comms dead, it didn’t matter where, so long as the warp field didn’t smash them into solid rock. It only mattered that they get away, that Starscream wasn’t fighting him, and that  _thing_  couldn’t follow.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It looked like a dance, Sam thought, the way they completely missed stepping on everyone. Except for Optimus’ horrified cry, and the grim look on Ultra Magnus’ face as he caught the staggering, then offline Prime. Sam gripped the edges of the podium. The press were already clamoring for whats and whys and whos, the collective bandwidth use in the room skyrocketing.   
  
“It’s Galvatron,” Sam told them. “We’ll release more information as soon as we have it. Right now only Prime knows any details. Conference over for now, thank you for your understanding.” Kup leaned down and extended a hand. Sam stepped into it, but Secretary Williams waved him off, taking the podium instead. It wasn’t that Sam couldn’t handle the press, but Sam was family, and the way Ratchet, back at the embassy, was barking for access to scans this constituted a medical emergency. Prime never went offline these days.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The next morning, Sam and Bee had to get back to New York to reassure the UN. Maggie headed for the med-bay first thing to check on Prime. Ultra Magnus had insinuated himself between Optimus and the repair table, cradling the unconscious Prime, Optimus’ head on Magnus’ shoulder. By the way the CMO was ignoring this arrangement, she could tell Ratchet approved. Their friendship was older than her species.   
  
She climbed onto Mikaela’s gantry. (Mikaela was at her alma mater, MIT, with Dani, giving a lecture series.) “How is he?”  
  
“Still offline,” Magnus said. Maggie thought he sounded like Smokescreen's older, taller brother; like someone who had smoked three packs a day through their teens but had since quit. Kinda sexy, pleasantly rough, resonant as an old-time radio announcer. Her inbuilt signals analysis software gave her a graphic representation so she could see the harmonics and other differences in his voice and Smokey’s, though she didn’t understand the harmonics the way Cybertronians did, nor could she actually hear them.   
  
“Allspark or no,” Ratchet grumbled from across the chamber, “he could use the rest.”   
  
“Agreed.” Magnus glanced up at Ratchet, smiling briefly, then returned his attention to Prime. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to comfort him in person.” Every hundred thousand years or so Magnus wondered how things would have been different if he had been Optimus’ twin, instead of Megatron. Would there have been a civil war? Or would Optimus have then been the one to lose himself and run mad?   
  
He extended a hand to Maggie, bringing her over and setting her on Optimus’ shoulder. He agreed with Prowl’s early assessment. It was weird how readable these tiny, soft-bodied creatures were. Unlike Prowl at that time, however, Magnus had parsed the Web and knew the phrase “uncanny valley”. He supposed he was coming at it from the opposite side.   
  
“Oooh, he’s warmer than usual,” she said.  
  
“Recovery mode,” Ratchet explained.   
  
Intriguing, Magnus thought. Such sympathy and concern in alien eyes. He had not anticipated this understanding from humans. He had thought Optimus had gone a bit loopy in settling here. He was beginning to comprehend.   
  
Fleetingly, Maggie hoped Optimus didn’t jerk awake, then dismissed the thought. Optimus had the keenest situational awareness she’d ever observed. Even when Megatron had been throwing him around Mission City, Optimus had never fallen  _on_  anyone. The big bots were like that; not clumsy because of their size and both more intimidating and more comforting for it. She shifted on the smooth metal. He was getting warmer. The hums and whirrs and hydraulic hisses of his body were returning. He must be waking up. Ratchet came over just as Optimus’ optics lit.  
  
“Hello, Maggie,” Prime said.  
  
“Hiya. How was your beauty rest?”  
  
“Galvatron has done something terrible.”  
  
“We reckoned so, the way you were yelling.”  
  
Ultra Magnus watched the exchange wonderingly. They spoke like old friends despite the disparity of their ages. The brevity of a human lifespan meant a human could never know a Cybertronian to the same extent, didn’t it?   
  
“He has finally attempted to kindle a living spark in a robot body,” Prime explained. “Something went wrong.” He touched his chest. “I don’t understand what he did, precisely.”  
  
“Whatever it is, it won’t be good news for us,” Ratchet said.  
  
“I’m afraid not,” Prime agreed. “It felt to me as though Galvatron was more affected than I was at the kindling of the Graveyard Legion. We’re going to need more information. Countermeasure is still with Turmoil as far as we know, on their way to Chaar.”   
  
“In which case he’ll soon know more about it than we do,” Ultra Magnus said. “Unless you want to send Silverbolt’s team out there, we’ll have to wait for that information.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“So, Wheeljack. Whaddya call those things again?” Kup peered into the tank, hands on hips.   
  
"Those are the Killer Guppies," Wheeljack said eagerly. "Don't stick your fingers in there, that batch is programmed to chew up our alloys. We've got them down in the Laurentian cleaning up the abandoned Con base. We're leaving a lot of the superstructure for the critters down there to use as habitat, but there's a metric aftload of toxics and explosives the Cons kindly left behind."  
  
"Uh huh."   
  
"Yeah, we've got a couple other schools of these," Wheeljack continued. "Got great big swarms going in the trash gyres in the Atlantic and Pacific - we know it's kind of interfering, but since we had the things around already, and if we were going to not interfere we'd have to go back in time several thousand years, and...well, anyway."  
  
"Uh huh." Kup's grin grew broader.  
  
"And then we got another batch down on the Argentine coast cleaning up that oil spill. Shame about that, crude is interesting stuff. Remember the similar hydrocarbon gunk on P'rllx V? This is essentially the same stuff, it's just...oh well you got all that info with the rest of the web, never mind. Anyway, they're basically just little mobile nanoassemblers, modified specifically for aquatic use. They even have a bit of shielding to keep 'em from being eaten by small- to mid-sized critters, and they're sturdy enough to go right through the bigger guys."  
  
"Jack."  
  
"Beachcomber worked out the chemistry for the end products. There was concern about environmental impact, so we figured out which molecules were most inert for whatever inputs they were dealing with. We also made these Little Brown Birds and spider-analogs to catch and dispatch the insecticons Soundwave and Hook were putting out, but since they've been off-planet that hasn't been top priority."  
  
"Jack," Kup said, leaning on the edge of the tank. "That's not what you call them."  
  
"What, the Libbies?"  
  
"The Killer Guppies. That's not what you really call them."  
  
"Yes we...uh..." Wheeljack moved around the room, pretending to straighten the clutter. "Ya know, the militaries and governments love acronyms, so they call 'em KGs, like 'cagey' – puns are almost as common in English as—”  
  
"Wheeljack."  
  
"It was the humans! You don't understand what they're like! The minute you tell them not to do something, they run off and do exactly that!"  
  
"You call 'em 'kuppies', don'tcha, Jack." Kup straightened and crossed his arms, optics twinkling as Wheeljack stammered. It was hard not to tackle him, but Kup didn't fancy overloading in here. Too many things might go off when the static charge hit. "I like 'em."  
  
"We didn't know for sure if you'd ever be coming down here, and they didn't know it would end up being like your...you do?"   
  
"Tough little guys with teeth like that? Helped you drive the Cons off this planet? Pit yeah I like 'em and no I don't mind about the name, you big glitch."   
  
Blurr whirled down the ramp from the ground-level floor. "Hey, Wheeljack, whydidn'tyou ohhi, Kup, areyou showing him the ohmy, well Idon'tsee any smoking holes so he mustnot have minded after everyone wasso worried, too, that'sprettyfunny! So, Wheeljack, doyouwantmeto finish setting up that tachyon commset or didyou do it already?"   
  
"Hi, Blurr," Wheeljack said. "Nah, I left it for you like I promised. You can do the calibrations too if you want."   
  
"Woohoo!" Blurr sped down to the next level, shooting a grin at Kup's bemused expression.   
  
 _You like working with old Jack, here, huh?_  Kup tight-beamed to the youngster.  _Brave mech._  
  
 _Wheeljackdoesn't mind peopleaskingquestions,_  Blurr replied. Perceptor didn't mind either, but, unlike Wheeljack, if you asked Perceptor a stupid question – or not a stupid question, really, but a thoughtless question – Perceptor could get a little sharp with his answers.  _And I...I'm fast enough to get him out if something...goes wrong. Whichit doesn't! Notveryoften._   
  
 _Like I said, brave mech._  Kup sent a glyph-pat on the shoulder.  _Good lad._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Prowl stood at the north end of the mesa, the two Seekers arrayed behind him. Cueing off the angle of Prowl's doorwings, Strake came to attention as Ultra Magnus approached.   
  
Prime was right, Magnus thought. That youngster, Strake, was too adorable. Nodding at Prowl, he turned to Thundercracker, optic-to-optic, both of them utterly still for long moments before the tension broke with a burst of tight-beamed comm and a ringing embrace.   
  
"I'm glad, Thundercracker," Magnus said, leaning hard into the Seeker's shoulder. "I wish... Never mind. I'm glad to see you, TC, I really am."   
  
"Likewise, Commander," Thundercracker said, relief and respect clear in his harmonics. "Feels good to be on the same side again."   
  
 _We need to pipe a little Barry White up there for you guys?_  Jazz broke in.  
  
 _Shut up, Jazz,_  Prowl said amiably.  
  
Understanding trines well, Magnus maintained contact with Thundercracker as he brushed a hand over Strake's forearm. Polished black chased with silver. If Strake had chosen an Earth-made alt form it would have had to have been a showpiece, a concept jet. No human air force currently sported colors so elegant. He made a striking counterpoint to Prowl's metallic white and Thundercracker's storm-sky blue. Offering cables that were swiftly accepted, Magnus transmitted his admiration for their beauty and for the difficulty and importance of their shared task. He withheld behind firewalls the feeling that he knew who the next Command Trine would be if Prime chose to reinstate that level of military hierarchy.   
  
He knew there were unquiet layers of things they concealed from him as well. Secrets kept, secrets maintained. Magnus found he was tired of revelations at the moment. Right now all that mattered was how they felt – and what they all felt right now was overclocked. He smiled. Alphas were high-tuned, precision creatures, easily provoked and volatile. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Magnus hadn’t ‘faced TC in 3.2 million years.  
  
Optics flared, claws and fingers clenched on heated armor. Magnus lifted Prowl up between his own body and the Seekers’. Prowl was small, compared to them, but not fragile.   
  
 _Primus, Prowl,_  Magnus murmured, hands roaming.  _Who built your body?_    
  
 _I-Ironfisssst,_  Prowl hissed, arching, his cheek flanges striking Thundercracker’s hull as he tossed his head.   
  
Magnus would have guessed Skyfall, but Ironfist, yes, that made sense. A weaponsmaker of consummate genius. And, occasionally, aesthetic brilliance. _You have the hypercoil series tetra musculature… unusual for your mass range. And are those, mmm, fermion-core recoilless repeaters in your shoulders?_  
  
 _Just like old times,_  Thundercracker commented to Strake.  _Magnus can’t get binary with a bot without running a catalog of their features._    
  
 _I suppose that could be flattering,_  Strake said, grinning.  _And Prowl does have some pretty nice features._  In complete agreement, the three larger mechs turned the full strength of their regard and desire upon Prowl, engulfing him with their bodies, cables sliding.   
  
 _No,_  Prowl moaned, thrashing, face turned away from Magnus' seeking mouth.  _I am not so admirable a being as you imagine._  Images and remembered emotions seared through them, the death throes of Coryx VII, the upturned faces of executed mechs. Magnus nearly dropped him, but shot his articulation locks and held on through as severe a storm as any he'd weathered in space. Watching the way Thundercracker and Strake understood Prowl’s distress – accepting and absorbing it rather than reflecting – was fascinating.   
  
 _Sunkiller,_  Magnus named him, shuddering.  _Like the Lord Protector. We loved him, too, remember?_  
  
 _YES!_  Thundercracker cried.   
  
Four minds coiled as one, rising up to strike.  _We can do this. We can weld ourselves whole again. Not only because we must, but because we believe in our basic nature. We have been a peaceful civilization for an enormous span of time. We will reclaim that heritage._  
  
Their wave of intention thundered across the cloud mind, gathering consciousnesses and momentum. Laughing with elation, Prime made no effort to channel or curtail it, merely adding his own determination. From Beachcomber and Glyph in a deep Moroccan valley to Skyfire and Borealis in geostationary orbit, the Autobots united across all the bandwidths of joy.   
  
The four on the mesa-top, now the focus of a returning wave like a hundred-meter tsunami, staggered and shouted and held on to each other as overload knocked them off their feet and offline.   
  
Regaining awareness slowly, Ultra Magnus laughed and twined his fingers with Thundercracker’s and Strake’s, wishing he had another set of arms for Prowl spread so enticingly between them.  _I hear that Prime alone can bring Prowl to give voice to ecstasy,_  Magnus rumbled.  _That sounds like a challenge to me._    
  
 _Not…not entirely true,_  Prowl felt compelled to point out.   
  
 _Let’s find out,_  Magnus growled, and opened his spark chamber.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
On an asteroid in the shadow of the second moon orbiting a gas giant in solar system 539-26, Starscream pulled Skywarp's offline body deeper into the cave. The unusual combination of ores laced through the stone would help hide their energy signatures as long as they were quiet and conserved power. The multiple warp jumps had seriously depleted Skywarp. Starscream weighed the option of leaving him here and heading as swiftly as he could to the nearest space bridge. They were outside the old boundaries of Cybertronian space, so while there were a few wormholes in range of a fast ship like himself, the nearest functional bridge was a considerable distance. Skywarp might yet prove useful, once he recovered. If the monstrosity followed them, his warp jump was the most effective means of staying out of its grasp.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 – September  
  
Maggie and Glen's bedroom had one of the few skylights in the embassy. They could watch the stars, and let dawn wake them slowly. Their small, pod-like suite of rooms was tucked high inside the mesa, above and north of the human-scaled area and the med-lab. Not the lawn and dog and picket fence and two-and-a-half baths people were supposed to want. She and Glen often looked at each other and grinned. We live with giant robots! From outer space! That was way cooler than any lawn.   
  
This morning, the deep voices were silent, and no heavy footfalls echoed from the stone walls. The usual human staff were all on vacation for the federal holiday. Maggie sipped her coffee and wandered the halls and chambers, Glen joining her once he'd completed his habitual daily systems check. "Hello? Tel?"   
  
"I am here."   
  
"Where is everyone?" They'd never seen the embassy empty before. If nothing else, Red was always in the security office. Kalis' pillar was in its customary place, but Teletraan was speaking to it via a focused beam of sound that could only be heard if one was standing in the right place.  
  
"The Autobots have devised a surprise for the people of Earth."   
  
"Uh, what kind of surprise?" Glen asked.   
  
"They began at local sunrise," Tel said. "Would you like the live feed, shall I replay from the start, or both?"   
  
Maggie and Glen looked at each other. "Replay," Maggie said. They raced down to the human-scaled entertainment alcove where Tel could put whatever it was up on the big screen.  
  
Pale sand glowed beneath a vivid sky. A low line of mountains marched in shadow to the west, only their peaks limned in golden sunlight. Nearly seven hundred mechs were assembled on a huge, circular, fibrous mat laid out on the desert floor.   
  
"Is that …everyone?" Maggie asked.  
  
"Everyone embodied, yes," said Tel. "Except Countermeasure, who is offplanet, and Lifeline, who remains in Oregon. Ven is keeping an optic on her."   
  
"What are they doing?" Glen asked. He checked the coordinates. "Black Rock dry lake. Hey, isn't that where they do Burning Man?"  
  
"Yeah," Maggie said. "Labor Day weekend. Which is today. Oh my god."  
  
Glen put his arms up in a victory pose. "The Autobots do Burning Man! OutSTANDing!"   
  
Tel put up three different views – looking down from two or three hundred meters, looking westward from human-height ground level, and a high oblique view from the south – clearly using his own skyspy hoverbots, which were similar to but larger than Optimus' battle gnats. There were no humans in sight, though Glen added a dot on the satellite map to indicate where Burning Man's Black Rock City had been assembled. It was several miles away to the southeast. Maybe within visual range on the ground with Cybertronian optics or a good pair of binoculars.   
  
As sunlight crept down the mountain peaks, the Autobots gathered on the mat, arraying themselves in a complex spiral pattern with Prime, Ultra Magnus and Springer visible in the center. Skydive, Air Raid, Fireflight, Slingshot, Thundercracker and Strake stood like henge stones in a ring about midway between the center and the edge, and the three deltas towered equidistant around the outside edge. There seemed to be further organization by height, but whatever convention they were using wasn't immediately obvious.   
  
“When did the Aerials get back?” Glen asked.  
  
“Late last night,” Tel said.   
  
"They're going to dance," Maggie breathed.  
  
"Yes," said Tel softly.   
  
When sunlight touched the highest crest of Skyfire's helm, they began.   
  
In perfect unison, every mech took a step or rolled counterclockwise. Music coalesced from silence, rising in long slow measures from alt-mode speakers and vocoders. They were singing, Maggie realized, though the human ear had difficulty distinguishing Cybertronian voices from instruments. Her acoustic analysis software was lighting up like Times Square on New Year's Eve.   
  
Another step. Thirty-one motionless seconds elapsed between, the bots’ heads lifted toward the sky. Another – twenty-nine seconds; some of them turned, rotating stars within the galaxy-dance – they were counting down primes. Twenty-three seconds.  
  
"Not exactly Carameldansen," Glen murmured, glued to the screen despite the geologic pace.   
  
Nineteen seconds. Groups of mechs turned, slow-motion whirl of gravity, arms and hands swinging in complex arcs to intimate planets, mathematically precise. With hearts like theirs, Maggie thought, of course they were attuned to the stars. Seventeen. Thirteen. Eleven. Spiral arms narrowed in the overhead view, coalescing, and then suddenly they were a single stellar disk, reenacting the formation of the Cybertron home system, the large mechs in the center drawing together as a sun, the six jets becoming planets, circled and skirted by moons and rings, the three deltas moving back, galactic arms watching the smaller sequence unfold.   
  
Low-slanting rays gilded their armor, casting a sheen of antiquity over even their brightest colors. They glittered like dragonflies after a rainstorm. Seven seconds. Five. Lines of mechs streamered between the spinning planets, mimicking electromagnetic or gravitational fields, fluxing and flexing as Prime flung out a solar prominence arm. Three. Two.   
  
Their topography changed abruptly, plates and shards and spikes of armor flattening, spreading; and mountains, canyons, strung with jeweled garlands of towered cities sprang from the circling mechs.   
  
Handfuls of mechs rose from the valleys, mouths open, arms reaching. The firstforged, awakening from nodes of swirled metals half-buried in the crust of the strange world the Allspark had made, created to its own requirements. With a toss of their heads, they evoked the emergence of an atmosphere, and as they opened their mouths again, the song grew louder, more joyous.   
  
An hour and a half had passed before Maggie and Glen leaned back, stretching on the couch, easing their necks and shoulders.   
  
“Are they still dancing out there now?” Maggie asked Tel, remembering they were watching a recording, not the live feed. Teletraan split the screen and put the live image up side by side. The dance as it had evolved had become nothing like anything humankind had seen, not like birds or dueling stags or interpretive dance or insects posturing. If they were still telling the tale of their earliest history it had passed beyond Maggie’s ability to decode.   
  
“How long…?” Glen asked. The robots were, well, robots, but they’d been dancing for how long without even a brief intermission? He and Maggie had lazed around in bed until after eight, not even talking, just enjoying the weekend lethargy. The sun had risen at 6:27 AM. Three and a half hours, more or less.  
  
“This dance will last five days,” Tel explained.  
  
“Wow,” said Glen.  
  
…  
  
Sarah had steered him to the TV to watch, but within minutes Will was on the phone to NEST headquarters at the Pentagon. “Get a cordon set up one and a half klicks out, keep the hippies from getting too close, and I want eyes on station across North America.” He understood that the Burning Man people would be curious, wouldn’t mean any harm, and the bots wouldn’t step on anyone on purpose. The press, however, might get pushy, even with the pristine feeds coming free to everyone from the Cybertronian AI. And if there were Decepticons hiding anywhere in the Sol system, this would be too great an opportunity to miss. Ultra Magnus and Kup wouldn’t have left the  _Sparkreaver_  entirely unmanned, but there was no sense taking any chances. He tried to ignore the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach and simply enjoy the gift.   
  
…  
  
At midnight they turned their lights on – a multicolored diamond illuminated from within. Mikaela clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. They were so beautiful.   
  
Dani hadn’t wanted to go to bed, but Tel had promised her he was recording everything. She could watch every second of it later. Mikaela pointed out that the adults had to sleep too, even if the bots didn’t. In the morning they were catching a flight to Vegas, but it looked like they’d have to rent a car to get to the embassy. Maggie and Glen were setting up the mother of all BBQs and the whole old crew was invited; Sarah and Anna and Anna’s suitably nervous boyfriend, though Will had declined, choosing instead to man his post at the Pentagon, Miles, Joey and Yasmina, Bobby Epps and Theresa were returning from Colorado, Ron and Judy Witwicky, John and Lucia Keller, Graham and Salazar were coming in from Heathrow, and Sam was gleefully abandoning his DC office in favor of a little unscheduled R and R with friends and family. Michael Banes hadn’t seen his granddaughter in a couple of months and thought he could take time away from the shop for a few hours, but Mikaela’s mother and grandmother didn’t like crowds and said they would watch the pretty robots dance from the comfort of their own living room, thanks.   
  
Headlights and taillights and running lights flickered in synchronized patterns, Seaspray distinguishable by his sole red/port green/starboard, the jets blinking at wingtips. Every reflection and refraction was deliberate and choreographed, light seeming to bend, opening like a flower, narrowing to laser points, illuminating the desert or focused on Prime, who cut loose with the giant halogens in his chest, leaning back to slice a vertical beacon through the night.   
  
As one every light was extinguished but their optics, becoming a shifting, whirling sea of blue. They did something with their shields and sheets of iridescence fluttered across their forms, touching, merging, rising up in vast sails of energy, bending and swaying in rhythm with the mechs below.   
  
Mikaela tried to quiet her mind and just  _watch_ , to let herself absorb it, but her brain chattered away, faster than before, wanting to know what it meant, how they were doing that, how old this music was and were there words to the song or were they making musical sounds. She knew she would suck at meditation.   
  
It was 3 AM when she remembered she and Dani would have to get up at six to catch their flight. “Slag,” she grumbled, dragging herself away from the TV to take a shower.   
  
…  
  
Dawn touched the fingertips of the uplifted hands of three starships in the chapel of the sky. Their booming voices rolled above the music, welcoming the return of the sun. A shimmer of white-gold crossed their shielding, spreading into the circle, an echo of the radiance suffusing the air.   
  
The dance had taken on a stately rhythm, but not from fatigue. Leashed power and excitement ran visibly through the bots’ frames, moving with a collective grace that had nothing in common with ballet but stark athleticism.   
  
Just outside the embassy hangar, Epps and Ron were jockeying for grill supremacy while their families and friends clustered around the big screen.   
  
Keller reclined in one of the perennial beat-up La-Z-Boys, out of the way of the more energetic members of this extended and motley tribe. He’d been dubious about watching. It wasn’t dignified for a world leader, a planetary leader, to, what was the phrase? Get his groove on. Broadcast for the Earthlings to see. But he saw there was nothing hokey or undignified about it. Optimus moved with the careful deliberation required of his size, every swing of arm and heavy tread measured and distinguished without being ponderous. The samurai thing again.   
  
With a peculiar shiver, the robots who had them dropped their Earthly guises, retracting their chameleon mesh to reveal the gleaming protoforms beneath. Merge scars shone from the chests of many. The pace of the dance increased and Mirage – still recognizable despite the lack of Veyron façade – led a spiral line that redoubled and folded upon itself, mechs swaying and gyring in a manner similar to the solo dance Mirage had demonstrated years before.   
  
“Go OPTIMUS!” Maggie, Theresa, Sarah and Mikaela whooped, jumping on the big couch like teenagers. “SHAKE THAT THANG!”  
  
Sam and Glen exchanged a look, half alarmed, half excited. Anna and Dani tried not to show their embarrassment. Judy wanted to join the girls, but she’d broken a toe on the landscaping last week.  
  
By sunset, the dance shifted again, recapturing the wandering attention of the younger members of the audience. Out in the red-lit desert, the mechs were using each other and themselves as drums.   
  
…  
  
By the third day, the embassy had filled again with the human staff and NEST personnel. People were trying to get back to work but the big screen was always on and the alien music drew them. Out past the safety net, people from Burning Man who didn’t yet have to return home danced in a miles-wide ring, and though individuals came and went, the ring slowly grew in thickness as more humans arrived to celebrate.   
  
Maggie shamelessly ensconced herself on the biggest couch, tossing off a few minor online duties now and then but mostly just watching. Her employers, after all, were engaged elsewhere. Glen brought her lunch and settled next to her.   
  
“What are they doing n— Holy!” He almost dropped his soda. The gestalts were combining. The Aerials, the Pbots, the Bullet Trains and the Build Team, flowing into their enormous forms, still dancing, taking the deltas’ hands, drawing them into the center of the circle. The other mechs surrounded them in serried rows, bending and bowing, extending their arms in rippling patterns. It reminded Maggie of nothing so much as ferrofluid sculptures, with the big mechs in the middle forming a spiky, extraterrestrial column.   
  
The column went abruptly still and solid. In a surging wave, the rest of the mechs climbed it, leaping and wheeling to the top, forming balconies and flying buttresses and convoluted, delicate structures whose purpose Maggie couldn’t guess, building a Tower out of themselves. A tower that sang, and slowly, slowly began to dance.   
  
…  
  
Through the night the dance had evolved to resemble a trance. Thursday’s dawn saw them stirring from the coded, repetitive forms into a wilder, more individual expression that oscillated from a fast ambling beat to long, curving arbors of lifted arms and joined hands, not unlike Regency-era ballroom dances. Pockets of jigs and sambas broke out, expanded, and transformed, becoming mazurkas or a conga line before altering again into unrecognizable Cybertronian sequences.   
  
Springer leapt skyward, turning a leisurely back flip at the height of his arc and alighting precisely on Silverbolt’s shoulder before somersaulting to the ground. A flurry of cartwheeling, spinning leaps broke out, the rest of the bots inspired to push the dance into three dimensions.  
  
The three deltas’ expressions shifted to unadulterated mischief. They gave no other warning, judging by the stumbling steps and surprised expressions on the faces of their comrades. In unison the three jumped straight up, as though to take flight, but without engaging their engines they landed with a boom felt as much as heard. With each leap they landed harder, and harder, trying to bounce everyone else off the ground. Fly with us!   
  
Laughing, and finding their balance now that they knew what was intended, the others timed their own jumps to take advantage of the added force. The jets took off and wove the dance higher, in intricate patterns of speed and sonic booms.  
  
…  
  
On the fifth day, Thundercracker abandoned the pretense of avoiding Prime and began to maneuver his place in the array, edging closer and closer.   
  
By sunset, hands that had brushed over armor now clung, blue gazes lingered as groupings accreted like planets and the diameter of the circle grew narrower. On Cybertron, it had been common knowledge that if a dance brought the Prime’s consciousness high enough, he could take the whole planet down through overload with him.   
  
Teletraan turned off the feeds and hinted to the NEST teams in the cordon that backing off another hundred meters might be a good idea.   
  
Falling into the shadow of the Earth, the sky deepened to sapphire. Optics glowed indigo and ribbons of aquamarine fire coruscated over armor, lashing the white sand, leaving behind strangely ornate shapes of molten glass.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Well. You look comfortable, Thundercracker," Ultra Magnus commented, rolling onto his side so he could see the Seeker better. Chromia punched him in an uncommitted sort of way for disturbing their heap.   
  
Thundercracker was of no mind to move either. "Shu'up," he rumbled. "Don' wake Prime." Optimus was sprawled across his chest, a hot, comfortable weight. Thundercracker stroked the smooth plates of his dorsal armor, tracing the outlines of the flame design the chameleon mesh displayed. During those final moments of the dance it had been as though Thundercracker's body was composed purely of photons, not crass lesser particle-waves. Feeling himself re-coalescing around his spark, finite and mundane once again, had been disappointing.   
  
"'Wake'? TC you said 'wake'. We don't sleep, you know." Strake, himself pinned by Trailbreaker's reassuring bulk, and the slight, twined shapes of Mirage and Hound curled in his lap, was amused. Only the Protectobots used human language like that. Sleeping and yawning and waking and sighing and grunting and coughing and clearing of throats that were not connected to the bellows of lungs. Groove and Streetwise had once had a sneezing contest. First Aid had proved better at it than either of them. Ratchet had been thankful it hadn’t been burping.   
  
The sun was high in the desert sky before Prime stirred.   
  
 **Thundercracker. Your spark,**  he tight-beamed softly, surprise and concern lacing his harmonics. The last time they had had spark-to-spark contact every cycle in every processor of Prime’s system had been taken up trying to establish a communications link between patterns within the Allspark and a living mech outside it. He hadn’t had attention left over to delve too deeply into the Seeker’s spark.  **You’re much older than you’ve—**  
  
 _Hush,_  Thundercracker said, petting Optimus’ helm.  _Hush. It doesn’t matter._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Prime, Ultra Magnus, Drift and Smokescreen stood to one side of the holotable. The doors to Prime’s office closed and locked behind Prowl, Thundercracker and Strake.   
  
 **Given the circumstances after the dance, and those surrounding Drift’s choice to join us,**  Prime began,  **I am no longer convinced that the thousand year parole I placed upon Thundercracker and Strake is either effective or necessary. I welcome suggestions as to how to proceed.**  
  
 _No!_  Strake yelled without thinking, clutching Prowl close.  _Don’t make us…don’t make us leave h-… Uh…_  His outburst withered under the startled stares of the others.  
  
Thundercracker scratched at a cheek flange. “Prime, sometimes regulations are a comfort rather than a constraint.”   
  
“So I see,” Prime said as grins flashed around the room. “As you wish, then, Strake. Your and Thundercracker’s sentences stand.”  
  
Prowl patted Strake’s hands. “You can put me down now.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Where do helicopters go to nest? Ideally, Blades felt, it would be isolated, elevated, and somewhere impossible for  ~~Slingshot~~  jets to land without shifting to robot mode. There was a very nice mesa in Monument Valley that had been featured in a certain old television series about what was then a very advanced helicopter. Evac thought this was hilarious.   
  
Running six meters from the ground at top speed, Evac pulled up barely in time, did a flip, transformed and landed neat-footedly on the mesa’s edge. “Still fun!” he said.   
  
Blades spiraled around him once before making a more solid landing.  _Copter’s a new alt for you, huh?_  
  
Evac chuckled.  _Yes. I copied Topspin’s and Bluesky’s memories after Optimus rekindled us._  A lot of that had gone around. Most of them had not been tanks before, either.   
  
They moved to the center where there was a slight, weather-worn depression. Neither was perceptibly coy. They sat facing one another, legs sprawled in whatever direction was out of the way, hands wandering, their backs bent toward each other, mindful of their rotors.   
  
Blades decided to ask then and there, shy but resolute. None of the Graveyard Legion had participated in a merge, and no one knew whether something about a twice-given spark forbade it or whether they had decided not to for reasons of their own. They were the front line, and the Cons were gearing up for something big. Something bad, given the way whatever Galvatron had done had made Prime spark-sick.   
  
 _Helicopters don’t necessarily beget helicopters,_  Blades said, catching one of Evac’s nimble hands and kissing it,  _but you’re the last one in the Legion, and I… I know you mean to return to the Allspark, but…_  
  
Evac smiled and pulled Blades close, opening his chest teasingly slow, kissing the young mech thoroughly.  _I’d be honored._  
  
Blades drew back for a moment. The Legion mechs were willing, had then no one ever  _asked_  them? He was appalled, guilty as everyone else. He offered cables and an apology.   
  
 _Don’t worry about it,_  Evac laughed.  _We don’t exactly put out willing harmonics. We came back to fight, to help Optimus end the war. Forging new life is for the living._    
  
“You’re alive now.” Blades drew their chests together again, rubbing the edges of his armor against Evac’s. The heat and fields from their coronae were making it hard to think.  
  
“I’ve been dead.”  
  
“Mmm. Does that matter?”  
  
“Primus, you’re cute. I always did have a weakness for people with flight modes. This,” and he licked out a flare from his corona, making Blades shudder and moan, “this is not physically the same spark I had. I am not entirely the same person I was before I died.”  
  
Blades leaned into Evac’s shoulder, shuttering his optics and mouthing Evac’s neck cables.  _Your s-sparks aren’t the same? How does that work?_  
  
“They’re not the same in a certain way. What good would it do to change our names and bodies if anyone who had known us would instantly recognize our spark? Ask Jazz. Ask anyone who knew Jazz before he was killed.”  
  
"Um." Blades would rather not. The subject of Jazz's brutal death was considerably lightened by his rekindling, but people tried to hide how much it had nevertheless upset them. And if Blades left a trail of unhappy mechs behind him, then First Aid would be unhappy.   
  
 _Never mind, dear one._  Evac stroked Blades’ helm and opened himself wider, at last sinking them into full contact.   
  
There was something familiar about Evac’s spark, in quality if not quantity. Blades couldn’t place it, though he also got a strong impression that Evac was making up for something. Blades pressed, seeking more detailed emotions, surrendering his individuality level by level.   
  
 _That's enough of that, young spark._  Evac drew his fingertips up Blades' rotors, sending a field pulse of a peculiar frequency through the hub.  _I thought Streetwise was the nosey one._    
  
 _Nnnngh,_  Blades said.  _Groove, too._  
  
 _I see. Which one are you, then?_  
  
 _Sensible. Only one with...uhhhnhh...self-preservation circuit... Protect them._  This was transmitted with such complete smugness Evac tossed his head and howled with laughter, kicking his feet yet somehow not dislodging Blades.   
  
 _You like being of Prowl's spark, hm? Good thing, then, because you're stuck with that connection, you know. You can't delete that from your memory core and make an end to it._    
  
 _Never,_  Blades agreed happily.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“You sure about this, kiddo?”  
  
“Yes, Jackplease. Justyouandmedownhere. The tank’sready isn’t it?” Blurr took Wheeljack’s hands and the inventor drew him close.   
  
“Yep. Just checking.” He chirped a tight-beam message to Ratchet, who wasn’t surprised. Everyone was feeling especially frisky these days, as though the entire Autobot army had gone into bloom at once. How they were going to keep this from the larger human awareness was beyond him. Wheeljack laughed. Blurr was vibrating against him, pushing him closer to the recharge table beside the tank.  _All right, Ratch. See ya on the flipside._  
  
 _You be careful down there,_  said Ratchet. His vocal processors were practically looping with that message, but did anyone listen?   
  
 _We will. Blurr’s eager, not stupid. Trust me._  
  
 _Considering the last spark we got from you, Wheeljack, it’s not Blurr I’m worried about. We have neither the room nor the resources for another cityformer, understand?_  
  
 _That wasn’t my fault!_  
  
 _Of course not._  Ratchet’s last glyph was fond.   
  
Smiling, Wheeljack climbed on the table, opening his chest, filling the dim chamber with turquoise radiance. Blurr followed him precisely, move for move, optics wide and bright, engine revving hot, his spark a paler blue-green but dazzling, spinning fast.   
  
 _Um, Blurr?_  Wheeljack hesitated, not for the world wanting to discomfit his friend.  _You…_ do _know you don’t have to—_  
  
 _Even I know there are some things in life worth taking your time for,_  Blurr thrummed.  _Relax, Wheeljack. Lie down. I got this._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 - October  
  
He'd been afraid of this. Ratchet stared into the empty tank for long minutes before beginning the calibration and growth medium fill sequence.   
  
"Oratorio, his spark has been spinning for over three billion years," he said quietly. "Four billion if you believe half his tales." He cast a dubious optic in Kup's direction. Kup grinned and chomped his rusty pipe. "I’m not convinced this is a good idea. I know his  _body_  can take the strain. I can’t stop you, but I recommend against this."   
  
“All the more reason to try now,” Oratorio insisted, taking Ratchet's hands. Rio let his voice sink into its lowest, most resonant register. Ratchet felt this was not playing fair. “I don’t mean to sound flippant, but he won’t get younger if we wait. Please, Ratchet. He’s too wonderful, we need more mechs like him.”   
  
"Definitely Prime’s kid, too," said Kup.   
  
"Slag."  _Perceptor? Would you come down here and do one more diagnostic? It'd make me feel better, even if Kup's determined to be reckless._  
  
"I think I'm old enough to decide for myself what's reckless," Kup said.   
  
 _Do calm down, Ratchet,_  Perceptor said cheerily.  _I'll be there momentarily_  He was helping Wheeljack clear space in his tower for the new and very important construction project.   
  
After several more minutes of Ratchet grumbling, Rio pleading and Kup approaching the point where he might consider losing his patience, Perceptor entered – deciphering Ratchet's lock without having to break stride, which did not improve Ratchet's humor.   
  
"So what," Kup was saying. "If I snuff it doing this, then hey, what a way to go."  
  
 _Primus, Perceptor. Couldn’t you even_ pretend _it took a few seconds to hack my doors?_  Ratchet looked ready to chew titanium. "If you snuff it doing this you could take Oratorio with you. And the med-bay. And the rest of the embassy. And a non-trivial chunk of Nevada."   
  
Kup wrangled his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. "Oh. Huh."   
  
"He won't," Rio said. "We won't. I've done this before. We'll be careful. And Perceptor can stay and keep an optic on us. He'll be able to tell if something isn't right, even before we can, I bet."  
  
"I have not had occasion to observe the process from the outside, as it were," Perceptor said, pleased. “Thank you, Oratorio. I am gratified to be of any assistance whatsoever.”  
  
 _There ya go, Ratch, you don’t even have to be a party to our irresponsible shenanigans._    
  
 _Fine. But you're taking the result with you when you and the Wreckers leave. I'm not raising any Kuplets. It's bad enough with all the Jazz-babies and Bee-children and Prime-kids around here._    
  
 _Good thing there's only one Ratchetspawn, then,_  Rio said, ducking Ratchet's swing.  _And no Sons of Ironhide!_    
  
 _Primus preserve us,_  Kup intoned solemnly.   
  
“Hrmph. The tank is ready.” Ratchet pointed a finger (on the hand that became a rail gun) at Oratorio. “You be careful. If Kup is damaged by this I’ll sic Springer on you.” His expression softened as he left them, locking the doors behind him. Using extra encryption.   
  
“Promises, promises,” Rio said, leering. He followed Kup onto the recharge table. Plucking the pipe from Kup’s mouth and handing it off to Perceptor, Rio settled into a long, lingering kiss, pushing Kup firmly down. Their kiss grew hungrier, not entirely civilized, mouths and chests opening, vocoders and engines growling. A lot of sizzle left in the old bot yet.   
  
Perceptor watched, and bit his fingers to keep from jumping up there with them.  
  
…  
  
Hoist, Perceptor thought, was probably the best growth tank attendant. He had even crocheted a pair of spark-handling mitts, though where he had gotten Kevlar in that color was a mystery. Perceptor wished he’d thought to ask Hoist to bring them when they’d all come down to Nevada for the dance.  
  
The new spark fizzed and whirred in Perceptor’s hands, nearly bouncing out of his grip before he could get it into the tank. "Whoops! You're a lively little one," he said, watching it snuggle into the protomass. Kuplets indeed, he thought, amused. This one was going to be a handful.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The Lord reposed on his dais, serene in recharge despite the melted chestplates. Soundwave stood guard in the shadows behind him; several symbionts ranged the great hall and adjoining spaces. There he would remain until Lord Galvatron came online and presented him with different orders. In orbit, within the assembly frame, Shockwave worked, steady and ruthless in his fury at the damage caused by the fled Thunderwing. Why had Galvatron kindled such a thing? If he had meant it to go after Starscream, to finally shut the treacherous Pit-spawn up, why not then simply kill Starscream himself and have done? Why make it look accidental? Unless there was some sport to be had, or further convolutions to Galvatron's plan that Soundwave was not yet aware of.   
  
It was also conceivable that Galvatron had made a mistake, had catastrophically botched the kindling. Soundwave buried the hypothesis under the deepest layers of encryption. It would be dangerous to even hint that Galvatron had failed where Optimus Prime had clearly succeeded on several occasions.   
  
In any case, Turmoil would be arriving soon, and it would be best if Galvatron was operating at optimum capacity when the rogue captain made planetfall. Soundwave pinged Scalpel for an update on the Lord's condition.  
  
Coiled up in a space between armor plates at the angle of Galvatron's neck and shoulder, the tiny repair-bot flicked a delicate antenna in Soundwave's direction.  _Lord is in recharge. Self-repair at 87 percent. Further inquiry is unnecessary._    
  
Stepping on Scalpel the next time Soundwave had the chance was also unnecessary, but would provide a small portion, however short-lived, of personal satisfaction and enjoyment.


	68. Transgalactic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Vector Prime drops in for a little visit.   
> Veccy takes a look at Kalis, Lifeline gives Catscan a bit of a turn, the big jets meet Veccy, minicons show up, Optimus and Veccy get horizontal, the Cons are having difficulties, Perceptor and Veccy try to get snuggly, the Autobots attend a funeral, First Aid gets to deliver a baby, Veccy has difficulties, Ultra Magnus learns the cityformer's name, and Starscream has a great idea.

2030 - October  
  
An old Daft Punk song came on the base-wide speakers.  _…Work it harder make it better…_  After a few bars they were treated to the dulcet tones of Perceptor echoing down the halls from his lab: "FRAG YOU, VEN."   
  
Yasmina grinned. "That's the song Event Horizon plays whenever Perceptor's been working for over four days without a break." She looked up at Ultra Magnus curiously. "He doesn't usually swear, though."   
  
"No," Magnus agreed. "I don't think I've ever heard him swear before, myself." As they came abreast of the door, Magnus peered inside to make sure it was safe before entering. "Perceptor?" Hoist and Skyfire were converging from the other direction, but upon seeing Ultra Magnus, they smiled and waved, and retreated again.   
  
“Although,” Yasmina continued, “if he doesn’t stop working by the end of this song, Ven moves on to  _Still Alive_. At which point he starts throwing things.”  
  
“Oh dear.”  
  
"Ultra Magnus! So they've sent you in here to distract me this time, have they? Good morning, Yasmina."   
  
"Is it working?" Ultra Magnus asked, his voice dropping a whole octave.  
  
"Right," said Yasmina. "I'll just be toddling along, then."   
  
'Thank you, Ms Abizaid," Magnus said, smiling. She saw the way he was bracing his legs. He was about to get pounced.   
  
"You're very welcome," she said, and scurried off before things got loud.   
  
 _CLANGGGG!_  
  
Yasmina skipped down the corridor like a woman half her age.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Someone stood at the holotable, head tilted, watching the latest episode of  _As the Kitchen Sinks_.   
  
Optimus halted so abruptly that Jazz, directly behind him, took a leisurely nanosecond to calculate whether he should allow his excellent reflexes to stop him in time, or if it would be more fun to crash into Prime's aft. He settled for swinging around Prime's left leg in a move that evoked pole dancing without getting explicit about it. It took him another full nanosecond to register the stranger in the room.   
  
"Vector Prime." Optimus wrapped a hand around Jazz's helm to keep him still.   
  
"What?" said Jazz.  
  
"Hello, Optimus," said Vector Prime.   
  
 **Red Alert,**  Optimus sent hastily.  **Please do not be alarmed. We have a visitor. He is to be accorded freedom of the embassy.**    
  
Within seconds, Red was pelting into the war room, glaring at the newcomer. "How did you get in here and why didn't I detect your arrival?"  
  
Vector nodded and made no sudden moves. "My sword and I," he said softly, "have certain properties."   
  
"Rhysling!" Jazz said, visor flashing through its spectrum. "The stories are true?"   
  
"Which stories, Jazz?" Vector came around the table, slowly, giving them time to get used to him. He was big, taller than Prime and more solidly massive, though Jazz got the impression that parts of him extended into dimensions they couldn't perceive. Unless Perceptor could.   
  
Jazz chirped him a handful of his favorite stories. Vector Prime and the Moons of Cic. Vector Prime and Tluoc's Pendulum. Vector Prime and the Jagrafess of Raxacoricofallapatorias.   
  
Vector Prime laughed, and Jazz and Red grabbed each other to keep from falling over. His laughter, his presence, stirred things in them that they, even they who had experienced the merging of their sparks, had never felt before.   
  
"My dear Jazz," Vector said, and Jazz held tighter to Red to keep himself from jumping the legendary mech. "As you no doubt expect, some of those stories contain a nanocell of truth, while most are quite ...imaginative."  
  
During this exchange, Optimus had remained still and silent. Vector watched him.   
  
"I...did not anticipate meeting you so soon," Optimus murmured, reaching toward him. Vector made a rushing movement to close the gap, parts of him blurring strangely. He took Optimus' hand.   
  
"Do not fear," Vector said softly. "Do not fear. I am here because I am interested in this little project of Perceptor’s.”  
  
“Ah!” Optimus said, smiling. "You would like to meet him. Or...you have already, or...?"  
  
"I have no difficulty operating within the constraints of what you perceive as linear time." Vector inclined his head fractionally. "It is, in a way, rather nostalgic. Please, do not trouble your physics processors, or twist grammar, on my account."   
  
"Thank Primus," Red said faintly.   
  
"Valiant Red Alert," Vector said, looking at the Security chief with grave respect. "Many yet stand due to your strength and vigilance."  
  
Jazz propped Red up, both of them grinning at the ancient mech with dizzy amazement.   
  
Vector linked arms with Optimus and tight-beamed,  **I fear my presence may have rather more of a disruptive effect on your people than I anticipated.**  
  
Feeling more than a little disrupted himself, Optimus raised an optic ridge.  **Because we have only recently begun to reproduce in the manner you and your cohorts employed?**  
  
 **Yes. You have passed through our population bottleneck, Optimus.**    
  
Optimus wondered for a nanosecond whether it was safe for Vector to tell him that, but supposed he wouldn't have said so if it wasn't. It gave Optimus great hope. The war would never again take so devastating a toll. Optimus would rededicate his spark to make certain that was so.   
  
As they moved out into the hangar, mechs gathered and followed. The human embassy staff and NEST personnel were bemused to see their mighty guardians stagger and stumble over each other and collide as if blinded in Vector Prime's wake. The cloud mind went electric as news of his arrival spread.   
  
 _Who's Vector Prime?_  Maggie and Glen asked at the same time.  _And why are Sides and Sunny acting like lovestruck teenagers?_  Maggie added, amused by the incongruity. They were flooded with varying answers before the first question had been completed. Vector Prime was one of the first Cybertronians created by the Allspark at the dawn of the universe. He was the Herald of Primus, the Demiurge of Time, the Great Observer, a Guardian of Cybertron, and he had singlehandedly defeated the entire Naratnos First Battle Fleet.   
  
"He doesn't look that old," Glen whispered to Maggie as they ran up the stairs to the mezzanine.   
  
"What were you expecting, a long beard?" Maggie teased.   
  
"I dunno," Glen said. "Gears and steam, maybe. The Primordial Lever..."   
  
 **Do bear in mind, Glen Whitmann,**  Vector said, modulating his transmission so as not to damage the human's delicate receiving equipment,  **this is not my original form.**    
  
"Oh," Glen squeaked. He moved to join the striding vanguard of Autobots, but Maggie put a hand on his arm.   
  
 _I think…I think we should let them be,_  she told him on their private channel.  _This feels like a personal, Cybertronian thing._  
  
 _Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I understand._  
  
Maggie beamed and hugged him. It had taken years, but she’d married him for good reasons.  
  
The Autobots passed under the red stone arch into bright sunlight. Glimmering, folded things on Vector Prime's back rustled, unfurling slightly. The metal of his skin seemed to expand in the solar warmth. The hilt of Rhysling glowed turquoise at his shoulder.  
  
Thundercracker and Strake landed with Prowl between them, the three touching earth at the same time. Thundercracker abruptly felt as though he'd just stepped off the kindling platform. Kup laughed, catching the edges of Thundercracker’s expression.  _Know what you mean, lad,_  he tight-beamed. Strake tried to be small, unnoticed, hiding behind the elder Seeker.   
  
"Ahhhh," Vector purred, caressing Prowl's face as they came abreast on the road leading to Wheeljack's tower. "There you are, dear Prowl."  
  
Prowl's chevron went crimson, and Strake leapt forward to catch him as he stumbled. The intonation and harmonics Vector used had been extraordinarily intimate.   
  
 _Wow,_  Strake said.  _You don't know what that was about, do you?_  
  
 _Not yet, apparently._  Logically, Vector did not make mistakes in allowing people to know things ahead of their proper time. It would give a Time Guardian too much work cleaning up the resultant mess, according to lore and Prowl's own computations. Therefore, it was of no consequence, literally, for Prowl to know that he and Vector Prime would, some time in the future, become quite close. He patted Strake's shoulder in thanks and got his feet properly back under himself again.  
  
Prowl and the Seekers joined the growing host in its progress toward Wheeljack's tower. Perceptor was in the process of moving himself and much of his lab equipment in, combining his expertise with Jack's in order to begin construction of the prototypes for the space bridge. Bets were being made as to how long such proximity would last, given the two mechs' disparate personalities, and whether the odds had increased or decreased that Nevada would get blown sky high when something went wrong.   
  
The heavy blast door opened as they approached. Wheeljack stepped out. "Good," he said. "Maybe you can make him see reas--whoa." Not every day did Wheeljack emerge to find a legend on his doorstep.   
  
Vector smiled. Tracks and Mirage tried to hold each other up.   
  
"Are you and Perceptor arguing already?" Optimus asked. "Or would that be 'still'?"   
  
Wheeljack broke off staring at Vector with some effort. "He's off his cycles, I'm telling ya. First he concocts this whole new sub-branch of mathematics, then he sends Rutile and Borealis off to churn through a metric aftload of those equations. Then yesterday they come cheeping and clanking back here with their answers and Perceptor jumps around like he's just proved the Inirba Formula, and presents me with a whole new design! Not just modified, no, but completely redone! And don't you start, Ratchet! I can't believe I'm the one arguing against innovation and experimental intuition either, but you guys, this is crazy!"  
  
"What seems to be the problem?" Vector asked, maintaining a remarkably straight face. Smokescreen decided never to play poker or shreen with him.   
  
"Okay, look," Wheeljack said. Lifting an arm, he projected a ghostly holo image. "Space bridges are constructed as a solid ring. Always. That's how it works, you can't have gaps in the field emitters or you end up leaving bits and pieces of your cargo or yourself behind, and that's never fun." The annular image rotated slowly. Like a closing iris, a blue glow spread from the inner edge of the frame to the center.  
  
Many of the gathered mechs returned to their interrupted duties as the argument was taken inside the tower. They'd pick up the optical and auditory feeds from friends who braved Wheeljack's lair.  
  
Wheeljack led them down a level, to a comparatively uncluttered staging area, with a large holo tank in the center. Wheeljack gesticulated at what was displayed. "Space bridge equals solid ring, right? Well, look what Perce wants us to build!"  
  
At the center of the display was a scale representation of Cybertron and her two remaining moons. Around them were arrayed a circle of small modules like beads on a necklace, several kilometers apart. They looked rather like Art Deco swallowtail butterflies.  
  
"Sure," Jack said, "it saves on material with a ring this big to break up the emitters like that, but now you’ve got to bend the field in completely unnecessary ways, and the cost in energy—!"  
  
"Is nowhere near as severe as you posit it to be," Perceptor said, emerging from the next level down, sounding cross.   
  
The big mech who stood beside Prime turned slowly as Perceptor approached. Slow as a world spinning to meet a new moon. Perceptor swayed, would have fallen if he hadn't locked his legs. "You're... you're... "   
  
"I am," Vector said.   
  
"Firstforged."   
  
"Yes."   
  
“But that is not a Firstforged body,” Perceptor said, sensory array whirling. “You’ve been substantially modified – at the molecular, no, the quantum level. When—?”  
  
“If I answer that question,” Vector laughed, “it will only spawn another, and another, and we will be down here until this desert again becomes a sea.”  
  
“I suppose so,” said Perceptor, though that outcome had an appeal.   
  
Vector knelt and held out a hand. "Come. Show me your design."  
  
Perceptor stumbled forward, an arm cable extended, but Vector took his hands, establishing a link through his skin, metal to metal.   
  
“What are you… how… Oh my. Oh  _my_!” Perceptor felt the contact surge through him like the spin of iron atoms aligning to a powerful magnetic field, akin to a particularly thorough transscan, but two-way and lingering. Perceptor’s firewalls buckled and internal warnings flashed across his CPU as he scrabbled after input streams from Vector that his processors were unequipped to handle. The old, long capped and buried stumps deep within his pectoral frame where his secondary arms had once been ached.   
  
 **Easy!**  Vector pulled him closer, modifying the link gently, sidestepping Perceptor’s half-blind grabs for data.  **Relax. You will harm yourself. Show me only your new field equations.**    
  
Mastering himself, Perceptor wrangled his curiosity to the back of his CPU and brought up the equations, proud of how beautifully they fit into the established physics lattice and solved a handful of vexingly thorny theoretical problems. Rutile’s CPU had proven agile with the new math; while Borealis had employed her atypical thought processes to contribute ideas and novel approaches.   
  
 **Yes!**  Vector said.  **Very well done indeed, Perceptor.**    
  
Perceptor clutched at the edges of the link as Vector disengaged.  _Why…why did you come…?_  87.3 percent of his systems rebooted. Vector caught him as his body went limp.   
  
“I am here,” Vector said, “to reforge my bonds with my people. To remind myself of my charge, my past, and the necessity for humility in proper measure.” He stood and carried Perceptor up and out into the sunlight, watching the scientist’s mobile face as stage by stage he recovered full consciousness. “I have come to meet you, to learn from you. All of you.” Setting Perceptor on his feet once he could stand, Vector reached out to the mechs around him, touching shoulders, brushing fingertips, optics dancing with a vast, cosmic fondness.   
  
 _I don’t know about you,_  Jazz tight-beamed to Optimus and Prowl,  _but I think there’s more to this love-in than he’s saying._  
  
 _Precisely what I surmised as well,_  Prowl agreed.  
  
 _Hm,_  said Optimus.   
  
As they wended their way back to the mesa, Optimus guided their steps, in the temperate way a Prime had, up to the top, to engage in the Cybertronian equivalent of feasting.   
  
There were far more Cybertronians on Earth now than the first time they had indulged in an iguana-pile and their sprawled limbs and bodies covered the expanse of stone, even piled two or three deep. Thundercracker and Ironhide fussed about being a high-value target as they had during the Burning Man dance – with about as much heed paid. Mirage shut Thundercracker up rather thoroughly, much to Strake’s amusement.   
  
In the center of the jostling mass and slithering cables, Vector Prime smiled, and stretched luxuriously on his ventral surface in the sunlight next to Optimus and Ultra Magnus. With a contented sigh, he extended his solar sails upward and out, translucent and glimmering like blue topazes in the autumn air. Intricate patterns and glyphs etched across his skin shifted, their edges flashing iridescent as he absorbed energy. Cables had been shyly offered him from several parties, but Perceptor shared flickers of his experiences in the earlier link. To further illustrate, Vector engaged his dermal comm system, watching the reactions with amusement as the colors of the Autobots’ chameleon mesh turned brighter, more vivid under the touch of his hands.   
  
 _You convey both data and energy through your armor?_  Ratchet asked, kicking at Wheeljack, Chromia and Ironhide as they pretended to shield their optics from the torment of glowing chartreuse.  _Radio and subspace frequencies?_  
  
 **Yes.**  
  
 _No cables at all?_  Red Alert asked, sounding disappointed.   
  
Vector lifted a hand. From the wrist a slender silver tendril extruded, thickening and forming a proper jack at the tip. Bots shifted and shivered as it waved idly about for a moment before being drawn back into the substance of Vector’s arm. “I am yet Cybertronian,” he said. “I adapt as you do.” He let the hand fall – onto Optimus’ chest. The fire of Optimus’ reaction roared silently through air and cables.   
  
Coming in from a long-range patrol, Drift climbed as fast as he could and leapt over the mesa’s edge. Vector turned sharply toward him.  **That longsword,** he tight-beamed.  **You will take very good care of her, won't you?**  
  
 _Yes sir,_  Drift replied in kind, keeping his harmonics even but nearly tripping over Windcharger and Bluestreak as he picked his way over to snuggle into a spot among Perceptor, Prowl, Raze and Strake. “Bumblebee’s on his way, with his family.”   
  
“Mmmm, Bumblebee,” said Wheeljack. Arcee revved her engine in agreement.   
  
Half an hour later, Bumblebee left his humans in the care of Maggie and Glen inside the embassy (with a promise to Dani that she could come up later maybe, when the robots’ collective thermal signature wasn’t enough to fry NEST’s more fragile robot-detection gear) and scrambled up to the simmering mechpile. Evac shifted a leg to offer a stable foothold, and soon Bee found himself crowdsurfting over to where Wheeljack had shoved a little space between himself and Ironhide. Ironhide didn’t seem to mind, nuzzling the younger mech affectionately. Vector observed them with satisfaction.   
  
In October, the average temperature varied only by twenty degrees between day and night. Metal and composite cooled slowly as the sun completed its arc amid lakes and mountains of fiery clouds. Vector sat up to watch, furling his sails. Others watched as well, torn between the sunset and the glow of it reflecting from Vector’s mirror-bright skin.   
  
“Guardian of Cybertron,” Sunstreaker growled, shaking off the spell for a moment. “Why weren’t you there when Megatron was wiping out our sun?”  
  
“Was I not?” Vector said quietly, head bowed.   
  
Perceptor would have leapt to his feet but Wheeljack held him down. “It wasn’t Shockwave!" Perceptor said. "It was you who saved the moons. Who saved Cybertron! I  _thought_  the gravitational stresses were greater than… Of course!” Cybertron as a planet was somewhat peculiar, more ductile, less dense than most rocky planets. It should have been destroyed rather than flung intact into space. “The power it would have taken to…oh,  _Prime_ …!”  
  
Vector traced a pattern on the stone (which Perceptor recorded and would ponder the significance of for eons to come). “Yes.”  
  
From the shelter of Trailbreaker's arms, Bluestreak raised his hand. "I have a question, too," he said. "Okay, you're Vector Prime and he's Optimus Prime. I thought there could be only one. Or is this a time travel thing?" Murmurs of agreement and laughter rippled across the mesa top.  
  
“Optimus is  _the_  Prime. I am merely  _a_  Prime.”  
  
“Uh. How does that work, exactly?”  
  
“Primes are not now what they were when I was made. We were touchstones, lodestones, foci…conveying this is difficult…not leaders precisely, but…”  
  
“Would it be easier in Cybertronian?” Glyph asked.  
  
Vector shook his head. “The communication modes we used then are as foreign to modern Cybertronian as that is to English. And incidentally, Optimus, that particular glyph on the side of your helm does  _not_  say ‘This End Up’. Nor does it mean ‘records clerk’, you great clot.”  
  
Optimus laughed. “What does it mean, then?”  
  
“It means ‘Prime’. The one glyph your scholars interpreted correctly. That and the number five.”  
  
Ratchet leaned toward him. "You can read the Allspark glyphs?"  
  
"Yes," Vector said, simply and with no harmonics indicating classified or taboo knowledge. "But not because I am Firstforged."  
  
"Not...but...?" Bluestreak began, head cocked.   
  
"Because he has had contact with the civilization that created the Cube," Perceptor said, inclined at a somewhat drunken angle against Prowl, his tone what one might be forgiven for calling lightheaded. Ratchet, Optimus and Glyph bolted upright in unison, getting themselves growled at, but not too seriously.  
  
“Might we,” Optimus began.  
  
“Have a translation?” Glyph finished for him.   
  
Vector Prime laughed, the happiest he’d been in centuries. “You certainly may.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2030 – October  
  
Long fans of bronze sunlight spanned the polished floor of the embassy, flickering as people walked or rolled across the hangar, reaching lacy ripples even into the hollow where Kalis’ column stood. Vector Prime moved between the bars of shadow and light, the hazy autumn air somehow clearer around him. Bluestreak trembled in the seat beside the column.   
  
"He has made no other sound?" Vector asked.   
  
"No, not really," Bluestreak said. "When Wheeljack and Ratchet installed him in this thing there was some static and squawking, but I don't think that was on purpose." He wriggled in the chair. "Beachcomber insisted we go back to rescue him. Rescue Kalis I mean. English is kinda funny about pronouns, don't you think? It's confusing sometimes. Prime let him take a whole team, let Beachcomber, I mean, since Beachcomber can be really stubborn when he wants to be. Perceptor complains about that a lot, which is funny, because if anyone is stubborn, Perceptor is. Anyway, we're glad Catscan and Glyph and Lifeline were alive too. Except Lifeline just sits there on the beach up in Oregon and won't say anything or move; but I guess being trapped in a VR for thousands of years can really mess with your CPU."   
  
"Indeed," Vector said. Laying a hand on Kalis' column, Vector bent his head sadly. "Ah, Kalis, I remember you." At once the low screaming from Kalis' vocal grille stopped. Smokescreen came skidding in, dusty from the desert.  
  
"You fixed him!"  
  
"No. Not entirely. I have corrected several serious faults that had accumulated in his program. You should be able to more directly access him. Perhaps Event Horizon and Teletraan would consent to budding off copies of themselves as well. The presence of another AI might be of comfort now that he is capable of regaining a greater degree of coherence."   
  
"Of course we will," Tel said. "Thank you."   
  
"There have been programmatic advances over the millennia. Kalis' difficulties are not simple; your efforts, your kindness will continue to be worthwhile."   
  
Bluestreak hugged Smokescreen – because Bluestreak felt that hugging Vector Prime would lead to more than hugging, and there were humans about. _He fixed him!_  he tight-beamed to Smokescreen.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Each sunset inside had been more spectacular than the last, until the colors blurred and ached and she remembered Cybertron had never had clouds like that. Xeno team data mixed with the long, high sheets of atmospheric ice that were the more usual formations back home. She stood in whatever room happened to form around her with her back to the window.   
  
Lifeline knew she wasn’t inside any more, knew she wasn’t home. The ways she had buried herself were deeply engraved on her CPU. It was a relief to let them continue. She watched the waves break, watched the tiny lifeforms around her, listened to the large lifeforms farther away in the ocean. Catscan was patient. There would be time later to reassure him, thank him, ask questions.   
  
No! There was no time! There was only the next mission, the next wounded mech to try to save, the next research précis to submit to the University Council.   
  
No. She was outside. She was in a different galaxy. She had come here within a delta who was newforged. Too many strange things at once. There hadn’t been enough strange things, inside. Only enough to draw her out, keep her interested, until she grew screamingly weary and let the inside world play out. The AI would fail eventually, or someone would come, or her spark would be used up, and she would find out what happened after that.  
  
She let the global nets go by. She let the tide go by. Everything was background noise with no foreground. Vector Prime was in Nevada.  
  
What?  
  
The rock under her aft was cold and made of serpentine. Old links Ratchet had mentioned shifted to the top of her queue. Catscan’s footsteps were loud, crunching down the narrow beach.   
  
She turned to him and at last her optics focused, meeting his. “Fluffathelium,” she said flatly. “I can’t believe this planet, Catscan. These people have slipped a gear.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
They came down at midnight, seven shooting stars across the Milky Way, visible even so near Vegas through air largely devoid of smog. The Aerialbots landed in formation, flanked by the two deltas, waves of heat boiling off their armor. Optimus, Jazz and Vector met them on the mesa top. Vector had taken the hundred meter ascent in a single leap and Jazz couldn’t shake the feeling that the ancient Prime had done something very odd with gravity.  
  
Giggling, Borealis handed the message buoy from Countermeasure to Optimus. In this instance, Countermeasure appeared to have considered Pig Latin to be as good as Navajo as far as the Decepticons were concerned, and had then tucked the note-shard into a squiggly little foam thing that Borealis had immediately recognized as a Space Herpes. Skyfire had run a couple of diagnostics to make certain she was all right.   
  
Reports were conveyed to Optimus and Jazz while seven pairs of optics strayed to Vector’s sleek shape. The Cons had withdrawn, there were no signs of them in this galaxy besides a couple of landing sites on moons close to the wormhole that connected this galaxy with M100. Lockdown was probably still on Earth, Jazz reminded them, but seemed to be lying low. Not even the sensors aboard the  _Sparkreaver_  had been able to find him.   
  
“They’re converging on Chaar, including the supposed rogue elements of Turmoil, Jhiaxus and Bludgeon’s battalions,” Silverbolt said, nodding at the Space Herpes in Optimus’ hand. “And we have a name for the thing you felt Galvatron kindle – Thunderwing. It killed a number of mechs as it was sparked and it’s been chasing Starscream and Skywarp all over the galaxy. The rest is rumors and lies.” Silverbolt smiled. Countermeasure was thorough, reporting everything as he had observed it and only then annotating with his own opinions and suppositions.   
  
“Are you really Vector Prime?” Fireflight exclaimed, leaning forward. “The First Starship?”  
  
“Hm. I suppose that is technically correct.” Vector grinned broadly up at Skyfire and the other jets, taking the elder deep-Seeker's big hand in both of his. "You are of my lineage, as closely and directly as our kind can determine such things." Skyfire's jaw dropped. Silverbolt and Borealis exchanged a fast glance and Borealis stuck her fingers in her mouth.  
  
Vector turned sharply, as though someone had tapped his shoulder. With a triumphant shout, he whirled, drawing Rhysling and slashing at the air. An incandescent rent followed the sword’s path and out of it flew five small shapes. Like swifts around a cathedral, they flew three rapid circles around Skyfire's head.   
  
"Safeguard!" Skyfire cried, as one of the five detached itself from the formation and collided with the side of his helm, holding on with tiny arms and legs. "Safeguard." Skyfire folded a leg beneath himself and cradled the tiny robot against his cheek. "You saved me and then you disappeared and I thought..."   
  
Safeguard warbled at him, scolding, affectionate. Vector laughed heartily as the four other minicons alighted on his shoulders, conferring with each other in rapid clicks and whirrs. Borealis was surprised to find she could understand them. They were deciding on names in English.   
  
“Minicons!” Silverbolt said. “I thought they were extinct.”   
  
“Several groups escaped Cybertron,” Optimus said, “and the colony on Gigan- oh, sorry, Jazz – Ginormica evacuated before Megatron’s troops got there.”   
  
“Orris,” said a vibrant ultramarine and violet minicon.  
  
“Phase.”  
  
“Pulse.”  
  
“Call me Signal,” said the fourth. “Optimus Prime, we’ve come with Safeguard as emissaries from the Minicon Council.”   
  
“Welcome to Earth,” Optimus said. “We’re glad to see you.”   
  
Signal looked at him steadily. “When we heard you had launched the Allspark into the Alkaris Anomaly, we started calling both you and your brother the Doombringers. The Council has decided after lengthy deliberations that we minicons as a people want nothing further to do with other Cybertronians or your war.”   
  
“I understand,” said Optimus.  
  
“The four of us, however,” Signal said, optics twinkling, “want to help you bulks rebuild. Safeguard told us about Earth, this Earth anyway, and…and spark-merging.” He leapt and landed neatly on Optimus’ shoulder. “We called you Doombringer, but you’ve saved us, too.” He touched Optimus’ cheek guard.   
  
“Wait till they find out what Perceptor’s up to,” Fireflight whispered to Skydive.   
  
The cervical cable Optimus offered Signal looked huge – Signal and the other minicons were around two meters tall – but an apparatus on his left arm unfolded to accept. Signal took a few nanoseconds to process the new information. His optics widened.   
  
“Your help is greatly appreciated,” Optimus said. He turned as Skyfire settled lower, still pressing his face into Safeguard’s body. “And Safeguard goes with Vector Prime, but…”  
  
“But right now,” Vector said, smiling, “it looks as though he and Skyfire have quite a lot of catching up to do. Shall we leave them to it?”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Soft lavender shaded to citrine and gentian in a wash across the sky. Stars and galaxies gleamed beyond the pale streamers of the Van Allen Belts. The mesa top was no Seeker eyrie, but it was pleasant. Vector Prime flexed his sails and leaned slightly toward Optimus. “This spot seems to be your consortium’s favorite perch.”   
  
“I suppose we have become as much a family as a militia lately,” Optimus said. Below them out in the desert, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were being chased by Trailbreaker, Cliffjumper and Hound over an incident involving Silly String, which soon evolved into a Cliffjumper-throwing contest, wherein Cliffjumper was both judge and scorekeeper. Mirage and Rio stood next to Optimus, facing the other way, watching the moon rise and chatting with Tracks and Nightbeat, who were in the French Riviera helping Interpol track down a supercar smuggling ring that was smuggling more than fancy cars.   
  
“Good,” Vector said softly, almost sadly. “I’m glad to see it. We are all a part of each other, quite literally.”   
  
Optimus felt a spike of shame. Vector moved closer, put a hand on his shoulder.   
  
 **This universe is among the kinder ones, regarding your civil war. I intend to see it remain so. There are few universes in which you and Megatron exist where you are _not_  in conflict.**  
  
 ** _This_  is kinder?**   
  
 **Yes. In approximately a quarter of the universes in which you both exist, you and Megatron murder one another. Sometimes repeatedly.**    
  
 **Re—. Primus.**  Optimus covered his face with his hands. Himself and Megatron alone in the long darkness; what would they not do to one another? **You…are permitted to tell me this?**    
  
 **Ah. You imagine a brotherhood of shadowy figures, sworn to secrecy and silence, travelling through the multiverse, never interfering, the Great Observers, perfect in their objectivity.**  He took one of Optimus’ hands, pressing one of his own against it palm to palm. Vector’s fingers were slightly longer, but there were five of them.  **Such objectivity is a myth. Impossible to maintain, and even were it possible it would lead to far greater suffering.**  “It is the bonds between us that give time its meaning.” He spoke aloud and smiled at the way Mirage’s antennae flicked at him and away, the cant of the Tower mech’s head taking on an apologetic angle. “The humans have rightly enough calculated that time and space are related, but there is another aspect. Spacetimelove.”   
  
Down in Wheeljack’s tower, Perceptor stiffened, his optics at their widest aperture, the accessory emitters at their edges whirling with color.   
  
"Oh Primus," Wheeljack said. "He's doing the math..."  
  
Borealis bit her fingers. "Yes. He is."   
  
Vector slid an arm around Optimus’ waist, head bent, lips not quite touching the cables of Optimus’ neck. “Ah, beloved, I would explain everything to you if it were possible. I am not constrained by occult directives, but by the difference in our experience.”   
  
Mirage squeaked and pulled Rio out of the way as Optimus gave in to the impulse he’d had since Vector had first appeared. “Oh my – their  _fields_!”  
  
“’Might as well be walkin’ on the sun’,” Rio sang, optics bright.   
  
 **Mmrrr,**  Vector rumbled. He mouthed Optimus’ antenna and the “Prime” glyph, shoving his hands into the spaces in Optimus’ body and opening a dermal link chest to chest.  **I've not been this close to the Allspark in a painfully long time.**    
  
With a cry, Optimus opened. Power surged through him, the glyphs etched in his armor glowing blue as though light-piped from his spark. By the end of this encounter he would be seven centimeters taller. He found his orientation abruptly horizontal rather than vertical, with no clear idea how that happened. Then Vector was kissing him, lips supple as a human’s, and the elder Prime’s body seemed to be half melting into his, transmitting passion and love and a stark, primeval hunger.   
  
Vector’s solar sails spread above them like wings dark as sapphires, unfurling slowly at first, then jaggedly stretching to their full extent, blade-edged and quivering. The heat from Optimus’ spark blazed in ripples across Vector’s skin. For a moment, to Optimus’ optics, he appeared nebula-auraed, like an ancient supernova.   
  
Pushing himself up into a trembling arch, head tossing, Vector shook his sails, and the edges of his chest curled back like silver waves, revealing a strange, red-violet spark, blue-coronaed, striated with arcs and flares of white and faint turquoise.   
  
“What…what have you done to your spark?” Optimus moaned. Vector lowered himself by centimeters but hesitated before final contact.   
  
“Something dissimilar in method but akin in effect to what you did to yours.”  
  
 **You’re doomed, too,**  Optimus groaned.  
  
 **No. There is a universe in which we are media, fiction, figures in plastic to entertain the young. And there is another universe in which the fictions of that universe are true. In _that_  universe (which does not yet exist) I will grow very weary at last, and die in the service of my friends.**  
  
 **I have died, I will die, I am dying now. As I die there/then, I am here/now interfacing with you.**  He lowered himself the last span, stellar radiation between them increasing a hundredfold. Rearranging things within, he pressed closer to  _breathe_  scorching air across Optimus’ antenna, into his mouth, over the stretched cables of his neck.   
  
Vector pushed his thigh between Optimus’ legs, drawing Optimus’ knee up, running his hand down the young Prime’s long calf, inserting fingers into a space just above sensitive ankle proprioceptors. Optimus shouted, hands and helm and shoulders and feet striking fire from the stone as two immortal sparks brushed coronae and their selves collided.   
  
 **I told myself it didn't matter whether I ever met you metal to metal,**  Optimus moaned. **That I was content, knowing your spark from within.**  No part of him remained untouched, by hands or mouth or fields or mind.  **Was wrong. Want you…**  
  
A low, incoherent sound wrung itself from Vector’s throat or chest or skin, part whimper part growl, penitent and needy and protective.  **Optimus…I beg thee… Please, please let your body be my harbor…  
  
Yes.  
  
Your spark my safe haven…   
  
Yes.  
  
Let me come to you over the ages and lose myself in you until I am sane again.  
  
Oh YES!** This was what he was  _for_.   
  
Dozens of mechs surrounded them at a respectful distance, kneeling or crouching – each according to their hip structure – optics lambent. Prowl strained in Thundercracker's arms, longing for the ability to make Optimus writhe and cry out like that.   
  
The pulse of their overload expanded like a sonic boom. For half a second Optimus was caught on the crux of being unable to make a sound at all and the talons of a long low moan that would rattle the stone beneath them.   
  
Three rising notes – so perfect a triad that Mirage, seizing Hound, overloaded and would have fallen off the mesa, taking Hound with him, if Trailbreaker hadn’t caught them – poured from Optimus’ vocoder like night-dyed velvet. Drift, kneeling, fell forward, losing his grip on consciousness as six or seven things Yoketron had tried and tried to teach him about voice and emotion finally slipped into place. Rio and Jazz and Bluestreak and Strake were a silver, grey, black tangle of limbs.   
  
“So,” Vector purred, “you  _can_  sing.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _You fool!_  Shockwave ground out.  _Do not bring that thing back here. It did quite enough damage as it was kindled!_    
  
 _Shut up, Shockwave,_  Starscream sneered.  _You've had time to recover, and you are forewarned of the creature's capabilities. What's the matter, don't you think you and all your lackeys can destroy it?_  
  
Fuming would be a waste of time and energy. Shockwave opened a different channel.  _Dreadwing, dispatch your drones to intercept Thunderwing. Under no circumstances are you to let it reach the planet’s surface, is that understood?_  
  
 _Yes, Shockwave._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hound took Mirage’s hand as they emerged from the oil bath and the two strolled into the recharge bay already half-powered down.   
  
“I kinda like what Vector called Prime,” Hound said, slipping an arm around Mirage’s waist. Ratchet shot a command to the table the pair were climbing to reconfigure it for two.   
  
“Hm?” Mirage wasn’t going to be online for much longer. “Oh. ‘Beloved’? That is nice, isn’t it.”  
  
“Beloved Mir,” Hound said.  
  
“Beloved Hound,” Mirage answered, rubbing his cheek spar on Hound’s.  
  
“Get a room you two,” snickered Cliffjumper, who had just come online.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"I understand that you carry information regarding twelfth millennium Guin-Sekians." Vector stood at the holotable in Wheeljack’s lab, watching the elegant new space bridge design’s stately rotation.  
  
Perceptor refocused his optics. "I do, but what possible use could that... Never mind, in all likelihood you cannot tell me."  
  
"On the contrary. I need that data in order to realign the Ekri’s intrasubstantial orrery."  
  
Perceptor laughed. "I haven't the faintest notion what that means. My memory cores, and indeed any other part of my anatomy, are entirely at your disposal."   
  
“Mmm,” said Vector. “Lovely.”  
  
…  
  
Optimus started as his antennae picked up a high-frequency sound of such power as to be detectable even though it originated from the bottom floor of Wheeljack’s tower.  **What was that?**    
  
Vector answered promptly.  **We are having some file incompatibility issues. I can read your streams but you cannot read mine. We've nearly broken Perceptor trying.**    
  
 **Oh dear,**  Optimus said.  
  
 **Don't worry,**  Vector reassured him.  **He's fine now.**  
  
…  
  
“You. Fascinate me.”  
  
Vector bent forward. “The sentiment, I assure you, Perceptor, is entirely mutual. This might work better if your systems weren’t fragged up beyond all recognition.”  
  
 _You’ve been talking with Sam._  
  
 **Briefly. He’s delightful. Perceptor… Perceptor, you have set yourself a great and worthy endeavor. It is not necessary that you sacrifice yourself in the doing.**  He drew his fingers along Perceptor’s body, tiny curls of blue plasma trailing their paths.  
  
“When …when was the l-last time you participated in a spark-merge?”  
  
“You like living dangerously.”   
  
“No. I lllllllike newsparksss…”  
  
Vector laughed, kissing Perceptor as the latter’s vocoder rebooted. “Mmm. It might be a good idea at that. I have not spark-merged in eight billion years, but there are subtleties to the art which the Matrix has neglected to provide.”  
  
“And you mean to remedy our lack?” Perceptor made no effort to disguise or restrain his eagerness.   
  
Vector sat on the edge of Wheeljack’s small recharge table, pulling Perceptor’s limp frame onto his lap. “I do indeed. But for now,  _recharge._ ”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
In the morning, Vector Prime and Safeguard had gone. No farewells, no explanations.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Commander,” said Skyquake. Under Shockwave’s command, he had quickly learned the value of remaining calm no matter the circumstances. “Eighty-three percent of the drones have been destroyed. Turmoil and Bludgeon are a quartex out and Jhiaxus is three quartexes distant. Sentries estimate Thunderwing will make planetfall in 1.7 groons.”   
  
“Noted,” Shockwave said.   
  
“Where is Galvatron?” Starscream asked, tapping his claws on Shockwave’s main projection console. “He made this mess.” Skywarp was still in the CR chamber and Starscream’s injuries had been repaired only a few groons ago. He was in no mood to confront that monstrosity again.   
  
“Lord Galvatron’s whereabouts are of no concern to you at this time,” Shockwave said, continuing his work. “Dispatch Roadblock and his troops with the Class Beta drones to Thunderwing’s landing site.” If the thing dared approach Shockwave’s research facilities – or the new shipyard above – Shockwave was determined to pitch Starscream at it bodily. “Perhaps if you would stop running away, Starscream, you might determine what it wants and use that against it.”   
  
Starscream shuddered. “Don’t be stupid. And what do you mean, Galvatron’s whereabouts are of no concern to me? I am his second! Everything Galvatron does is of concern to me.”   
  
“Lord Galvatron instructed me to ensure he was not disturbed. If he did not similarly inform you then one must deduce he did not wish you to know.”   
  
“You—” Starscream’s rant was interrupted before it could begin. He shuddered again as he felt the strange wash of particles that meant Thunderwing had found him. “Slag.”   
  
 _COME TO ME,_  Thunderwing roared, though not at deafening levels this time.  _I BELONG TO YOU!_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 - November  
  
Over the years, John Keller received fewer and fewer invitations to speak at various functions. Those he did receive were not always accepted, though when they were, he and Lucia turned them into an opportunity to travel, spending two weeks or more if the location proved interesting. Long flights were more bearable in First Class, and when venturing transatlantic or transpacific, they enjoyed the innovations in jet technology and fuel efficiency which had ushered in a new age of supersonic civilian flight.   
  
The trip from Narita to JFK still took several hours. Lucia was catching up on the latest “Mrs. Pollifax” novel while John took a nap. When a deep vein thrombosis lodged in his brainstem, he hardly stirred, and the jet noise masked the cessation of breath.   
  
Lucia finished a chapter and set aside her book in favor of a nice long stretch, fancying a refreshing trip to the lavatory. She turned smiling to her husband.  
  
"John? John!"   
  
...  
  
Nineteen Autobots assumed their stations on the roads surrounding the snow-covered lawn south of the Columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery; evenly spaced, awaiting the order. Optimus Prime himself stood nearest the gravesite. If the procedure was out of the ordinary, it was because John Keller, Secretary of Defense to four presidents, had been an extraordinary man, living in extraordinary times.   
  
Nineteen energy weapons lifted in unison. No command was heard by the attending humans but blue fire speared the sky nineteen times, each volley five seconds apart.   
  
“That was awesome,” Epps said quietly. Lennox returned his friend’s half-grin.  
  
“Yeah. Hope they do the same for me, when the time comes.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
"Please, Mikaela? Pleeeeease?"   
  
Oh no, Mikaela thought. Not the puppy optics. It wouldn't work from a human kid, but First Aid was just so damn  _cute_.   
  
"I'm really good at it now; I've delivered thirty-six human babies, fifty-three puppies and kittens, ten cows – including three breech – and seven horses. I am so good, I swear, you won't feel so much as a twinge. You're healthy, the baby's healthy—”  
  
"You don't have to be coy this time, Aid," Mikaela said. "Dani already told us you guys saw it's a boy. The grandfathers are driving us nuts."   
  
"Oh. Do you have a name picked yet?"  
  
"Maybe." It was nice that they couldn't just pluck it out of her mind unless she deliberately broadcast it on the implants. First Aid sidled closer and tilted his head at an angle calculated to invoke the greatest coefficient of adorableness. She wanted to throw a wrench at him.  
  
"Please oh please oh please? I could beg."   
  
"Oh god. Aid, if you've delivered all those other babies, why do you want to deliver mine so much?"   
  
First Aid's chin came off the gantry in surprise. "Because you're you," he said. "I want to help my friends. And this way Bee can be in the room with you instead of climbing all over Ratchet and me like last time."   
  
She leveled a stern forefinger at him. "No Discovery Channel footage, no recording optical feeds for posterity."   
  
"Of course not!"  
  
"No running commentary."  
  
"No. That was Cliffjumper..."  
  
"Just you, me, Sam, Dani, Bee and Ratchet. I don't want you guys setting up bleachers."  
  
"We would never!"   
  
"Pinky promise." She extended the relevant digit and he did the same.   
  
"Pinky promise!"   
  
"Fine. I'll call Dr. Shima in the morning." There wouldn't be more than token protests from the OB/GYN. Dr. Shima had met First Aid.   
  
"YES!" First Aid put his arms up and danced a victory lap around the med-bay.   
  
...  
  
Mikaela wasn't granola enough to want any part of bona fide natural childbirth. She was all for better living through chemistry. First Aid had a slightly different plan.   
  
"I've blocked only your pain receptors," he told her. "You're going to be in charge of this, or your body is. Which kind of amounts to the same thing.” She could kneel or crouch on the raised, sturdy foam blocks First Aid had arranged. He knelt in front of her and would hold her hands as needed, while Sam was behind her to rub her back and provide emotional support – and Bee was behind him for similar reasons. Dani sat on Ratchet’s shoulder, not sure if she really wanted to watch this icky, messy thing or not.   
  
“Am I going to have to institute a no babbling rule?” Mikaela asked through gritted teeth. No pain did not mean no work. She had the athletic build of a woman who had spent her entire adult life climbing big rocks and giant robots, but this was different.   
  
“No babbling, I promise,” First Aid said, his voice dropping to its most soothing register. “You’re doing great, Mikaela.” This process would never stop being wonderful and amazing to him.  
  
Before the next contraction hit, Mikaela managed to look up and smile at him.   
  
…  
  
Nathan Archer Witwicky was born on November 29th, 2030 at the Cybertronian Embassy, Nevada. The proud grandfathers had begun to light cigars, but the looming presence of Inferno apparently deterred them.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2030 - December  
  
The embassy's security systems had been told to allow Vector Prime free access. So when he and Safeguard fell through a rift onto the med-bay floor, it was several minutes before Tel and Red spotted them.   
  
…  
  
“Maybe he killed that Thunderwing thing for us,” Bluestreak said hopefully.  
  
“No,” Optimus said. “He has far greater battles to fight.”  
  
“Greater than—?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Bluestreak eeped.  
  
…  
  
“Slag. I don’t know what half these systems  _are_!” Ratchet was up to his elbows in Vector’s torso while Wheeljack worked on Safeguard and Perceptor acted as an extra set of hands for Ratchet and maintained high-level scanning for all of them.  
  
“That may not matter,” Perceptor said. “He can utilize energon, though that’s not what’s in his, for lack of a better term, fuel lines. I can see what I’m fairly certain is self-repair going on.”  
  
“Are those nanocells, then?” Wheeljack asked. “’Cause they don’t look like ours.”  
  
“As far as I have been able to ascertain, yes. …I think many of his systems operate on a quantum scale, much like our memory cores, but…” Perceptor shook his head.   
  
 _Now you know how_  I  _feel, working on you guys,_  Mikaela said from her waldo-VR chair outside the med-lab, Nathan sleeping on her chest.   
  
 _My dear Mikaela,_  Perceptor said.  _You are in fact understating the scale of our difficulty. He is exponentially more advanced to us than we are to you._  
  
 _Oh. Shit._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Maggie stopped dead three feet from the rivulet of energon trickling across the floor. "Whose...?" she said, the rest of her query sticking in her throat. She stared at the dimming line, edges already turning cobalt. She didn't know how many hours it took for the volatile compounds to evaporate away, until the spill turned the color of Arcee's armor. Trailbreaker rushed in, making sweeping motions with his hands, and the energon rolled and balled itself up, herded back through the med-lab doors. Maggie swallowed hard. Had the lull in the war softened so quickly twenty years of combat-thickened skin?   
  
 **It's Vector Prime's**  Optimus said gently.  **We don't know what happened. We may never know, unless he chooses to tell us.**    
  
 _He's going to live, though?_    
  
 **I think so.**  He did not tell her that Vector knew the particulars of his own death. The temporal mechanics involved gave Optimus a processor-ache; he wasn't up to explaining it to even so intelligent a human as Maggie.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Nightfall found him, as it often had since his arrival, gazing into the new cityformer's growth tank. The purpose for which he had originally been built had been as one of the mech aides to a cityformer named Spire. It was only during the war with the Penstirachtatoriafelexians that Megatron had asked him to become the Ground Commander.   
  
A deep thrum of heavy machinery filled the chamber. Lights flashed and blinked in unfamiliar sequences as the monitoring and recirculation lid rose into the hollowed ceiling. Just as Ultra Magnus leaned over the edge to look down into the viscous growth medium, Wheeljack came barreling in.  
  
"Who popped the cork?" he was saying, even before he had cleared the doorway. "Oh, hi, Magnus. Uh, she's not done yet, yanno."  
  
"I didn't do it," Magnus said. "I don't know your code."  
  
"Huh." Wheeljack chinned himself on the edge of the plex, cocking his head at his seemingly quiescent progeny.  _Hey, Ratch, you didn't send the code to unbutton the big kid did ya?_  
  
"Of course not," Ratchet said, entering in almost as rapid a fashion as Wheeljack had, alerted by the same protocols. "Tel?"  
  
"It's an independent system," Teletraan said, rather acerbically. "As you well know, Ratchet. I don't have the codes either; only you, Wheeljack and Prime do."  
  
"Huh," said Wheeljack again. "D'you suppose...?"  
  
A single cable bundle extended from within the tank, curling first around Wheeljack's wrist, then Ultra Magnus' and Ratchet's.   
  
"Why hello there," Wheeljack and Magnus said together. Ratchet shuttered his optics.   
  
"Did you hack your tank system, sweetie?" Jack continued, practically cooing.   
  
"She must have," Magnus said, his tone admiring. Cityformers had exquisite control over their vast array of functions and were well equipped to defend themselves against malicious or accidental attacks on their programming by outside entities. This meant that in a sense they were peerless hackers themselves.   
  
"She hasn't infiltrated control of anything else, has she, Tel?" Ratchet asked.   
  
"No. ...Wait." The AI hesitated, running deep diagnostics. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did. "Red Alert will not be pleased." There was no physical connection, but the tank room was deliberately unshielded to allow the protoform to sample the myriad communications and input from the surrounding people as it grew. Somehow, she had coaxed the nanites in a section of Teletraan’s network to build a tiny emitter that gave her a more direct feed. “It’s read-only,” Tel explained, “but I should have caught it earlier.”   
  
“Clever girl,” Wheeljack said with a conspicuous lack of irony. He dabbled his longest fingers in the growth medium. “She’ll be processing rings around the rest of us pretty soon.”   
  
Red Alert entered with no outward show of irritation. "I am accustomed to the habits of cityformers, Ultra Magnus," he said at Magnus' questioning look. He lifted a hand and Magnus gave him a boost to the thick plex rim beside Wheeljack. Red leaned down, extending one arm, ports open. Immediately two cables of a suitable size shot out from the cityformer’s central mass, connecting with exaggerated care.  
  
"This will be an advantage," Red explained. "Another layer of redundant systems. I understand she has a great deal of development yet to undergo, but cityformers are protective by nature." He offered his files regarding the protocols he'd set up for the embassy over the years. Who was allowed to enter, who wasn't, under which circumstances alerts should be called and what to do in the event of hundreds of projected possible emergencies. Everything from nuclear strike to the filtration system in the oil bath backing up. “Done.” Red jumped down and returned to the Security office.   
  
Reluctantly Wheeljack hopped down as well. “Okay, kiddo, I gotta get back to the tower before Perceptor starts organizing my tools. You be good!”   
  
The monitoring lid remained raised, so Ultra Magnus leaned over the edge, happy just to watch the protoform as she arranged her multitudinous limbs.   
  
 _I will be a city,_  the protoform said. Magnus hid his surprise.  
  
 _Yes you will. A big, beautiful city,_  he said.  
  
 _Beachcomber will lead me to a mountain in Morocco. I will like it there._  
  
 _I’ve seen images of the area. It looks very interesting._  
  
 _Humans will live in me, too. But my drones will have to teach them how to be careful. I will have to move sometimes._  
  
 _Are you building your drones already?_  
  
Gently waving limbs shifted to reveal three tightly curled shapes attached to the central mass.   
  
 _That’s wonderful, um…_  
  
 _My name will be Metroplex,_  she told him shyly.   
  
 _That's a grand name, Metroplex,_  Magnus said. He wondered if it was typical of growing protoforms to speak in the future tense.  _Thank you for sharing it with me._    
  
 _I like your name, too, Ultra Magnus,_  Metroplex said.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _I know what to do with this thing._  Starscream slipped the thought to his wingmate. Skywarp flew closer than necessary beside him. Starscream was not fond of being crowded like that, but did not find it in himself at this point to protest.  _We’ll make it someone else’s problem. If they can kill it, fine. But I’ll wager it takes quite a lot of them with it._  
  
 _Yes! Great plan,_  Skywarp agreed. They changed course, heading for the wormhole that would bend them to the wormhole they wanted.   
  
Behind them, Thunderwing followed.


	69. Thunderwing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Thunderwing ponders his purpose, Mez makes friends, Earth receives a warning, Starscream brings the party, Beachcomber has a qualm, and the big jets get pwnd.  
> The Autobots fight Thunderwing on Mars. Ow.  
> The Bots recover from battle, TC makes a discovery, Optimus gets yelled at, UM and Chromia get frisky because Ironhide won't, Veccy and Safeguard wake up, Veccy and Perce get frisky old-school style, Prowl freaks Sam out, and mechs catch some rays.

2031 – January  
  
The chase had been incomprehensible at first. Why did they flee? He had been created for them; his spark, his body meant to join with theirs. Every astrosecond apart, every micrometer of distance away from them increased his agony. Nothing about his systems functioned properly without his trine. He had come to recognize the pursuit as a test. He altered his engines again, ignoring the pain, for another factor's worth of speed.   
  
The slightest brush of their signatures against his was exquisite torture. Behind an asteroid gravity suddenly bent and twisted - ah! Clever Skywarp was about to... and they were gone. Thunderwing howled silently, delighted and bereft. He was learning such wonderful tricks of hiding and treachery and deceit from them. They were so beautiful. Now he must begin the search anew. Skywarp could not take them very far, but any direction was possible, and they would try to hide, altering their shield characteristics or concealing themselves behind strange ores, or running perilously close to pulsars or neutron stars.   
  
Obeying Galvatron was written into the most basic of his core programming. That one imperative before everything else, gladly and completely followed. And Galvatron had made him for Starscream and Skywarp, to complete their trine. He was for no other purpose. The screams and energy blasts crashing against his shields and armor were of no consequence. Thunderwing's defensive subroutines countered them easily, leaving his main CPUs free to contemplate the splendor and perfection of Starscream's wings and mind, and the convoluted, hidden talents of Skywarp. Their eventual union would be so much the more triumphant for having been delayed. He would be so worthy of them, even if it took a hundred thousand years. The truest, most beautiful love was that between those with wings. All others were but pallid, shallow reflections.   
  
He could feel how they wanted him, their stifled longing clear in their fields whenever he got close. He could feel the rapid flutter of their sparks in his own. It spurred him on, made him dizzy like the finest high-grade, which he had never tasted but he possessed the memory files from Galvatron. During the long reaches of his pursuit, Thunderwing amused himself with imagining what he would do to Starscream and Skywarp when he at last proved himself and caught them. Those fierce, singular sparks unmistakable for anything else in the universe; he would always find them, always know them. He wanted only them forever.   
  
The pain never ceased. He would share that with them, too. He reconfigured his sensors, using the frequencies that had worked best last time, boosting the signal strength, trying new combinations when that yielded no result. Every small change stabbed, every input was interpreted as pain. The constant transformation in his unquiet body was agony, but that seemed just to him, that was how life was supposed to be. Galvatron had made him so, he embraced it.   
  
He would embrace them as well. Galvatron had programmed him with their preferences and most secret pleasures. They liked to be opened forcibly. They liked to be bitten and clawed. They did it to each other all the time. He would share everything with them.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mez swaggered down the corridor, kicking Shadowside out of his way. Now he would have to find somewhere new to hide for recharge, since Shadowside’s favorite tactic was cutting the fuel lines of recharging mechs, but that was fine.   
  
“Just because you fancy yourself on the way to being Turmoil’s Second!” Shadowside snarled. The power vacuum left when Deadlock had – thank the Unmaker – disappeared a few vorns ago was only unsteadily occupied by Countdown. A competent brute; very strong but not quite smart enough to really make Turmoil happy.   
  
“Hm?” Mez asked casually, pressing his photon cannon to Shadowside’s helm. “What was that?” Mez’s recent history was well known aboard Turmoil’s ship. There being only one survivor in a Decepticon crash wasn’t uncommon. Mez had put the bodies of his former compatriots to good use; the body he had now was unusually flush with new parts and weaponry, and Excoriation – Turmoil’s CMO/Chief Torturer – had declared Mez’s nanocells to be of a peculiar lineage that was uncannily good at swift self-repair.   
  
“Nothing,” said Shadowside, smiling. “Forget it.”  
  
“Shut your valves, both of you,” Iceneedle said, shoving them apart. “Mez, get your aft up to the bridge. Shadowside, down to the engine room. We’re turning this crate around. New orders.”  
  
“Thought Turmoil wanted a refit at Chaar,” Mez said, heading for the bow as ordered.   
  
 _Taking a little side trip,_  Iceneedle tight-beamed.  _Thunderwing wrecked half Chaar again. If we and Bludgeon and Jhiaxus can’t kill it out here in space we’re to kill Starscream and Skywarp instead._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 - May  
  
 _Elita! They’ve entered the Milky Way wormhole,_  Verthandi reported via long-range subspace.  _Launching transmitter now._  
  
 _Very good, Verthandi. Thank you,_  Elita replied. Primus help them. Prime’s spooky tactician had foreseen this possibility. Elita hoped the combined forces of Ultra Magnus, Kup, Silverbolt and Prime would be enough to stop Thunderwing before Earth became yet another planet destroyed in this relentless war.   
  
…  
  
Two weeks later.  
  
 _Message from the Nornir, Prime,_  Borealis sent, pulling a high-g turn around the nearest star and arrowing back to Sol.  _Crap. Prowl was right – Screamer’s bringing his buddy our way. If they take the most direct route I calculate their ETA at twenty-two Earth days._  
  
 **Understood, Little Bird. Rendezvous with Skyfire at Jupiter.**  
  
 _Woohoo!_  
  
 **Heh.**  
  
…  
  
The first thing up on the screens at NEST headquarters when Lennox arrived in the morning was Optimus Prime.   
  
“No offence, Optimus, but I’m guessing this isn’t good news,” Lennox said.   
  
“It is not. Starscream, Skywarp and Thunderwing will arrive in this system in a minimum of twenty-two days. I’m sending the deltas and the Aerials out to intercept them outside the Oort. If that fails we will have an ambush set up on Mars. It is my intention to stop Thunderwing there.”  
  
Lennox raked a hand through his hair. "I understand." What Optimus hadn't said, Lennox knew, was that the Autobots would stop Thunderwing at Mars – or they would fight to the last mech trying. As Optimus cut the connection, Lennox stared at the blank monitor for a moment. “Get me Commander Bowen on Mars.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 - June  
  
 **Starscream.**  
  
 _Hello, Prime. I have a present for you._    
  
 **Please bring it to Mars. We can more easily receive it there.**  
  
 _Oh Prime, don't you want me to send it directly to you at home? Think how convenient it would be. You and your little insect friends dying together like good comrades should._  
  
 **Starscream, think. If it kills all of us, who will stop it from hunting you for the rest of your life?**  
  
 _What makes you think it's hunting me? How do you know anyth... Never mind._  Starscream needed to kill someone. Soon. He could decide later whether to make Shockwave figure out whom, or claim that pleasure for himself. After months of flight and hiding, Starcream was too weary for his usual games. Not that it would do for Prime to know that.  _Very well. I suppose you’re cowering in that wretched labyrinth._  
  
 **That will do, yes.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
In June of 2031 Mars and Earth were quite close to one another, though not quite in conjunction. The people of Earth watched the bright, near planet with greater trepidation now than ever before in their history, old Halloween radio broadcasts notwithstanding. This time it wasn’t a hoax, or the fevered imaginations of early astronomers.   
  
The proximity was convenient for the Autobots. Those whose vehicle modes could not make the interplanetary jump shed their chameleon mesh and folded themselves into cometary protoforms.   
  
In Japan, millions of children – and adults – watched their phones and holo screens as Railspike, Rapid Run and Midnight Express waded out to sea so that their thrusters would do no harm as they took off. Wedge led the Build Team to a fallow field near Kochenevo, Novosibirsk Provence, Russia; their takeoff observed with far less enthusiasm than had been the total solar eclipse of twenty-three years previous.   
  
Bumblebee dropped Sam and Mikaela and the children off at Sam’s parents’ home in Tranquility. “The gestalts are all going,” he told his family. “I probably won’t even get to shoot anything.”  
  
“Then stay here with us,” Dani insisted, for the umpteenth time.   
  
“All the Autobots but a few are going,” Bee explained. Again. “Just in case. We have to make sure Thunderwing doesn’t come here.”  
  
“Hot Spot’s team isn’t going are they?” Judy asked. “They can’t, they’re…” She stopped herself before saying  _ours_. Humanity didn’t own the Protectobots of course. But they belonged on Earth, Optimus Prime had ensparked them for  _this_  world.   
  
Bee chuckled ruefully. “Prime meant for them to stay. But then they combined and Defensor launched into this huge speech about how their programming was to protect the Earth and how could they do that if Prime left them behind to do nothing but sit on their hands.” Defensor had gone on to say that he could pin Superion in three throws out of five, which prompted a great deal of yelling over the radio from the Aerials. “Vector and Safeguard are still in stasis. The minicons and Glyph are staying with them.” Wheeljack hadn’t made up his mind yet. Someone should guard the growth tanks, and Atrandom had said she would remain as backup if Wheeljack did. Catscan and Lifeline intended to go, but would set up a medical unit at a safe-ish distance from the anticipated battle.   
  
Bee knelt low and hugged Dani and then Sam and Mikaela, and – to his surprise – Judy ran at him for a hug too. “We’re just going to Mars, not far, and only for a week or two maybe.” He let Judy go and stood. “Besides, I honestly think there isn’t anyone as good at combat in space as Skyfire. He and the Aerials and Borealis will probably end this before the rest of us see any action.”   
  
…  
  
"So we're just going to trap this ‘thing’. A fully-sparked, thinking being, and execute him in cold blood. Without trying to talk to him, or figure out what's wrong."  
  
"Beachcomber." Seaspray put his hands on Beachcomber’s shoulders. The geologist shouldn’t go, he thought. There wouldn’t be much he could do anyway, and the whole thing was making him unhappy. Perceptor wouldn’t have to worry about protecting him that way either.  
  
"No,” Beachcomber said, shrugging Seaspray off. “I think we need to be clear about this."  
  
Prime nodded and knelt, offering arm cables. "Beachcomber, you're right. Come closer. Glyph, you too, my skeptical friend." The two small mechs approached and seated the cables.   
  
After a swift scan to ensure no humans were in the hangar, Prime opened his chest.  **If you wish, I can share what I felt when Galvatron kindled Thunderwing. And if you give me a moment I might be able to let you feel his spark through mine.**    
  
“Very well,” Glyph said, opening her side of the link fearlessly.   
  
Beside her, Beachcomber stared at his feet. He knew he should trust Prime, he really did. This was going to be bad. This whole situation was bad. He didn’t like the way Perceptor had disassembled, cleaned, reassembled and recalibrated his light cannon. But he had to know.  
  
Prime highlighted the memory file, stripped of emotional and physical layers. Glyph opened it, Beachcomber a wary nanosecond behind.   
  
There was a kind of spark sickness, documented in only a handful of cases through the vast reaches of Cybertronian history, where the elements lost their balance, subatomic forces decaying unnaturally fast, spitting out rare, corrosive particle waves. The mechs so afflicted displayed ravenous, psychotic appetites, dying after a few short years of cannibalistic death and mayhem. This was worse. This had been done on purpose.   
  
The blue-white radiance of Prime’s spark enveloped them. Beachcomber steadied himself, following Glyph through a dimensionless wrenching, to a not-space where his sense of self blurred and somewhere a part of him had a voice and cried out because there it was, fast and utterly malevolent, approaching, writhing like a cancer, necrotic and foul.   
  
Prime caught them as they collapsed, holding them close to his body.  
  
"Not...not execution," Glyph choked. "Euthanasia."  
  
Beachcomber curled against Prime, trembling.  _Why? Why would the Allspark make something… allow someone like that to be made?_  And Prime could feel that sickness, that malformation of spirit  _all the time_. How could he bear it?  
  
“You are correct to ask. The Allspark is more than a tool, clever tool that it might seem. But it is also far better than I am at holding firm to the ideal of freedom, of choice.” Prime held out a cable, watching the faces of his people. "Doubt is good. Questioning me is good." Reassure me, his tone said, that this war, my failure, has not changed us so completely. "Does anyone else wish to experience this?"  
  
Tracks stepped forward, and First Aid.   
  
Seaspray helped Beachcomber stand and half-carried him down the stem corridor. “Come on, let’s find Miles.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _What… what…the hell… was that?_  Borealis rebooted her peripherals again, nothing was working right. Someone’s hand drifted by her face. She dimly thought she should catch it but her arms wouldn’t move. Did she have arms in this mode? What mode was she in?   
  
 _Slaaag,_  said Air Raid, sounding like Borealis felt.  _I thought getting null-rayed was bad._  
  
 _My hand,_  Fireflight said in a small, piteous voice.  _Why did my hand come off?_  
  
 _We…we mistransformed, Flight,_  Silverbolt groaned. Starscream and Skywarp had streaked by like neutrinos, narrow and fast and not touching  _anything_ , and then Thunderwing had come. And done something. Some kind of spherical pulse weapon. Whatever it was had gone right through their shields and armor and protoforms and knocked Superion out of gestalt. From the look of things it had fragged up the deltas as well.   
  
 _Warrrrrrn… Prri…iiiime…_  Skyfire managed before his optics flickered out.

2031 - June  
  
The first shot Thunderwing fired in the vicinity of Mars struck Perceptor in the chest. The second and third took Bluestreak's arms off at the shoulders.   
  
Beachcomber stood rooted. Three million years vanished. They were at the beginning again, when every loss was raw and new, and a single plasma blast changed everything. Drift sprinted past him, up and over the ridge to where Perceptor had fallen.   
  
 _Beachcomber, help me,_  Drift transmitted, pulling a section of armor off Perceptor’s upper leg. The blue-green glow of Perceptor’s spark was familiar, but not a good sign under these circumstances.  _His spark chamber has been breached, we need to seal the gap until Ratchet can get here._  Dust and sand that got inside a spark chamber would be melted, the impurities would pool inside, eventually evaporate and be incredibly uncomfortable the whole time. Beachcomber had faster, hotter welding equipment in his arms.   
  
 _Yes._  Shivering, Beachcomber ran down the slope.  
  
Not far away, Bluestreak was swearing and shouting in Smokescreen’s embrace as Hoist capped off his shoulders. Both arms – and Bluestreak’s rifle – were a smoldering mess some distance away.  _That’s just slagging terrific! How the glitching frag am I supposed to fragging help now?_  
  
 _You could take it as a compliment,_  Smokescreen murmured, pressing his lips to Bluestreak’s helm.  _Thunderwing obviously thinks you and Perce are the most dangerous mechs here. He made sure to take you out first._  
  
 _Grounding him to reduce his mobility is still valid. The canyons will limit his range. We just have to keep him down there._  Prowl said, recalculating furiously, feeding Prime and Jazz the new probability meshes as each set of data came in.   
  
Starscream and Skywarp flew west down the Valles Marinaris at mach 3, Thunderwing nuzzling their exhausts with his bow. Skywarp gibbered, kept from complete panic only by Starscream’s will. As they reached the narrower canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthus, fire came from above – Superion, Skyfire and Borealis, plus Thundercracker and Strake. Despite some residual damage, the gestalt and the big deltas had joined the Seekers to try to drive Thunderwing lower, into the sights of the bots ranged up and down the rock walls of the labyrinth in a three-dimensional pattern designed by Prowl and Rutile to maximize access to target while minimizing the hazards of a conventional crossfire.   
  
 _Thundercrackerrr…_  Starscream growled, his harmonics filled with hatred and promises. A laser from high above scored his wing and he jigged aside angrily, only keeping from bashing himself against the rocks by main force.  
  
 _Oh, I’m sorry, Starscream,_  Skyfire sneered.  _Did I_  miss?  
  
 **Thunderwing coming into primary range in 0.23 astroseconds**  Prime cut in.  **Starscream, Skywarp, divert to heading 347…now.**    
  
The Seekers darted to port, Starscream snarling to himself about Prime’s interference, but a low overhang on the heading he had given led to a cave large enough to shelter them as Ironhide and the rest of the Autobots opened up on Thunderwing, effectively diverting the monstrosity from his pursuit.   
  
Thunderwing’s shields glowed under the barrage, but nothing got through. His shape shifted beneath his asymmetrical wings, unmistakable but unfamiliar cannons bursting through his armor.   
  
Borealis dropped like a giant peregrine, transforming and extending her blades, intending to land on Thunderwing and slice him into coleslaw. Thunderwing rolled toward her approach and an armlike appendage shot out, swatting her away. Several minutes later, her offline body hit Deimos, creating a new crater in the little moon and altering its orbit.   
  
Continuing his roll, Thunderwing fired on the rest of the pursuing jets. One by one he shot them down, separating Superion again with the pulse weapon. Skyfire rapidly modulated and remodulated shields and armor, chirping the data to Ratchet even as Thunderwing’s firepower at last got through and sent the big white delta crashing into the rusty Martian dirt.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Commander, are you seeing this?”  
  
“Yes, Aquino. Keep recording.” Mars Base One Commander Kat Bowen crossed her arms, her face lit by the flickering screens. Without the recording and playback they’d never be able to see what was going on. It was happening too fast. Prime had wanted them all evacuated, and the science team had been, but the Special Forces unit had chafed and General Lennox had backed them up.  
  
“Are we really just gonna sit here and—” her lieutenant, Jeff Ohara, asked quietly.  
  
“Yes we are,” Bowen cut him off. Ah, youthful enthusiasm. “Unless Prime, Prowl or the Secretary-General of the UN gives us the call, we are staying right here. Out of the way.”  
  
Which didn’t mean she hadn’t already started the standby sequence on the nuclear warhead. She’d need Ohara and Dr. Chantilas and their keys to launch of course, but it looked like if things went pear-shaped down there in the Labyrinthus they wouldn’t have much warning.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Shit.” NEST headquarters, the Pentagon. Lennox paced the room like an old wolf; grey-haired and lean. He watched the feeds from Jazz and Rio and the Mars Base satellites with a dangerous look in his eyes. “They’ve been holding back,” he muttered. “This whole time. Holding back. We never even… Shit.” They were seeing how robots fought when there weren’t humans to protect, when there weren’t humans in the way.   
  
Lennox had seen sparring matches aplenty, and more battles with the Decepticons than he cared to count. And this wasn’t even a full army-vs-army battle. This was a couple hundred Autobots trying to take down one misbegotten abomination. The war on Cybertron must have been like nothing Lennox ever wanted to see. If the Transformers had shown up on Earth when Bots and Cons had been at full strength instead of on the raggedy edge of having wiped each other out, Earth wouldn’t have stood a chance.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Optimus Prime, I accept your truce in this matter. The Sweeps and I will deal with Thunderwing. You will withdraw._  
  
 _Hello, Cyclonus,_  Ultra Magnus said.  _Nice of you to join the party._  
  
 _How dare you!_  Starscream hissed from his cave.   
  
Thunderwing landed precisely where Ironhide hoped he would. And ionized the atmosphere.   
  
 _It’s raining Sweeps,_  Jazz said, when the screaming had stopped and his CPU recovered.  _Hallelujah it’s raining Sweeps…_  His EM gun hadn’t been designed to be used defensively like that but it worked, shunting the worst of the ionization around him. Terraforming efforts would have been set back centuries if any had been started. Groans and static echoed weakly through the thin, glowing air, resounding off the canyon walls. Jazz didn’t like it that he was the only mech in range with optics on. Thunderwing turned toward him.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“What the hell was that?!” Aquino shouted over the wailing alarms, even as she watched the readouts.  
  
“Gear up, people,” Bowen ordered, shooing everyone ahead of her toward the rad suit racks. The base had been built to withstand heavy solar flare bombardment, so far it was holding fine.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Lifting his shield-gun, Jazz fired repeatedly into Thunderwing’s face. He abruptly had to adjust his aim as Rail Racer’s shield edge slammed into Thunderwing’s helm. Rail Racer fired several shots point blank into Thunderwing’s chest before Thunderwing wound an appendage around Racer’s shield arm and crushed it, leveling one of his own cannons at Racer’s neck.   
  
The Build Team’s gestalt mode, Landstrider, jumped in, knocking the cannon aside. Bolo and Jury and four others of the Graveyard Legion followed the two gestalts to pound at Thunderwing, giving the rest of the Autobots time to recover and begin more precise attacks. Mirage went invisible and darted underneath Thunderwing’s chassis, firing upward.   
  
Rail Racer went down, shield arm broken, neck nearly severed, head badly damaged and unable to disconnect into his three component mechs. Skyfire, in robot mode and missing a wing, waded in as Cyclonus landed on Thunderwing’s back.   
  
 _Where the frag is he getting all this power?_  Ratchet swore, dodging another blast from Thunderwing’s guns as he worked on getting Searchlight back online. Bluestreak and Smokescreen’s progeny had fallen from a ledge near the canyon’s rim when Thunderwing’s atmospheric weapon had gone off.   
  
 _Working on it,_  Wheeljack said. He launched another missile from his shoulder, chugging through Skyfire’s observational data as fast as he could.  
  
 _No!_  came a cry from Hound. Mirage had been stepped on. Hound lunged forward, but Streetwise grabbed him. A flash of blue wove between churning legs and was lost in the billowing dust of the melee. Blurr emerged carrying something which flickered into Mirage as the young mech laid him next to Searchlight.   
  
Cyclonus hewed at Thunderwing’s neck with a long black blade. Ultra Magnus leapt to join him, firing at the back of Thunderwing’s helm. Arms suddenly grew from Thunderwing’s dorsal surface, grabbing both of them and smashing them together before throwing them into low orbit.   
  
 _Nucleon!_  Skyfire broadcast.  _I’m getting the chemical signature. One of Cyclonus’ hits got through._  
  
 _Nucleon,_  Wheeljack said.  _That’s not good._  
  
 _That’s not_  stable, Ratchet growled.  _Slag._    
  
Landstrider went down, breaking his gestalt. Hot Spot wanted to form Defensor, but First Aid was busy keeping Trailbreaker alive. Powerglide was hit, and Springer.   
  
Cyclonus and Ultra Magnus returned to the planet’s surface via comet mode, transforming and catching Evac’s landing skids for a quick ride down to the action. Cyclonus resumed his position on Thunderwing’s back, hacking at the already self-repaired neck with renewed determination.   
  
…  
  
Perceptor's optics lit.  _Euuuurrlptk. Oh my. Hello Bluescreencomber, hello Waft, unit time query planetism?_  
  
Beachcomber and Drift exchanged a hastily horrified look.  _Reset your primary-use language module,_  Drift said.   
  
Perceptor's sensory fins extended then retracted.  _That was messy,_  he said calmly. Drift rested his helm on Beachcomber's shoulder for half a second.   
  
 _Perceptor, we need you on your feet,_  Drift said.  _This isn't going well._  
  
 _I can see that,_  Perceptor said, peering through the rock wall between them and the battle.  _Help me up. Cyclonus is an able warrior, but he's aiming for the wrong part._    
  
…  
  
A bright circle appeared on Thunderwing’s shields. Brighter than the Sun at this distance.  
  
 _Perceptor’s up!_  Atrandom crowed, ducking with the Lamborghini twins behind an outcropping.   
  
 _Severing the head will do no good,_  Perceptor broadcast, tight-beaming to Cyclonus on an old Decepticon channel as well.  _This thing’s CPUs are distributed. There are seven and we’re going to have to get them all._    
  
 _It’s using nucleon instead of energon, Perceptor,_  Wheeljack said.   
  
 _Oh dear,_  said Perceptor.  _Well. Try not to ignite him, then._    
  
Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus looked at each other for a nanosecond.  
  
“Great,” Ultra Magnus muttered, and switched out his cannon for an energon sword very like Optimus’.   
  
Cyclonus grinned and drove his blade toward the nearest CPU according to Perceptor’s map, but the tip merely glanced aside. Thunderwing’s shields were somehow stronger.   
  
 _Everyone, keep firing,_  Skyfire broadcast.  _You too, Starscream, Skywarp. We must wear down his shields long enough for those with non-energy weapons to get at the processors._  There was no answer from the cave. Starscream and Skywarp had fallen into recharge.   
  
Thunderwing unleashed his pulse weapon. The mechs surrounding him fell away.   
  
“No!” First Aid threw himself across Traibreaker’s chest, feeling the big mech’s spark gutter. Catscan similarly tried to protect Seaspray. Ratchet’s swearing jumped in volume then ceased as Farragut, Gawain, Wyvern and Nimbus of the Graveyard Legion – already badly wounded – died.   
  
As Thunderwing moved toward the cave where Starscream and Skywarp hid, Prime rolled groaning to his feet and extended his swords to their greatest length.   
  
 **No farther,**  Prime said.  **Thunderwing, stop. You’re dying, please stop.**  
  
 _I AM THUNDERWING!_  was the reply, and a powered lance in Thunderwing’s arm thrust through the center of Prime’s chest.  
  
…  
  
“I wish he’d stop doing that,” Drift muttered, trying again to sit up, succeeding this time. Everything hurt. On the other side of Perceptor, Beachcomber was offline, but Perceptor himself was crouching, head down, light cannon humming.   
  
 _Skyfire, your calculations are correct,_  Perceptor broadcast.  _If we use this algorithm – Jazz, be so good as to make certain everyone’s getting this, I don’t think my comms are operating correctly – with this algorithm plugged into our shield modulators his next such strike should have little effect. Skyfire?_ He looked up, searching for his colleague.  _Skyf— OPTIMUS!_    
  
The light cannon fired; a continuous beam whose power level was audibly rising. And rising. Down on the canyon floor Thunderwing’s shields rippled, arc-welder bright, yet holding.  
  
Drift leapt to his feet.   
  
 _He’s not going to stop,_  Beachcomber groaned softly, sitting up and squeezing his helm as if that would ease the pain.  _Drift, that cannon runs directly off his spark._  He opened a panel in his side, pulling out a major power cable.   
  
Understanding at once, Drift knelt at Perceptor’s other side, unhooking his own power cable and plugging it into Perceptor’s systems.   
  
 _He won’t drain us,_  Beachcomber explained.  _He’ll stop when he has to now because he won’t take us with him._  The frightening whine of the cannon rose higher.  
  
 _Good idea,_  Ironhide and Chromia said together. Swiftly, Bumblebee and Bluestreak – with Bee’s help – hooked themselves up to Ironhide, while Streetwise and Tracks did so with Chromia. Throughout the canyon, the Autobots clustered around those with the most powerful weapons, lending their strength, concentrating their fire. Kup, Arcee and Smokescreen to Ultra Magnus; Groove and Rutile to Prowl; Hound and Blades to Raze; Red Alert, Windcharger and Gears to Hot Spot; Cliffjumper and Blurr to Sideswipe; Brawn and Goldbug to Sunstreaker. Cyclonus continued to stab at Thunderwing’s buckling shields.  
  
…  
  
Prime retracted his battle mask – energon gushed from his mouth. Hand over hand he pulled himself up the lance. Closer. His own spark a torus around the lance, Prime could feel that Thunderwing’s spark had split, a smaller portion deeper within Thunderwing’s terrible body. Out of reach. Prime drew an arm back, sending more power to the blade until it glowed bright amber. Perhaps the smaller portion would extinguish from the shock. Thunderwing’s shields flickered, went out for half a second.  
  
Prime struck clean and true, and Thunderwing fired every weapon in his arsenal.  
  
…  
  
A plasma beam seared across Prowl’s face and he staggered, releasing Groove and Rutile’s power cables before the shock and pain could reach them. Both chevron and optics were out, the optics melted from their sockets. Raze and Sideswipe with their cohorts closed ranks in front of him and Jazz somersaulted from the cliff above.   
  
"I gotcha, man," Jazz said, sliding his arm under Prowl’s and plugging in an arm cable.  _Use my visor feed._  
  
 _He'll be all right,_  Sideswipe told Raze.   
  
 _I know,_  Raze said, grinning.   
  
Prowl and Jazz sailed out like they were waltzing, flanked by Rutile and Groove, shield gun and missiles and butylpotassium gun firing continuously, aiming for places no-one else was, to make Thunderwing’s shields work harder.   
  
Swinging the lance, Thunderwing sent Prime crashing into the canyon wall and continued toward the cave. Violet nucleon ran from the rent in his armor  
  
 **Secondary spark,**  Prime broadcast, fighting to stay online as the Allspark closed the hole in his chest.  **Keep on…. gnnnnaaah… keep firing… Almost have him.**    
  
Thunderwing kept firing as well, though his ruined face pointed inexorably to the cave. Thinking Prowl was about to be hit again, Jazz shoved him over. And took the volley himself in the midsection. They went down together, Prowl shouting in pain because Jazz for a moment could not.   
  
At that moment, Perceptor broke through, the light cannon beam passing through armor and protoform, taking out two of Thunderwing’s CPUs. Cyclonus punched his blade through three more before being thrown off and Ultra Magnus, missing a hand and part of an arm and his helm smoking from a close call, got the last two.   
  
 _We got him!_  Sideswipe said, too tired to do more than grin.  
  
 _No…_  Perceptor grated. He powered down his cannon before Beachcomber fell offline.  _No, still detecting power generation._  
  
 _That’s it,_  Evac said, hauling himself to his feet and staggering over to Thunderwing’s immense and at least briefly inert form.  _I’ve had it with this thing._  
  
 _Evac…_  Bolo began, worried.  
  
Evac shoved his way under Thunderwing’s shoulders, transforming to cometary mode with difficulty, keeping his arms free to hold on.   
  
 **No, you don’t have to…**  Prime crawled forward.   
  
Evac took off, pointing himself toward the sunrise. It took light 12.77 minutes to reach Mars from the sun. Evac would take somewhat longer.  
  
 _Stop him!_  Blades wasn’t badly damaged, he was sure, but the places he was hit prevented him from transforming, even to cometary mode. He continued to drag Strake toward Lifeline and Catscan’s triage center. All the jets were offline.   
  
Evac knows what he’s doing, Prime thought but did not say. It wouldn’t help.  
  
…  
  
Lennox sat down for the first time since the battle had begun. The whole thing had taken less than an hour. He rubbed his face. “How long?”   
  
“At that speed, uh, another thirty minutes, sir.”  
  
“Okay. If that thing he’s carrying so much as twitches, launch every SDI2 missile in range.”   
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
…  
  
The cloud mind was oddly silent. No-one wanted to interfere with anything Evac might want to say. There wasn’t much; just private messages to Bolo and Blades, which Bolo accepted quietly. Blades not so much. He knew how to swear in thirty human languages in addition to Cybertronian.  
  
 _Slag in a can! Death by fusion **again**!_  Evac shouted, laughing as the sun filled his vision.   
  
 _ **No!**_  Bolo cried, struggling to get up despite the sizable hole in his side.  _You promised! You promised you would let me go first this time!_    
  
 _Ah, beloved, I'm sorry, sorry... I love y—_    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
On Earth, sheltered deep within the Cybertronian Embassy, in growth tank number six, inaudible alarms shrilled across networks already overtaxed with data streaming between those embattled on Mars and anxious watchers on Earth. Mikaela had the codes to get into the med-bay's inner chamber, running past Glyph and the minicons who kept vigil beside Vector Prime and Safeguard.   
  
There was little she could do. Ratchet was up to his shoulders in Springer's chest, was directing triage, as well as keeping a reassuring line open to First Aid and the other Protectobots who were competent field medics but had never seen combat on this scale before. He patched a subroutine in to Mikaela's comm line anyway.   
  
"Are you getting this?" Mikaela said, moving her gaze over the tank readouts and the flashing indicators. She had dialed the plex transparent, but from the outside, the protoform gave no indication of the distress within. The new spark's energy readings had dropped almost to zero for a handful of nanoseconds, and though they had risen again, they had not stabilized completely. "This is Evac and Blades' kid, isn't it." She wanted to ask what was going on up there, but the satellite feeds were grim enough.   
  
 _Yes._  the subroutine's tone was flat and impersonal. Mikaela understood that she was receiving only a tiny fraction of Ratchet's attention.  _Evac has been deactivated._  
  
"Oh no," she said. I'm glad it wasn't Blades, she thought. She would wrestle her traitorous heart later. The Protectobots were the same age as Dani. "Is...is this related?"   
  
 _Unclear. Possible. Please increase the energon feed to the tank to 45 millivols per second._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Blades dragged Warpath toward the triage center. He wasn't going to watch Evac fly into the sun. He wasn't. There was work to be done, and Blades couldn't help Evac now. When his spark contracted sharply, he dropped like a core-shot Seeker. Kind of hard on a patient, he thought, when his CPU rebooted. Must remember not to do that again. If he had a little warning he could shoot his articulation locks.   
  
 _BLADES!_    
  
Oh. The gestalt channel had gone incandescent.  _I'm all right. I think. Hot Spot, don't you dare come over here._    
  
 _Blades, tell me exactly what happened/Brawn, hold him still until I get the patch in,_  First Aid said, holding on to calm simply because he had to.   
  
 _Later. It’s over, I’m fine now._  
  
Of the twenty Sweeps Cyclonus had brought with him, only a handful remained.  _Withdraw,_  he commanded. Galvatron must be informed of Prime’s survival.   
  
A Sweep raised his pistol as he climbed to the plateau for an easier launch, taking careful aim at Prime. Wouldn’t hurt to at least make the attempt; he might even be upgraded to Seeker if he succeeded. Something plinked against the gun, not even disturbing his aim much – until the alloys began to smoke and dissolve. Prowl evidently still had some alkali pellets left. The Sweep fled. Followed shortly by Starscream and Skywarp.   
  
“Slaggers,” Sideswipe growled.  
  
“You stay here,” Sunstreaker told his brother. “I’ll go find your arm, or what’s left of it.” He looked at Raze. “You stay, too.”  
  
Ironhide sat down hard and rested his head in his left hand. His right arm and cannon were a mass of melted slag. "If Galvatron was here I'd kick his aft," he said.   
  
"You and me both," Chromia muttered.   
  
Prowl held on to Jazz, to the link, but kept his own pain behind firewalls. The pain gave him something to focus on that wasn’t the idea of using a sun as a weapon. Jazz covered Prowl’s hand on his waist with his own.   
  
"Trochar used to shoot us in the face at low power,” Sideswipe explained, leaning on Raze. “Part of our drills, so we'd know how to handle it."   
  
"Yes, I remember," said Raze. He tipped his head back against Sideswipe’s intact shoulder, optics off.   
  
"You're... you were battalion, weren't you."   
  
"Yes. And that's as much as you're going to get from me, Sides. This life is a second chance for a lot of us, a chance to be what we weren't. Make up for things we...should have done." He laughed. "Especially Bolo and Evac." He laughed harder.   
  
...  
  
“Skyfire!”  _SKYFIRE!_  Silverbolt started to run, but the damaged structures in his left leg threatened to give out entirely. The big white jet lay facedown in a glowing pool of energon, unresponsive to hails on any channel. Skydive sprinted ahead, kneeling by Skyfire’s head.  
  
 _I’m getting energy readings from his spark,_  Skydive transmitted hurriedly.  _He’s alive, Bolt, listen! He’s alive. He’s just in stasis lock._  
  
 _Looks like he bled out,_  Air Raid said helpfully.  _Wow. Refueling a line system that size is gonna take a while._  
  
“Shut up!” Fireflight growled. Silverbolt at last reached the fallen delta’s side. Fireflight helped him turn Skyfire over. “Oh slag.”  
  
“Ooo,” said Air Raid. “Yeah, that would about do it. Primus.” Thunderwing had clawed Skyfire’s torso open, four long vertical rents dissecting him like lasers through lead.   
  
Limping, Silverbolt carried Skyfire’s cold body to the triage center.   
  
…  
  
Optimus knelt, holding Bolo’s upper torso carefully, tenderly. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“She goes where I cannot follow.”  
  
“I know. If there was some way… The Matrix was part of the Allspark once.”  
  
“No matter.” Bolo patted Prime’s hand, then shut off his optics and waited for his turn with the medics.   
  
…  
  
 **Borealis?**  
  
 _Uuurgh._  
  
 **Are you all right?**  
  
 _Nnnngh. Yeah, more or less. I think I broke a moon, though._  She would have to give Deimos a good long push in just the right direction, or Mars would lose its outer moon in a few years. Dammit, she thought, bastards quit messing up my solar system!  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The battlefield could be seen from Earth via telescopes, spilled energon unnaturally lighting swathes of the Noctis Labyrinthus. Epps put the end cap on and brought the scope inside. And tried not to think about it until the urge to throw up passed.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Cybertronians do not weep. Lennox went home and Sarah held him through the night as she had often done, while he wept for friends who could not.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Blades, big as he was, couldn't be seen amid the pile of his brothers and the Aerialbots.

2031 – June  
  
Bee started running. He quickly slowed to a walk. Ten meters away he crumpled to his knees and crawled, at last reaching his friend, curling his singed hands around Jazz’s helm.  _Jazz, Jazz, are you okay?_    
  
 _How much power did you feed Ironhide, Bee?_  Jazz asked, quirking half a smile.   
  
 _Most of everything he had,_  Bluestreak said when Bee didn’t answer immediately. And Ironhide had used it all. He and Chromia lay in a heap, damaged but not critically, catching recharge whenever they could in the habit of old soldiers.  
  
 _So did you!_  Bee said.  _Jazz?_  
  
 _Just dented,_  Jazz said. He kept his hand over Prowl’s, which hid the impact site across welds – scars – that had only recently healed completely. He felt cold and fragile, and stupid, for memories to overwhelm him like this. Only Prowl could feel him trembling.  _I’ll be fine, Bee. Recharge, why don’t you? Ratchet and his crew are going to be busy for a while, hey?_    
  
 _I will if you will,_  Bee said, curling up against Jazz, smiling in his own way as he noted how Prowl shifted his door-wings slightly to better watch over them both.   
  
…  
  
 _Borealis, turn around._  Streetwise narrowed his right accessory optic at the big jet as she landed. On her feet.   
  
 _Why?_  She edged around him, keeping her ventral side toward him and her optics on the battlefield, where the last of the injured mechs lay waiting for transport to the triage area. Skyfire had already been retrieved by Silverbolt so there was no one left whose size would prohibit her from carrying two or more at a time.   
  
 _I’ve already scanned you,_  Streetwise said, smirking. He finished a line crimp inside Arcee’s left arm and started on another.  _You might as well show me. …My flat-assed sister._    
  
 _Shouldn’t you be concentrating on what you’re doing?_  
  
 _Shouldn’t you try putting your thumb in your mouth and blowing? To see if that reinflates your aft?_  
  
 _I’ll reinflate you in a minute._  
  
Hoist cut in, valiantly restraining his frustration.  _Borealis, can you transform?_  Skyfire was out of commission and getting him to the CR chambers on Earth was going to be tricky, though by the look on Silverbolt’s face the Aerialbot leader wasn’t going to let anyone else take him down that gravity well. If Borealis was stuck in robot mode, though, that meant Silverbolt would have to transport everyone who couldn’t assume cometary mode. It was doable, but things would go faster if Borealis could help. And speed was of the essence for some of their patients.   
  
 _I, um, no. I can’t._  The armor across her dorsal surface – arms, legs, torso, even the back of her helm – was smashed and fused from her close encounter with Deimos. She stuck her right leg out to the side because that knee couldn’t bend and scooped up Jury and Strake.  
  
 _Very well. As soon as Grapple and I have finished with Thundercracker we’ll see if we can’t…reinflate you._  
  
 _Terrific. Streets, I’m stepping on you later._  
  
…  
  
He came online battle-ready, acknowledging the alarms ringing through his systems and automatically shutting them down.   
  
 _Strake is beside you, Prowl is with Jazz,_  Hoist said.  _It’s over. Thunderwing’s been destroyed._  
  
Thundercracker sat up, running claws gently over Strake’s helm, wiping pebbles out of his lateral fins. The young Seeker was offline, power levels low, but in no danger of deactivation.  _How?_  
  
 _How do we ever do these things?_  Hoist said bitterly.  _Sacrifice._    
  
The cloud mind was subdued, friends reassuring each other, updates sent to anxious watchers on Earth, but soon provided Thundercracker with a more specific answer to his question.   
  
Bolo sat nearby, grieving. His major fuel lines and wire bundles had been capped though the gruesome hole in his side remained. Thundercracker stared. Something about the mech’s fields or posture or  _something_  was so familiar.   
  
 _I know you._  
  
 _Don’t,_  Bolo said.  _You don’t understand what it was like for us to come back like this._  
  
 _Like what?_  Thundercracker pressed.  _No longer_  twins?  
  
 **Thundercracker. Don’t,**  Prime murmured. But the cloud mind had already spiked with realization.   
  
Thundercracker dropped to one knee.  _My Lord!_  
  
 _No!_  The tank lunged forward and dragged Thundercracker upright.  _No, slag you! Alpha Trion is DEAD! Murdered by his successor; though there is precedent for that… No. I am Bolo. **Bolo**._  
  
 _My truest Commander,_  Thundercracker said.  _Megatron betrayed—_  
  
Bolo shook him.  _AND YOU FOLLOWED HIM! FOR THREE MILLION YEARS!_  
  
 _Yes, my Lord._  
  
 _TC._  Bolo released Thundercracker and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehelm. Seekers.  _Please leave me alone._  
  
 _Yes, sir._  
  
…  
  
 _If I ask you,_  Bolo tight-beamed,  _will you send my spark back to the Allspark? She can at least speak to me there._  
  
 **No,**  Prime said.  **Please don’t ask me that.**  
  
 _Prowl, then. He executed Impactor…_  
  
 **No! He’s come so far. It would be beyond cruel to ask him to do something like that now.**  
  
 _You’re quite fond of him and your Lieutenant, aren’t you._  
  
 **Yes.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Grapple removed Borealis’ armor piece by piece, reshaped and reattached it until her mechanisms were freed enough to transform.  
  
 _What are we going to do with them?_  she asked, flicking an antenna at the bodies of the sixteen dead Sweeps Cyclonus had left behind. She hoped it didn’t include salvage. She wouldn’t want pieces of a Decepticon in her body. Ew! But maybe the older Cybertronians, the veterans, weren’t so finicky.   
  
 _We’ve never had elaborate funerary rites,_  Grapple said.  _They were so rarely needed, before._  He finished the last weld on the brace for Powerglide’s torn wing.  _And since the war, there often isn’t time…_  
  
 **Some of the Sweeps’ alloys are toxic,**  Prime said.  **Once the living have been transferred back to Earth, Borealis, please launch the bodies into the sun.**  
  
 _Yes, sir,_  she said. Erk!  
  
…  
  
 **General?**  
  
 _Prime! Optimus, bring your people home._  
  
 **Will, that’s one of the kindest things you’ve ever said to me.**  
  
 _Yeah, well, Sarah and Anna and a bunch of other people are pretty worried down here. Rio sent us optical feeds. That was some stunt you pulled._  
  
 **Ah.**  
  
 _And hurry up before every elementary school on the planet starts fuel cell donation drives._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Buried in his brothers and reckless jets, Blades squirmed.  _Come on you guys, we have to help load the wounded._  He squirmed harder and felt his right foot impact  ~~Slingshot’s~~  someone’s helm. Purely by accident.  
  
 _Hey!_  
  
 _He’s right,_  Hot Spot said, First Aid unhappily agreeing.   
  
Silverbolt withdrew, silent, his face set, and crossed the canyon floor to stand next to Borealis and transform. He lowered his boarding ramp as the first group assigned to him approached. He would bear Skyfire – in stasis lock but stable for now – for his second load. Borealis took off with her first batch, carrying Trailbreaker, Springer, Ratchet, Perceptor and Arcee. Perceptor was conscious, but his spark chamber breach was leaking badly.  
  
 _I could take a load too…_  Blades muttered on the gestalt channel.   
  
 _Except for the whole helicopters not working in vacuum thing,_  Groove commiserated.  _Come on; I know Aid has to stay with the wounded, but we can make like meteorites and be at the embassy to meet him, right?_  
  
 _We can,_  Hot Spot said, lifting his head to watch the Earthrise.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Sam rubbed some of the carbonization off Bee’s jaw with his thumb. He’d gotten used to how comfortable snuggling with a giant metal robot could be, but sometimes it still struck him as odd. “So,” he said – quietly, because Dani was almost asleep and Nathan was zonked – “Bolo is actually Megatron’s predecessor, Lord Protector Alpha Trion, and Evac was Volant Prime.”  
  
“Yes,” said Bee.  
  
“How did that work, though?” Mikaela asked. She shifted Nathan minutely, keeping the baby’s head on her shoulder rather than bumping Bee’s armor. “Prime’s made comments lots of times about Volant snarking at him from the Matrix.”  
  
Bee made an ambiguous sound. “I don’t know if Prime understands it either. It seems that Volant left a copy of her pattern in the Matrix even as her spark was re-embodied.”  
  
“If only Primes go to the Matrix,” Dani asked, less asleep than her father thought, “and everyone else returns to the Allspark, then…then the dead Primes are always separated from their people?”  
  
“I think they can…speak with patterns in the Allspark. If those patterns are coherent enough.” Bee warbled comfortingly at Dani. “But they’re not…part of the same oneness as those within the Allspark. You’d have to ask Jazz.”   
  
“That’s sad,” Dani said.   
  
“What about the old Primes, like Vector, who predate the Matrix?” Sam asked.   
  
“I don’t know,” Bee said. He didn’t want to think about it. They would never be one with Optimus in any case. Bee’s spark contracted for a single, miserable second.   
  
“Cheerful conversation,” Sam said, grinning.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“…And if I ever see you walk up a lance or anything like that again I am going to run so thorough a diagnostic on your processors you’ll think you’re a Roomba by the time I’m done.”  
  
After three hours Ratchet was finally winding down. Prime watched him with great affection, tinged with sadness. Ratchet hadn’t yet touched on the thing that was actually bothering him.   
  
“It looks like Skyfire was right, doesn’t it,” Prime said quietly.  
  
Ratchet stopped pacing and leaned hard on the edge of the recharge table upon which Prime was sitting.  _Oh it’d take a very determined effort to kill you now, I agree. Maybe even if you were atomized, given enough time you’d coalesce again and you_  might  _even still be Optimus Prime afterwards. There are worse things._  
  
“Oh?”  
  
 _You do know that your body’s substance is being replaced by…whatever the Allspark is made of?_  
  
“My spark chamber…”  
  
“Yes. But threads of it are infiltrating your protoform as well. About seven percent, as far as I can tell. And you’re almost two meters taller than you were when we first came here.” Ratchet leaned closer. “Looking forward to being a cube, are you? Because that’s where you’re headed.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
Ratchet spun away, stomping across the bay floor. “I don’t know! A few thousand years? A million? Less if this rate continues. Donating mass seems to help. Much as I hate to suggest it given your propensity to overdo it, you might want to get back into the habit.”  
  
Prime nodded. “Agreed.” He turned his gaze toward the darkened alcove where Vector Prime and Safeguard’s CR chamber stood. Ratchet had felt it best to put them in together. Some time during the battle on Mars, Safeguard had wrapped himself around Vector’s left forearm, in one of the standard intermesh sites for bonded minicons. “How are they?”  
  
“Improving. Vector’s regenerative powers are like nothing I’ve seen – outside of you. Good thing, given how badly he’d been mauled.”  
  
“I took it as a good sign that he returned here.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“He obviously felt this to be a place of safety. If he knew we were going to lose on Mars he would have gone elsewhere.”  
  
Ratchet thunked his forehelm against the side of the chamber. “Sllllaaaaaag.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 – July  
  
 _You and Ironhide have been arguing again._  
  
All of Chromia’s pointy bits bristled at him. There were a lot of pointy bits. Ultra Magnus smiled.   
  
 _Old slagger won’t even consider spark-merging,_  she growled.  _Says it’s “unnatural”._  She kicked an imaginary boulder off the mesa top.  _And too risky, considering…_  
  
 _Considering what happened to the protoform when Evac died, and how the protoform’s reaction affected Blades. Yes, I see his point._  Magnus stood close, despite the bristling, and slipped his fingertips into spaces in her back. She arched slightly into the contact.  _I agree with Optimus, though. I think it’s worth the consequences._  
  
“Of course you agree with Optimus,” Chromia smirked.   
  
“I don’t always.”  
  
“Yeah, right.”   
  
He bent to nibble on her left antenna.  _I’ll merge with you, if you want to._  
  
 _Yes. I want to._  It was more important now than he knew. Even if Elita instituted a lottery to decide who would be the recipient of the spark chamber modification, Chromia was determined to be the one to kill Shockwave. “You just want to make a cityformer of your own, don’t you.”  
  
“Oh hush,” he said, and kissed her.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Moonlight shone through the med-bay skylight, gently silvering the half-dozen mechs still wired into repair tables. Vector Prime stepped down from the CR chamber and went to each one, touching shoulders or chests, knowing there had been losses but grateful for how many more had survived.   
  
“Kindly don’t bypass my alerts,” Ratchet said, leaning against the entry with his arms crossed.   
  
“I do beg your pardon, Ratchet,” Vector said, bowing from the waist. “A reflex of some duration, I’m afraid. I did not wish to disturb your rest.”   
  
“Vector!” Optimus ran in from his habitual patrol to embrace the elder Prime. Ratchet wasn’t certain if it was reassuring or disconcerting how the two melted into one another. Safeguard disentwined himself from Vector’s arm, purring and chirping, to give Optimus’ helm a hug. A number of other mechs rushed the med-bay, slowing abruptly at the doorway because they knew Ratchet would have their afts for getting unruly when there were wounded in there.   
  
“We could have used your help on Mars,” Air Raid said, Strake beside him nodding in agreement and ignoring the glares they were getting from Silverbolt and Thundercracker.   
  
“My apologies,” Vector said, accepting the rebuke. “A crisis of, hm, causality occurred, requiring the immediate attention of myself and several others.”   
  
Safeguard detached from Optimus and hovered in front of Air Raid’s face. “We, like you, bought victory at a price,” he said.   
  
“Sorry,” Air Raid said. He resisted the urge to bat the minicon away like a persistent bug. If half the things said about Safeguard were true, Raid would likely lose a hand trying it. Silverbolt praised him for his restraint over the gestalt channel.   
  
“The timing seems kind of convenient,” Skydive pointed out. “Or, I mean inconvenient for us, maybe convenient for the Cons. Or someone else.”  
  
“Indeed,” said Vector. “Possible. And troubling.” His optics unfocused – or focused in a way none of them could understand. Perceptor leaned toward him so sharply he would have tripped if Drift hadn’t caught and held him.   
  
“Would you mind taking the discussion elsewhere?” Ratchet said testily. “I have patients to attend.”  
  
Vector’s attention seemed to return to the here and now. “Optimus, why don’t you use the Allspark to restore everyone at once?”  
  
Optimus gaped at him.  
  
“Because,” growled Ratchet, “if he tried, he’d also turn every computer and mechanical device in the embassy into microbots and whatever else; including the staff cars parked on the shady side.”  
  
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Cliffjumper.  
  
Ratchet rounded on him. “We salvaged a lot of our equipment from our ships. We do not have the infrastructure to replace it! And if the energy wave reached Wheeljack’s tower?”  
  
“Oh. Ack.”  
  
“Exactly.” Ratchet said. “And if  _that_  happened Perceptor’s head would probably explode.” Perceptor squawked in protest. Ratchet ignored him. “Haven’t we had enough of what happens when the power of the Allspark is misused?”  
  
Vector opened his mouth, then closed it. “Ah.”  
  
“It’s a worthy idea, Ratchet,” Optimus said. “Frenzy—”  
  
“Oh yes, let’s definitely follow in that little glitch’s footsteps. Get your hand off Springer’s foot, Optimus, or so help me…”  
  
Optimus removed the offending appendage hastily.   
  
“Springer would volunteer, you know,” said Chromia.  
  
“You are Not Helping,” Ratchet grumbled.   
  
“You just don’t want him to make you obsolete.”  
  
“Out!”   
  
“We still love you, Ratchet,” chorused the Lambo twins.   
  
Ratchet spun up the big saw blades on his left arm and the med-bay swiftly emptied.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 – August  
  
“Hello, Vector Prime.”  
  
“What gave me away?” Perceptor had seemed utterly immersed in his work, and Vector could move quite stealthily when he wanted to.   
  
“The slight disturbance in the quarternary chronion field whenever you move,” Perceptor said, looking up and smiling. “That and your reflection in the gallium oxide film on the solar array next to me.”   
  
Vector laughed. “I’ve come to distract you.”  
  
“Mmm. I am, as I said before, at your disposal.”  
  
“I am also here to fulfill my promise regarding the original methods of spark merging. Ratchet informs me your spark is recovered, but to be careful in the opening of the chamber as the patch won’t hold for strenuous… I believe ‘shenanigans’ was the term he used. For a merge the chamber merely needs to open to allow access to the spark. I foresee no difficulties.”   
  
Perceptor shut down his current experiment and set other processes to standby, then left a message on Wheeljack’s system to inform him of a two or three day absence.   
  
“Where would you like to go for the merge?” Vector asked, observing this with amusement. Perceptor cocked his head at him.   
  
“We…do not need to be beside the growth tank?”  
  
“No. I will carry the new spark the needed distance. Any place in this universe; I have never borne a new spark across universes. It might have unforeseeable consequences.”   
  
“Any place…any time?”  
  
“Hm. As long as we are careful. However, while it is possible – even necessary – for me to physically be in several places at the same time, it might complicate or even alter your lifestream if you were to appear concurrently with yourself. And Cybertron before the war was a busy world.”  
  
“I see. And the future holds its own perils.”  
  
“Indeed. There is still much to choose from.”   
  
“Yes.” The fins and flanges on Perceptor’s head waved gently as he considered. He looked up at Vector, suddenly hesitant. “Have you been to the Ardensahelian Ring Garden?”   
  
“I have heard of it, but never visited. It is said to be astonishingly beautiful.”  
  
“I…I think it is, yes.” Perceptor let Vector draw him close, holding on tightly as Vector drew Rhysling from his shoulder. “According to the notes I left myself, I went there once, when Beachcomber and I were students at Xenon University. But…”  
  
“But?”  
  
“I erased my memories to make room for a portion of the University Archive that had been hidden in Uraya when the war broke out.”   
  
“Oh, Perceptor.” Vector shuttered his optics and kissed Perceptor tenderly. Rhysling swung up—  
  
—and  _across_. Perceptor clung to Vector, every receptor wide open as Vector leapt into the rift, engaging his engines and sails smoothly as they tumbled into space on the other side. Above them a ringed planet superficially resembling Neptune hung like a sapphire, backlit by a planetary nebula. The rings were not composed of rock and dust and ices like those in the Solar system. They were a garden of deliberately arranged crystals and sculptures, and in the densest ring, which contained atmosphere of its own thanks to specially constructed force-fields, sessile life forms and water streams.   
  
Originally constructed by the oldest civilization in Galaxy 584-6-24, the garden was now maintained by a hegemony of cultures led by the semi-robotic, silicon-based Iess.   
  
Vector maneuvered them closer, contacting the local nets for an access permit, then scanning for a nice private space.   
  
 _On the far side,_  Perceptor said.  _There’s an icosahedron delineated by large corundum crystals at the nodes. The tour groups seem to be avoiding it._  
  
 **Hm. It’s on the night side. Perhaps that formation is preferred in sunlight for most species. Off we go, then.**  He took a polar orbit; the better to view a spectacular storm in the planet’s upper atmosphere. Swooping in and out of the rings, they caught wondrous glimpses of the different sections of the garden, Perceptor recording everything with childlike avidity.   
  
A languorous curve in trajectory brought them within the icosahedron. The corundum crystals glimmered in nebula-light, loosely joined to each other by a web of delicate bismuth filigree that would never support itself in even a light planetary gravity. Nanomaterials embedded in the web caused it to resonate with the planet’s electromagnetic field. Perceptor extended a hand and touched it. Music washed through his frame, haunting and eerie perhaps if human ears could hear it, but spellbinding to Cybertronian senses.   
  
 **A worthy eyrie,**  Vector thrummed, his transmitted voice in harmony with the lattice’s song.  **Thank you for suggesting this.**  He kissed Perceptor’s mouth, opening him with a tongue in place of an oral polyhedron, flexing their fields in subtle and grand ways, brushing fingertips over Perceptor’s sensory fins as they expanded and glowed, iridescent as his optics. Cables stroked Vector’s chest and he created ports, drawing them in, opening his side of the link through the skin of his arms and lips and hands, extending his sails slowly through the lattice.   
  
 **No full body-link, now,**  Vector said, smiling. Perceptor was too clever by half.  **Incompatible systems, remember?**  
  
 _Th-then how…?_  
  
 **Mmmshow you.**  Vector opened his chest, the parts of him that moved aside to reveal his strange spark extended to stroke Perceptor’s body. Perceptor shivered, wrapping his legs around Vector’s hips. He parted his armor, pressing against Vector eagerly, but he opened his chamber centimeter by centimeter, wary of the temporary repairs. Teal light danced over the crystals around them.   
  
Within the link, Vector guided him down to the fabric of the universe, not so different from how merges had gone before, though Vector’s ease and confidence altered the feel, allowing Perceptor to fully experience the pleasure, undistracted by fear.   
  
A space opened between/around them, inside their sparks, full of potential and potency, deep blue and hovering. Galaxies of stars whirled – no, sparks, not stars, and Perceptor’s mind was too orderly, the sparks arranged themselves in an infinite, hexagonal matrix, mirroring themselves, mirroring their progenitors, across the geometries of spacetimelove. There were so  _many_.  
  
 _Good heavens, I feel like a fish spawning._    
  
 **Now. Choose.**  
  
 _What? I want all of them…_  
  
Vector laughed, not unkindly.  **You have not tanks enough. Choose. This was the way: gaze upon the possibilities, then bring the desired spark to ignition.**  
  
 _Oh dear._  
  
 **We are not mammals. This is not the Discovery Channel. Bringing forth new life is an intrinsically conscious endeavor, a matter of _intention._**  
  
 _There are four empty tanks in Oregon._  The new person he and Borealis had sparked would decant soon, which would empty a tank if someone else wanted to use it.   
  
Laughing again, Vector acquiesced.  **Four then. Choose.**  
  
 _Don’t you want…?_  
  
 **I have done this before. Many times. You shall choose.**  
  
 _Bother. Very well…_  Once he looked at them properly, he could see how the threads of their two sparks had doubled themselves, combining in countless ways. Sparks that were, sparks that are, sparks that have not yet come to pass. Each one unique, haloed by the silvery haze of possibility.   
  
Perceptor let go of his expectations and the needs of his people pressing on him, let go of his ambition, his requirements and conscious logic. For just a moment, he let himself be Beachcomber-like and allowed his intuition – a strange, quicksilver thing in Cybertronians – guide him. Four sparks glowed softly, singing perhaps brighter than the others, spinning joy and playfulness with uncountable other things; we will adapt and thrive, they seemed to say. You will have wings, Perceptor thought, astonished, as they whirled into ignition, into the universe, and were gathered tenderly into Vector Prime’s chest.  
  
Bracing himself against the backlash, Perceptor nearly fell offline in surprise when there was none. Vector showed him the pathways, how the unleashed power was allowed to flow, but directed, around and back within, nourishing mechs and newsparks.   
  
 **Well done!**  
  
 _That…would not have occurred to me,_  Perceptor gasped as their systems wound down, their consciousnesses rising to normal levels like sleepy fish in a pond at dawn.   
  
 **It might have, given time,**  Vector said fondly, wrapping Perceptor tight in his arms.  **Recharge whilst I fly us home. This way is not entirely without cost, dear, lovely Perceptor.**  
  
 _Mmm,_  said Perceptor.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Optics take a long time to regrow on their own. They are more complicated than they appear, requiring exquisitely formed complexes of unusual alloys and crystalline structures. Ratchet and the other medics had been too busy to fuss at Prowl, and Prowl refused to go in to have replacements installed when there were so many others far more seriously injured.   
  
Eventually, Blades and Bluestreak would drag him into the med-bay, but until then Prowl navigated with perfect ease via his chevron and door-wings, and sometimes with the aid of optical feeds from Jazz or others.   
  
…  
  
The first thing Sam noticed as he climbed to the mezzanine for the meeting was that General Rutgens, an old Army warhorse, was a little white around the lips. It wasn’t the heat. The cooling units were going full bore, as they would all summer. Sam turned toward the hangar, wondering what had the General spooked.   
  
Prowl, who would be giving the debriefing, stood close to the railing, speaking with the General’s aide. The aide looked pale, too.  
  
"Dah!”   
  
Prowl turned his head, homing on Sam’s voice. "What is it, Sam?"   
  
"Okay, Prowl? I know you figured out humans like to make eye contact during a conversation, and that’s great. But, uh, not when you  _don't have any eyes!_ That's just creepy."   
  
"Hang on a sec," Windcharger said, and dashed off down the stem corridor. He returned a moment later with a length of the ubiquitous blue plastic tarp. "Here." He passed it to Prowl, who tied it like a blindfold, hiding the jagged, half-melted sockets.   
  
"Is that better?"   
  
"Yeah, thanks." It was still freaky how Prowl could navigate so well with his other senses, but at least his face looked less skull-like.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Everyone except Skyfire was finally out of CR or medically-induced stasis; and Ratchet and First Aid had nearly completed the massive repairs to Skyfire’s chassis. The big jet would be out and on the wing soon.   
  
The forecast predicted record-breaking heat, so every Autobot who had or could manufacture an excuse was up on the mesa top, basking.   
  
Smokescreen rolled over to warm his dorsal side, throwing a leg suggestively over Prowl’s midsection. “I wonder if Vector has ever gone through time just to shag all the Primes.”  
  
Mirage gave a sputter of laughter. "I asked him that very thing."   
  
Trailbreaker gaped at him. "You did not!"   
  
"What did he say?" asked Hound. He slipped a hand up under Mirage’s chest armor.   
  
"He said not all of them, because two of them - he wouldn't say which two - had peculiar notions regarding interface. And another three were, as he put it 'disagreeable gits.’”  
  
Laughter rippled and rolled across the plateau, following the waves of arousal originating first from Hound and Mirage but rapidly taken up by the rest.   
  
 _Is this going to be one of_ those _gatherings?_  Red Alert inquired, sitting up as if to leave. Inferno pulled him down.   
  
 _Yeah, Red. It surely is._  
  
…  
  
“Have you been half asleep/And have you heard voices?/I’ve heard them calling my name,” Borealis sang, just for a moment her voice transcending her basic singing program.   
  
On the north end of the mesa top, Borealis was teaching Silverbolt to waltz, playing Kenny Loggins’ version of  _The Rainbow Connection_  over her speakers. There were no proprioceptive files on waltzing, so they were creating one. Then Silverbolt could teach Skyfire, when he recovered.   
  
“Mmm,” said Beachcomber, from the edge of the mech-pile, with Tracks’ hands stroking his ankles and Tracks’ mouth on his neck cables. “Jets dancing.”


	70. Star Light, Star Bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Primes comfort Bolo, Prowl and Jazz get frisky and share their first memories, and Skywarp makes a request. ;D  
> Jazz shares Optimus' first memory with Prowl, Skyfire gets out of the med-bay finally, Vector Prime has a little chat with the Structies, and Borealis learns what the big deal about minicons is. ;D  
> Ironhide and Bee get frisky, which leads to Bee and Jazz getting frisky; Chromia takes action; Perceptor is vexed; Ultra Magnus et al leave Earth; Mez is almost caught; Perceptor and Borealis' kid decants; Hot Rod emerges - not exactly on schedule!  
> Hot Rod learns to swim, a theft is discovered, various new mechs decant and Perce and Comber start a new batch cooking.

2031 – August  
  
"But he's not answering comms," Springer said. "I just want to talk with him. Kup, come on! That's ... that's  _Lord Protector Alpha Trion!_  His defeat of the Penstirachtatoriafelexian fleet at Wrest gave us peace for 500,000 years! Don't you want to ask him anything?" Springer paused. Sometimes Kup's young body put him off, though you couldn't forget the old mech's age, not really. Kup wouldn't let you. "I guess you knew him, before, though, huh? You could ask him what it's like in the Allspark. I mean, you might find out any breem yourself, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared!" He danced away, anticipating a swing, but Kup merely glared at him.   
  
"Just leave him alone, kid."   
  
"No. Not alone." Vector Prime strode toward them from the hangar entrance, his skin blinding in the bright sunlight, Optimus beside him. The two Primes smiled at Kup and Springer but passed them, smoothly flanking the rusty-looking tank sitting low on its treads in formation with about a hundred others parked south of the embassy mesa.   
  
"Bolo," Optimus said, laying a hand gently on the tank's turret.   
  
Bolo transformed slowly, meeting no-one's optics, and with a flash of Rhysling they were gone.   
  
…  
  
A high plain, windswept by a deep blue sky, surrounded by bluer mountains made of enormous sapphire crystals. No organic life existed on the planet, according to Vector, save bacterial mats in the belt of shallow seas around the equator; and the nearest spacefaring species had not discovered this mineral-rich jewel yet. The vistas around them would remain unplundered for thousands of years.   
  
 **You have lost your Prime,**  Optimus rumbled low, pressing his forehelm to Bolo's,  **and I have lost my Protector.**  Bolo nodded and put his arms around Optimus, accepting the solace offered.   
  
Vector expanded as though drawing breath, and wrapped himself around them both.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
A few days later.  
  
“WHEN IT’S TIME TO PARTY WE WILL PARTY HARD!” Sideswipe hollered, and Oratorio cranked the music to eleven.   
  
Outside the embassy, the afternoon’s thunderstorm was in full cry; the sky green with heavy, bubbling clouds and alive with lightning. Not even Prime would go out in a storm like that. Not in root mode, anyway. The Autobots’ vehicle mode tires weren’t rubber, but they insulated like it.   
  
Behind thoroughly insulated med-bay doors, Ratchet completed the final microweld and stepped back.   
  
“There,” he said. “Reinitialize your primary optical system.”  
  
“Initializing,” Prowl said. The world around him bloomed into light and color, filling the shapes and shadows and low-rez images from his chevron and door-wings with their accustomed depth. “Testing.”   
  
Ratchet projected a standard holo pattern of 12th level complexity in all the wavelengths Prowl’s new optics had been designed to receive. Prowl’s chevron flicked upward in surprise. He was getting some high-edge radio as well as the near reaches of gamma beyond far ultraviolet. Polarization axes had also been expanded.  
  
“Ratchet, you’ve given me Seeker optics?”  
  
“Strake’s portside lenses were cracked,” Ratchet said. “While I was fabricating for that I thought I might as well use the design topmost on the queue for yours.”  
  
Mirage hopped down from the repair table where he had been curled up against Prowl’s back, out of Ratchet’s way. “Oh, Prowl, they’re lovely!” he said, leaning on Prowl’s knee. The new optics were larger and a cooler, more vivid blue – what the humans would call periwinkle. The larger optics would make Prowl’s rather severe face more appealing to the humans as well, though he would probably never make it to “cute.”   
  
“Thank you,” Prowl said, nodding to both Ratchet and Mirage, caressing Mirage’s helm. Mirage kissed Prowl’s fingertips then sauntered off to join the party.   
  
Ratchet ran one last diagnostic via cervical cable. “Do the socket modifications feel all right?” he asked, keeping the medical link wide open in case Prowl tried to disregard what might seem to him to be a minor discomfort.   
  
“Yes,” said Prowl. One corner of his mouth tugged upward slightly. Ratchet huffed at him and retracted the cable.  
  
“Fine. Dismissed. I have a lot of work on Skyfire yet to do.”   
  
“Thank you, Ratchet.”  
  
Leaving Thundercracker and Strake to their highly modified, 3D game of “Rivers, Roads and Rails” with the Protectobots, Prowl assumed his new alt mode. The Autobots had shed their Earth forms to reach the battle with Thunderwing on Mars, returning to Earth more alien, more Cybertronian than many of them had been for decades. Choosing utility over nostalgia, Prowl had taken the semblance of the Clark County sheriff’s new Search and Rescue-outfitted Subaru Forester.   
  
Tires quiet on the polished stone floor, Prowl rolled out into the storm, headed toward Nellis. Jazz, abandoning the party, slipped into his iridescent silver Audi R Zero form and followed.   
  
From Nellis, they took Lake Mead Boulevard to Northshore, then to Lakeshore and on to Nevada Highway, which sent them across the Hoover Dam bypass. Jazz hardly spared a thought for the buried chambers of the old Sector 7 base, wondering instead where Prowl was going. As usual, Prowl kept precisely to the speed of traffic when there was any, and to the posted speed limits when they were in incorporated areas. But down the long, deserted stretches of road, Prowl hunkered low on his wheels and accelerated, easily passing 100 mph despite his bulk. Jazz could ask, but it was nice for once just to drive; to feel the air and rain rushing over his body, his wheels shushing on the wet, black road, with a warm body beside him when the highway split into separate north- and southbound routes. The charge in the wind made him feel bright and alive and ready for anything. He’d find out where Prowl was going when they got there. Prowl didn’t seem to have any objections.  
  
They had left the storm behind and the afternoon light was beginning to mellow as they hung a left onto Interstate 40 in Kingman, Arizona, running south of the old Route 66. Jazz picked up the inevitable replay of the song on the radio but kept the volume down. Sunset saw them pass Petrified Forest National Park and on into New Mexico. At Albuquerque they turned north on 85, the Pan American Freeway. Night fell blue around them and the scrubby landscape; blue like Cybertronian nights had been, with two big moons and a glittering host of satellites.   
  
The full moon rose as they got onto Route 44 at Bernalillo. Jagged hills and low mountains lifted from the desert. Right on Route 4 at the dusty little town of San Ysidro, down to two lanes with a double yellow stripe, irrigated fields unexpectedly to either side. They were just outside the Santa Fe National Forest.   
  
Jazz considered the route. If they’d been heading for the Los Alamos lab, they would have stayed on the 85.  
  
Inside the forest, they drove along a sere little valley, a line of hills close on their left, a dry creek-bed hidden by tired-looking, almost leafless scrub and trees on their right, silvered in the moonlight. Left on Route 126. Always climbing. The air grew cooler, the trees more numerous, with a greater percentage of evergreens. North on the indifferently-graveled Forest Service Road 376. Now they were near the western border of the Valles Caldera National Preserve; a smallish supervolcano whose geologic heritage could be easily seen in satellite images. In daylight this area would be greener, the meadows frothing with pale wildflowers at this time of year. Clouds streamed across the sky, never quite hiding the moon.   
  
At last Prowl slowed and transformed, Jazz following. They walked across the valley meadow, wading the Jemez River – more creek than river, but water flowed, gurgling over red and buff stone – heading for a rhyolite lava dome furred with trees and grasses. As they climbed, Jazz caught the flicker of an expression on Prowl’s face.  
  
Was that a smile? Jazz grinned. A lot of mechs (and most humans) thought Prowl was hard to read. Life in the battalion had made him close in on himself, wielding his natural reserve like an active shield. His body language was subtle, Jazz felt, not absent.   
  
Rising from the top of the dome hill was a jut of red rock, smoothed by wind and winter ice. A reminder that the bones of this place lay close to the surface, only lightly hidden by its fragile green cover. Jazz scampered to the very top and sat on a ledge, dangling one leg, the other foot curled against the opposite knee. Prowl stood below and to one side, arms loose at his sides, gazing out into the long, curving valley to the east, the creek glimmering in gentle curves and wide loops along its floor. Heat sources among the trees edging the valley indicated sleeping elk.   
  
A good place to wait for sunrise, Jazz thought, pleased. Then he noticed Prowl had a target lock on his swinging foot.   
  
“Swear to Primus, you sure you never been an alpha-class?” Jazz said, stilling his foot despite himself. “That prey-drive…”  
  
“It is not prey-drive,” Prowl said, hastily cancelling the lock. Cybertronians had never hunted and killed for nourishment. They manufactured, mined or absorbed it directly from suns. He had merely been trying to calculate what Jazz would do if he yanked on that foot. Jazz was fast enough the grab might miss. Prowl might get swatted, kicked or jumped on, but getting shot was highly unlikely.   
  
“F’you say so,” Jazz said, smirking. He leaned back on his right arm, the left wrapping unconsciously about his midsection as his torso stretched.   
  
“Are you in pain?” Prowl asked softly.   
  
“No.” Jazz jerked his left arm away from his body. Then, reconsidering, placed his hand over the spot where Thunderwing had shot him. “Not physical pain,” he admitted. “It’s nothing. Those new optics look great. How they seeing?”   
  
“Both macro and zoom functions have been improved,” Prowl said, allowing the diversion for a moment. “Power consumption efficiency increased 44 percent. Mirage likes them.” He turned and looked up at Jazz. “Making light of your suffering does not always help to overcome it. You were killed, Jazz; that is no trivial matter.”   
  
“Yeah, well, being dead ain’t so bad; it’s the dying that ain’t fun.” For half a nanosecond he regretted speaking. At the other half he reckoned it was like talking about gestalts with Red in the room. Red was so far past his trauma the subject held no more and no less interest for him than for any other non-gestalted mech. Yet Prowl had only hung twenty-three years beneath his particular geas.   
  
Prowl levered himself up and settled close behind Jazz. “Ah. The view is better here.”   
  
“Right. Your head’s a whole meter higher than it was.” Prowl’s warmth felt good, though. And Jazz liked the way Prowl slipped one arm so gently around his waist, snugging him in closer, that hand covering the latest welds. He and Prowl were like the overlapping shields of a Greek phalanx. Thigh to neck; not just their own, but Prime’s, regardless of the height differences. Jazz placed his hand over Prowl’s, as he had on Mars. “Come seventy-seven years what will you do?”   
  
“Strake and Thundercracker’s parole will still be in effect. I must stay with them, unless Prime reassigns me.”  
  
“And after that?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“What? Mr. Predictive Software on Legs doesn’t have a plan for the next couple millennia?”   
  
“Will the war be over by then?”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
 _What if the Decepticons learn of spark merging? Right now Thundercracker and Strake think Prime is using the Allspark to kindle new people._    
  
“Which he is, sometimes.”  _TC’s said before the Cons have noticed there are unfamiliar faces in our ranks. Take a few thousand years to breed our numbers back up and then we have at it all over again. Primus that’s depressing._    
  
“It is. I don’t think Prime will let it happen again. I think he’ll …do something drastic before that.”   
  
“Yeah.” Jazz pressed his forehelm into the space between Prowl’s shoulder and cheek flange. “Yeah he will.”  _Question is, what?_    
  
 _Evac…Volant’s solution to Thunderwing comes to mind,_  Prowl whispered. Much as he tried to stifle it, a high, thin wail of fear threaded his subharmonics. Jazz hugged Prowl’s arm hard.  
  
 _Went right for the worst case scenario,_  Jazz said.   
  
 _You’ve thought of it as well._  
  
 _Yep. Means Optimus has, too. And he hasn’t told me, which means he’s keeping it the ace up his sleeve. I don’t like it any more than you do._  He drew away slightly to get a better look at Prowl. Prowl’s fields had drawn in tight, dampened as though he was trying to stealth. His chevron flattened against his helm and his door-wings canted downward at a deeply unhappy angle. “Listen,” Jazz said softly, stroking Prowl’s fingers. “Hey, we’ve got plenty of time to worry about that, yeah? Relax. Even Prime’s at a party tonight.”   
  
“Very well.” Prowl’s door-wings lifted, though not enough for Jazz’s liking.   
  
“I got a question for ya. Why’d you drive way the slag out here?”  
  
Prowl was about to answer, but paused. Jazz liked puzzles, liked figuring people and situations out for himself. And he liked games. “Why do you think?” Prowl asked, genuinely curious.   
  
“I’m guessing to get away from the party. But you could have holed up with Red in the security office like you usually do.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Maybe you also bailed to give TC and Strake and yourself a break from each other.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“Ah. Or you wanted somewhere peaceful to watch your first sunrise with the new optics.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Huh. And what else?”  
  
“I would be a poor prognostitician indeed if my own behavior was entirely predictable.”  
  
Jazz rotated his torso ninety degrees to stare at him. “You…”  
  
“I had a randomization subprogram pick a direction.”  
  
“So at each turn…”  
  
“Yes. Until we came to Albuquerque, at which point I felt the National Forest might be worth exploring. I have not been to this part of the planet before.”  
  
“You logically decided it was time to do something random.”  
  
The sequence of words seemed familiar. Ah. Not an exact match, but close. Miles had explained once that the proper response was to name the episode. “’The Galileo Seven’,” Prowl said.   
  
“Geek,” Jazz said, amused. He knew exactly who had coached Prowl on certain human behaviors and thought it was funny as slag.  
  
Prowl cocked his head slightly. “And also because you came with me.”  
  
Oh ho! Jazz grinned. “Why d’you suppose I did that?”  
  
“Primary hypothesis is curiosity. This is only 25% likely to be the sole reason, as you rarely miss parties, or leave alone once one has started.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  
  
“Secondarily; you enjoy your new alt mode and are pleased to employ it at any opportunity.”  
  
“You got that right. Sweet set of wheels is what I am, baby!”  
  
“I must admit I am at a loss as to what the other reason or reasons might be.”  
  
“Your voice, for one thing.”   
  
“My…”  
  
Jazz reached up and touched Prowl’s mandibular hinge. “You haven’t slagged it lately. After Mars? That gives Optimus a concern.”   
  
Prowl’s chevron flicked back then forward. He gazed out at the moonlit valley before them. “I don’t know what to think of Mars,” he said. “The Decepticons, Galvatron, this war, are becoming less and less…”  
  
“Sane?”   
  
“Comprehensible?”  
  
Jazz laughed. “All right. Fair enough.”   
  
“I have not…reverted. I understand that my former habits of self-harm are no longer acceptable.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
They settled again into companionable silence; watching the wheel of stars overhead, trying to feel the turning of the planet as deep-Seekers did. The wild, bright moon sailed westward, gathering clouds netting it with rainbows and silver veils. The clouds held Earth’s warmth and scents rose around them, filtering into the sensors in Jazz’s legs, sending their myriad data up through his body to rouse his CPU.  
  
“I also followed,” Jazz murmured, “because seventy-seven local years ain’t a long time. Didn’t want you thinking I wasn’t gonna like you until your sentence was up.” They’d learned better than to let opportunities escape. Long-lived as they were, time had become as much an enemy as the Decepticons.   
  
“Ah.” Prowl nodded slightly, and the end of the nod brought his lip components to within centimeters of Jazz’s right primary antenna.   
  
Jazz tilted his head, the complex, non-Euclidean geometries involved in Cybertronian intimacy swiftly and joyfully calculated in his CPU. Seven millimeters separated their mouths. Jazz liked the unbridged proximity, the potential. This state of not yet having kissed Prowl. Jazz lifted his chin slightly. Four millimeters. Water vapor in the air struck as steam off their bodies. Prowl’s face was shadowed but for the glow of his optics; Jazz felt the mass of him solid, warm, beside and around him, the hand at his waist shifting measure by measure upwards, fingertips stroking the small armor plates beneath Jazz’s chest.   
  
 _Aah Primus!_  Jazz moaned, protoform surging in a tide beneath armor, pulling Prowl’s face down that last distance to seal the old universe behind them with lips and minds and fields and open a new one. Just  _this_ , Jazz thought, throwing temporary firewalls between himself and his chronometer; just  _now_.  
  
They drowned the night in long, slow kisses, in hands moving like constellations in stately hours-long arcs. Their bodies bowed and swayed, balanced on the rhyolite spar as on the prow of a storm-flung seaship.   
  
Connection via cables, when it came, was going to be cosmically processor-blowing, Jazz knew. He partitioned charge, feeling little curls of plasma spin off his fingertips and antennae, and opened his ports, extending cables so hot they hissed on contact with the air.   
  
Prowl drew back. “Rangers,” he whispered.  
  
“Wha-?” Jazz dragged his processors unwillingly back to the outside world. What were humans doing out here so early? Oh. It wasn’t that early. Dawn had come and the morning waxed and waned and neither of them had been watching. “Slag.”   
  
They fled silently from the rhyolite hill, ghosting across meadow and stream to the road well behind the rangers’ jeep, and transformed, running their engines in stealth mode, softening their tires. Jazz laughed to himself. Sneaking home like a couple of human teenagers.   
  
…  
  
A sandstone butte across the road from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Perfection seemed to promise adequate cover.   
  
“Whoops,” said Jazz. “Boy Scouts.” The way they were digging it looked like they were hunting for fossils. Jazz wished them joy. “Topo map says there’s a gulley just big enough for you and me two klicks south.”  
  
“No,” said Prowl. “Cows.”  
  
“Huh,” Jazz grumbled. “Wouldn’t want to deep fry ‘em before their time.”   
  
…  
  
“Campers.”  
  
“You gotta be kidding me.”   
  
The end of summer vacation approached, and a lot of families were on the road. Prowl and Jazz contented themselves with riding each other’s bumpers, brushing side panels, meshing fields. Good fun at 120 mph, but more frustrating than satisfying.   
  
When they reached the embassy, Smokescreen intercepted Jazz to deliver a report on the goings-on there while the two senior officers were away. Prime was in New York attending meetings with the UN and other world leaders. Report completed, Smokescreen leaned conspiratorially on Jazz’s shoulder.   
  
“So. What were you two really up to out there in Santa Fe?”  
  
Jazz forbore to glare at him, maintaining a neutral expression. “What’s on the list?”  
  
“Covert ops at Los Alamos, covert shagging, PR stunt set-up, PSA filming, covert racing, tracking Lockdown, Something Sekret and Personal for Prime, and covert retrieval of a ‘happy fun-time organic sample’ for Perceptor.”  
  
“Tell ya what, Smokey,” Jazz said, pulling Smokescreen closer by his chest plate. “What you really oughta be betting on is whether Prowl can make it to the oil bath without getting tackled.”  
  
Prowl’s door-wings stood straight up as he considered his options for 0.08 milliseconds. Then he bolted for the bath at a flat sprint. Jazz retracted his toes and speed-skated after him.   
  
“That answers that,” Smokescreen said, grinning. He pointed at half the mechs in the hangar, and posted messages to a dozen more. “Pay up!”  
  
By the time Jazz cleared the end of the curve and came to a sliding halt on the ramp leading down into the bath, there were only ripples to show where Prowl had submerged. Jazz adjusted his visor and could see him quite plainly. The tactician was waiting for him on the bottom. Like a shark.   
  
 _Like I said,_  Jazz tight-beamed.  _Prey-drive. You walk into a room and first thing you think of is NOT “how shall I pose so Jazz cannot resist my hottitude.” No. You arrange an ambush!_  
  
Prowl surfaced, contrite. “I’m sorry. I did not intend it that way.”  
  
Jazz waded in, leisurely, watching the oil drip down Prowl’s upper body. “I’m teasing you, Prowl. Okay?”  
  
“…I see.”   
  
“Yeah, that is not the mood I want you in.” The slope of the pool set them on a good level to resume what they’d been doing in New Mexico.   
  
 **clang _CRASH!_**  This time it was Prowl doing the tackling.   
  
O Primus, Jazz thought, Prowl’s mouth on him, Prowl extending his neatly sharpened denta to draw patterns on armor, nibble on more delicate structures. Yeah, so good like this oh Primus yes. Jazz shivered, knowing Prowl would taste Prime’s metal on the edges of his armor. Jazz had sent Prime off to the East Coast with his own special kind of flourish. Everyone expressed their love and devotion in individual ways.   
  
Jazz laughed and moaned and shouted, sending tactical magnetic pulses through Prowl’s body, driving him wilder. Prowl clawed his own chest open, prominences from the spark corona writhing and snapping across Jazz’s fields.   
  
 _Want… Wannnt…_  Prowl growled, too far gone for coherence.  
  
Two million years of a passionate spark imprisoned. Jazz shuddered. Slag cables! By main strength Jazz pulled them up the ramp, mostly out of the oil, rolling them over. Straddling Prowl’s arching body, he ran his hands over Prowl’s gaping chest, dipping fingertips inside, hanging on tight with his legs as Prowl bucked.   
  
 _Never deny you this,_  Jazz said fiercely, the halves of his spark chamber springing apart eagerly, without reservation. Overload took them hard, stone and oil scorched, lightning-struck, thirty thousand amperes spinning them into the soothing dark.   
  
…  
  
 _That part, that little swirl, that was from mine,_  Jazz said, tracing the bright comet of metal on Prowl’s spark chamber with a fingertip and honed fields.  
  
 _Jazz._  Prowl jerked his armor and protoform wider, helm striking sparks from the stone floor.  _Jazz…_  Lapsing into formal Cybertronian with full harmonics and subharmonics, half singing as the name demanded. Jazz normally eschewed the complication, but Prowl’s formality wasn’t stuffy or tradition-bound. Prowl meant it in absolute honor, deepest respect and regard. It was his own hue of profound affection.  _Jazz…_    
  
And to hear Prowl, singing his name, delirious with longing, that predatory body spread beneath him open and vulnerable…   
  
 _Mmhmm,_  Jazz thrummed.  _Don’t be expectin’ restraint from me_ this _time either._  
  
…  
  
Jazz came online smooth and slow, easy as blues, with the goodly hot weight of a mech on top of him. They lay on the ramp near a wall, immersed up to Jazz’s audials. He kept his visor and optics off, enjoying the tactile sensations. Warm oil sloshing gently around his body. Light touches of fingertips around his helm and face, followed by the barely-felt slick drip of oil down from the touches. What on Earth was Prowl doing?   
  
Praxians were known for their even temperament and sound, practical logic. They did not, as a rule, dabble in the arts; happy to leave such endeavors – as most Cybertronians did – to the Towers. Wordlessly, Prowl lent Jazz his optical feed by way of explanation. The bathing oil, when overlaid on Jazz’s specially coated armor, created a vivid, swirling iridescence that was eerily luminous in the cavern’s dim light.   
  
Jazz kept whatever quips he might have composed regarding face-painting behind firewalls. He did not want Prowl to stop. Instead, he let his hands drift over Prowl’s sides, slipping in the oil, not questing for new places to delve but keeping to a slow rhythm, up and down, over the back, skimming the hips, deliberately avoiding for the moment door-wings and their attachments.   
  
 _First memory?_  he asked. It was a fairly common thing to exchange, the first time one interfaced with someone. Jazz had a trove of such treasures – even Perceptor’s, though only as filtered through Beachcomber’s recollection.   
  
Cables at last linked them as Prowl acquiesced, settling down through the layers of their minds.   
  
…  
  
5.2304 million years ago.  
  
“The  _Fission Blade_  is to be decommissioned and salvaged. The AI node designated ‘Lance’, sub-node of the AI lineage designated ‘Sigma-47’, is to be neither decommissioned nor dispersed to the nets nor reassigned to a new battleship. In consideration of numerous heroic actions and displays of unique personality algorithms, it has been decided that the AI node ‘Lance’ shall best serve the Cybertronian Empire by being embodied and kindled; forthwith to be programmed as a Counselor of Law; replacement for Heliodor of Praxus.”  
  
The old Counselor was retiring to the mining planet Arenest II, where he would supervise a section of automated equipment and drones, even engaging in physical labor himself if he wished. It was a common mode of retirement, respected and contemplative. Mining worlds and asteroids were often beautiful in their austere, peaceful way, and one could communicate easily enough with friends throughout the empire via subspace. Heliodor even now was being feted and congratulated on his decision.  
  
But, Lance thought, I don’t want to be embodied. I want to be installed on one of the new Laser-class cruisers. He erased the quantum tunnels of the thought immediately, though the sentiment would reappear in his algorithms fourteen more times before they brought the logic sink aboard the  _Fission Blade_ ’s listing hulk to take him away.   
  
…  
  
Echo of thunder chest hot heavy compact solid center of gravity wrong wrong all wrong legs feet only two when he was used to five sets of landing gear hands so isolated single pair of stereoscopic optics field of vision so narrow so alone alone alone  _alone_!  
  
“Easy there, easy, we’ve got you.”  
  
“I’m going to connect via cervical cable, all right?”  
  
Something clicked in his neck and the world expanded sight broadened four other minds enfolded him – only four! – Heliodor’s former cohort – and encouraged him and gave him images of his new self the new body they’d had built for him; slim and tall, black and gold, with golden sensory vanes fanning out from the elegant central processor cooling vent on his forehelm. The expression on that unfamiliar face was one he recognized, he thought, but everything was happening so slowly…  
  
“Welcome! Come down, yes one foot at a time, very good, gently now.”  
  
“Slag I wish they didn’t throw them in so fast, poor thing.”  
  
“No, it’s better this way. You know AIs think ten times faster than the embodied. See? Just like Spiral did, he’s picking it up already.”  
  
“Yes, Aequitas, ha ha, I remember.”  
  
“What’s your name, young one? You can choose a new one – we didn’t think you’d want to be called ‘Lance’ any more. Spiral here used to be an AI, too, so it’s all right, you’ll be fine. We understand.”   
  
Step by step they were leading him from the Simfur temple, towards the shining road that would take them south to Praxus. Home. He’d never had a home before, unless one counted Cybertron as a whole. No hangar would ever equal the reaches of space.  
  
He looked down at his hands. Black enamel palms, fingers sheathed in sensitive bronze, brightly polished. “We…I…  _I_  would like to be called Warrant.”  
  
“Mmm, nice!” said Spiral, winking.   
  
Aequitas, now the cohort’s senior partner, took his hands and leaned close to touch forehelms. “Welcome to our cohort, Warrant.”  
  
…  
  
2031 - August  
  
 _Oh man, ooh man,_  Jazz whimpered.  _Your first body was hot, too!_  He wriggled and snuggled against Prowl’s chest, marginally overheated.  _Didn’t Aequitas go the other way, later? He had himself copied as an AI, after the war started._  Spiral and the others, and Aequitas’ embodied self were all dead. Jazz sometimes found he knew things like that, even when he had not intended to access his memories of his span within the Allspark.  
  
 _Yes._  Prowl knew who he had lost with his city-state. Jazz squeezed him gently.  
  
 _Last I heard, one of the neutral groups had one of his sub-nodes. They got away clean, far as I know, Prowl._  
  
 _That corresponds with the information I have,_  Prowl said, nuzzling Jazz’s helm.  _Your turn._  
  
…  
  
9 million years ago.   
  
 _Aaaahhhhh mmmm warm hello sunlight! Hello platform! Hello feet! Hello gravity! Hello world! Optics – hello optics! – on, that’s better. Oooohh, hello there, Legs! I mean Optimus Prime!_  
  
The beautiful silver-blue mech handing him down from the kindling platform laughed – a wonderful sound that thrilled through every circuit. His larger twin, silver and steel, pretended to glower but winked to give the game away, knowing himself to be a little bit frightening. Lord Protector Megatron. Mmmmm, another kind of thrill. The Lord and the Prime were new, too, themselves only kindled a few orns ago.   
  
“My name’s Jazz!” Jazz sang, slipping into the immensity of Cybertron’s communications nets. “I’m your information-gatherer/companion/party host/spy/partner in emotional tension-easing mischief/secret bodyguard/other things!” He swarmed up the Prime’s body, wrapped his arms around Prime’s neck and kissed him. Hello kissing!  
  
“You certainly are,” Optimus Prime said, laughing again.   
  
…  
  
2031 – August  
  
“Hello, kissing,” Prowl murmured and put the idea into practice, kissing the mouth that had been designed for kissing Prime. He meant to ponder a translation for Jazz’s original function, but Jazz’s hands wandered cleverly and the kiss lingered. Jazz hummed into his mouth, petting his door-wings. Prowl was about to open his spark chamber again when they heard heavy footsteps stumping down the ramp.  
  
Ratchet shuffled by them, energy signatures almost nonexistent. A little smear of energon had dried on his face.  
  
“Ratchet?”  
  
“’M fine,” Ratchet said, trundling into the bath. “Just wanted to soak a minute. Skyfire’s repairs are done.” He submerged, sinking to the bottom, crouching there, letting the heat seep into his joints.  _He’s in recharge now, will be for a couple of days I think. And yes I told Silverbolt already._  
  
 _I think old doc-bot could use a snuggle,_  Jazz tight-beamed to Prowl. Prowl’s engine revved and he sat up. Jazz pushed him back down.  
  
 _No, no, lean back like this…right, and pull one knee up…yeah. It’s sexy, trust me!_  
  
Prowl lifted an orbital ridge but did as he was told. The pose did draw the optics to the chest.   
  
(The Protectobots had found that moving their armor and protoforms in an approximation of human respiratory effort was deemed by most of the other Autobots to be shockingly erotic. Then Streetwise had commented on Hot Spot’s “heaving bosoms” and the whole experiment had dissolved into howls of laughter for a solid fifteen minutes.  
  
Making a determined effort, Prowl managed to set that memory aside.)  
  
When Ratchet emerged from the oil, Jazz and Prowl looked like they were ready for a mechaphile magazine’s centerfold photo shoot.  
  
“Jazz…” Ratchet was practically stumbling with weariness. He wasn’t unwilling – far from it – he just really needed to shut down for a few hours.  
  
Surging to their feet, Jazz and Prowl locked their forearms behind his waist and pulled Ratchet’s arms over their shoulders. “Hush,” Jazz said. “Hush. We’ll take care of you, Ratch. You don’t have to do anything.” They maneuvered him with military precision into the med-bay and onto a recharge berth, configuring it for three and climbing up to join him.   
  
Cables slithered, armor slid and clanked, sparks whirred lullabies. Prowl cupped Ratchet’s helm, pressing his other hand flat against Ratchet’s chest, conscious of the forging of those hands as Ratchet pulled the one on his chest up to nibble the fingertips. Hands, spark chamber, optics.  
  
 _Prowl, my dear friend,_  Ratchet said, kissing the hard angle of Prowl’s cheek flange. He knew how to use full harmonics, too.   
  
“D’awwww. Sweet recharge, us!” Jazz sang, and flooded the link with everything he and Prowl had felt and thought and said and done over the past day and night.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Starscream,_  Skywarp warbled, pulling himself closer, rubbing their cockpits together. Not quite fully out of recharge.  _Starscream, I don't want a third._    
  
 _Mmwha?_    
  
Skywarp tucked his head into Starscream's neck.  _I don't want a third anymore. We don't need one. It was just you and me at first, remember? Before he came out of CR. Just you and me were good enough to beat everyone else in the air._  Gloomy old TC had been a weight on their wings for millennia. They were better off without him, and anyway, Skywarp liked having Starscream to himself. He went on before he lost momentum.  _We could go get upgrades. Galvatron is so wrapped up in Shocky's toys he won't notice we're gone. There's this guy on Sheol; he pretends to be Neutral, even sometimes wears the Autobrand, but really he's a Con. He's a genius, always has new designs nobody's seen or used before. When we got back, Galvatron wouldn't know what our new limits were; we'd have the advantage! Please, Starscream? Please? You have to take over soon! Galvatron's going to get us all killed, and Shockwave doesn't care about anything but that thing he's building._    
  
 _Hm. You really have been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you? For you,_  Starscream murmured, petting Skywarp's helm indulgently.  _I’ll give it some thought, too, shall I?_

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

 

 

_Alegria  
I see a spark of life shining   
Alegria   
I hear a young minstrel sing   
Alegria   
Beautiful roaring scream   
Of joy and sorrow,   
So extreme   
There is a love in me raging   
Alegria   
A joyous,   
Magical feeling_

\--Cirque du Soleil

  
  
_2031 – August  
  
“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”  
  
 _? Oh._  
  
“Ratchet’s still off. Easy. We could just—”  
  
“Switch tables.”  
  
“Mmmhmmm!”  _I have another memory you might like, if you’re interested._  
  
 _Yes?_  
  
 _How about Optimus’?_  
  
 _!!!_  
  
 _Hehehe! Thought so._  
  
 _You knew him from his beginning, you’ve been close to him for your entire life._  _Prowl made no effort to conceal his envy, though it was softened now by his own relationship with Prime and the pleasant warmth of post-interface base-state.  _  
  
 _Mmhmm,_  _Jazz purred, smirking.  _ _Kiss me and I’ll share._    
  
_Prowl tilted his head, lowering his face slowly towards Jazz’s. Their lips brushed, clung, slid, mouths opening, internal fields unfolding in complex geometries of heat and want, whorled by their oral polyhedra. Prowl cradled Jazz’s helm with one hand, sliding the other down Jazz’s chest, fingertips rubbing the still-warm central seam. Jazz moaned, arching under the touch. Prowl maneuvered a little, turning them on their sides, never breaking the kiss, but aligning their chests more closely. He tipped his head the other way, until their helms were parallel, straight on – and extended his chevron forward and out, until the hot crimson tips, glowing, touched the winglike, beautiful silver swooping shapes of Jazz’s main antennae. Controlled feedback crackled across their armor, tickling deeper structures, as the sensory load grew, fractal-fine and heavy as worlds their senses overlapping, a synaesthesia of pleasure and curiosity and fundamental longings and sheer, overwhelming physicality.   
  
As Jazz lay there twitching, a silly little grin on his face, Prowl pinged him a query. He really wanted that memory.  _  
  
 _Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuh!_  _Jazz whimpered. __I see. Okay. I gotcha. You could tell me twice if you wanted, but I doubt I could stay conscious for the end. Here…_  
  
…  
  
9 million years ago.  
  
_

 

 

Connection / Threat assessment 0.02 percent  
Twin hands touching / Touching hands twin  
Self Optimus / Self Megatron  
Initiating contact access granted  
Brother Megatron Lord Protector / Brother Optimus ir-Prime  
Together we  
Spark loss Volant / Occasion of building kindling   
Grieving Cybertron world people / Grieving Alpha Trion   
Together we / Forever we  
Within acceptable parameters  
Agreed.

_  
_  
Passage of 0.000263 astroseconds. Optics lighting, meeting optics, brother-twin taller; warmth of air/kindling platform. Hands reaching toward them, beckoning, faces surrounding.  
  
“Prime. Lord.” Voices murmur, welcoming. Waves of hope and gladness sailing from the crowd like great wings – concepts and words alight in his mind, though he has not yet seen these things. Ah, there are wings folded across the shoulders of some who watch, including Lord Alpha Trion, who takes their hands now, leading them down from the platform, from the weight and warmth of the Allspark behind them.   
  
Names appear beside faces: Lever, Faience, Machicolation, Tabulus, Funicular, Susurrus, Skyfire, Nonsequitur, Semblance, Ratchet, Brimstone, Ironhide, Magnus, Thundercracker, Circumlocution… He looks out among the crowd, finding he knows every name, can call up basic information on nearly all of them. They are all so beautiful - he loves them individually and collectively. He loves this metal ground his tender feet walk upon, he loves the hands and the sparks that connect him to his brother, he loves the air vibrating with symphonies of voices, and beyond the air, the immensities and the stars, each with their own voices, too.   
  
…  
  
Prowl curled around Jazz, holding him tenderly like a precious thing, not fragile but necessary for vital function.   
  
 _Nice, isn’t it,_  Jazz hummed very quietly, stroking Prowl’s helm. Ah, Prowl, so easily affected; though Prowl didn’t seem to feel this was a vulnerability, not a weakness. It was a treasure, not to be hoarded and guarded, but shared, worn openly, as his love for Prime always had been.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Silverbolt?_  
  
 _I’ll be right there, Ratchet!_  
  
…  
  
The cloud mind enveloped his consciousness as he came online. Relief, affection, gentle teasing, and brightest, rowdiest of all the overlapping, entwined thoughts of the Aerialbots.  _Skyfire! Skyfire! Skyfire!/Knew you’d be all right!/Pff! Needs to learn not to lead with his chin./Scared us half to the Pit!/Love you, slag it…_  
  
“Oof! Ow, Silverbolt, easy.”  
  
“I’m so sorry! Ratchet!”  
  
“If you could possibly refrain from crushing him for a week or two, his self-repair systems will have time to heal the welds.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean stop altogether,” Skyfire said, pulling Silverbolt back into his lap.   
  
“Sparks fly when deltas meet.” Ratchet chuckled the old adage and left them, slipping into the growth tank chamber to check on Evac and Blades’ progeny. Skyfire made a rude gesture at Ratchet’s back, but his expression was affectionate.   
  
Silverbolt gingerly traced a weld seam on Skyfire’s chest. “Are you going to go as a zombie this Halloween?”  
  
“What? You’ve been on this planet too long. When are you leaving?”  
  
“Soon.”   
  
“Oh. Of course.” The dismay Skyfire tried to hide beneath joking nonchalance was transmitted in full force through his harmonics and subharmonics. Deltas rarely spent much time down gravity wells, though being part of a gestalt meant Silverbolt had slightly different programming and had adapted to living with his shorter-range brothers. Parting was an assumed element of their relationships and interactions. That didn’t mean it made them happy.  
  
Silverbolt leaned in, pressing his mid-helm buttress to Skyfire’s.  _Ultra Magnus and Kup want to leave soon, to harry Jhiaxus and Bludgeon and Turmoil if we can. Elita’s team nearly has the last of Shockwave’s drones cleaned up. They finally found and demolished the fabrication site!_  
  
 _I suppose Chromia has thrown a rod because she missed that?_  Skyfire chuckled, tilting his head slightly so their lip components brushed.   
  
“Mmm. The only reason you didn’t hear her, even in stasis, is because Ironhide and Arcee and Fireflight have been very busy distracting her.” Silverbolt rubbed his cheek flange against Skyfire’s. They fanned their sensory fins toward each other, waving gently, stroking delicate edges, their fields meshing and interfering in a slow rise of heat. Skyfire cuddled Silverbolt closer, welds be fragged.   
  
“How soon?” Skyfire asked. He touched and tapped his temporal vanes to Silverbolt’s helm, catching on a cheek flange, tugging a little, then disengaging to press a tiny kiss on Silverbolt’s mid-helm buttress tip.   
  
 _Not today,_  Silverbolt hummed low.  _Not tomorrow. Mmmm. Week or two. Magnus wants to make sure the ship’s fully charged, moved it out to the Earth-Sun L4._  
  
 _Ratchet’s going to let Kup get away without taking his progeny after all, eh?_  
  
Silverbolt grinned, and kissed Skyfire’s shoulder.  _The Wreckers aren’t going to sit around for two years when there are Decepticons out there getting away with who knows what kind of mayhem; they’d go crazy._  
  
 _I suppose we have been lazy, sitting around down here with the humans…_  
  
 _Hardly!_  Silverbolt knew there were mechs – including Slingshot – who thought the Autobots and Prime were wasting their time on Earth. They should have left as soon as they’d chased the Cons off Mars; maybe to make of themselves a more tempting target, so that the Cons would leave Earth alone. Take the fight back to their own galaxy where it belonged. Especially now that the humans were better able to defend themselves. Sure, before Mission City, a handful of Cons could have ended human civilization even without a battleship, but now? Maybe not. Once Shockwave got whatever he was building up and running, that would be trouble. But if the remaining Autobots concentrated their numbers and firepower on Chaar, maybe they could keep old Shocky from even completing whatever it was.  
  
It was almost, it suddenly occurred to Silverbolt, like Prime himself had formed a splinter group of neutrals, sick of the war, sick of what they’d become. He tight-beamed the thought to Skyfire.  
  
 _Yes. I agree,_  Skyfire said, nodding. Up to a point. _Prime is yet willing to fight, as are most of the rest of us. Our stance has shifted very dramatically to the defensive, though._  
  
 _Not Elita’s._  
  
 _No. It will be interesting to see if the Decepticons leave Cybertron abandoned long enough for Perceptor to put his plan into effect._  
  
Silverbolt grinned, hugging Skyfire again a little tighter than he ought to.  _To have a sun again! Perceptor and Hound built a sim of what it will look like, orbiting Alpha Centauri B – the nights, Skyfire! The long blue nights for half the year! So beautiful!_  
  
 _And the days, more to the point,_  Skyfire said, chuckling. Earth’s sun still felt too young, too bright to him. Alpha Centauri B had the decency to shine a little less exuberantly, its dimmer, more orange light easy on the optics.   
  
 _Yes,_  Silverbolt murmured. Sunrises and sunsets. He wondered if Skyfire would stay to help rebuild, or if, released from any tactical duties, he would flee to the outer volumes of unexplored space, other galaxies, and lose himself in his primary programming again. Except that, technically, Skyfire had only recently come back from a twelve-thousand year long search mission. It might be another century or more before the deltan native restlessness stirred in his spark. In any case, Silverbolt meant to make the best use of whatever time they had left together.   
  
Deltas generally packed nearly as much sensory equipment in their hands as their heads. Skyfire ran fingertips over Silverbolt’s helm, tangling in secondary antennae, sweeping across shoulders and out to wing-segment edges, petting and stroking, sending and receiving, firmly sliding over space-hardened armor, dipping into the spaces Silverbolt widened to admit them. Silverbolt made small hums and whirs, nuzzling Skyfire’s mouth open, oral polyhedron rolling to send their internal fields whirling, the feedback singing softly in their CPUs. Skyfire wished he could say he wanted to go with Silverbolt and the others. He wanted to stretch his senses out beyond the confines of a single solar system. But he had work to do here. Good work. And someone had to help Wheeljack keep Perceptor from overworking himself, or getting too crazy with the theoretical physics.   
  
They fanned their cooling and sensory vanes out around each other’s helms, central buttresses bumping, letting their medial mandibular hinges tap and slide, cheek guards and flanges slipping with a cool metallic hush, almost lost in the small array of sounds their facial components made as they moved, alloy tesserae shifting against one another. They kissed as their mouths happened to be in alignment, the rubbing of vanes more stimulating at the moment than kisses, soft hisses of minute hydraulics, cooling fans whirring to life in their throats and chests and helms. Little pecking kisses punctuated with soft hums and moans and chirrs that weren’t really much like any sounds any creatures that had evolved on Earth had ever made.   
  
Silverbolt initiated cables with some reluctance. He was afraid of hurting Skyfire again. Spark-to-spark contact seemed out of the question, though he supposed he could comm Ratchet to find out for sure, but it was up to Skyfire in any case.   
  
Skyfire accepted the cables and the link, letting his restlessness diffuse across. Was he repaired or not? He was. He was refueled, recharged, the welds were Ratchet-welds; they would hold through strenuous aerobatics, though they might pain him. He wasn’t going to fall apart any second. He wanted air, sky, to taste distant thunderstorms and look up through the veils of atmosphere to the stars who were always there, always his guides and companions. As usual he only spared the slightest of calculations for whether there were any humans or human-run machines about that might spot them if they went outside. Silverbolt laughed.   
  
“Come on. Ratchet didn’t say you had to stay aberth.” Silverbolt tugged Skyfire upright and off the repair table. “I have something to show you.”  
  
They flew to the mesa top, Silverbolt watching Skyfire’s leap and engines with first trepidation and then relief. Skyfire landed solidly, if a bit more carefully than usual.   
  
“Now,” Silverbolt said, taking Skyfire’s hands and drawing him to the center of the mesa. For a wonder no one else was up there. No, not a wonder; Trailbreaker had sounded the alert as he’d seen the deltas leave the embassy hangar. Whomever had been up here had courteously abandoned their perch to let the deltas play. For a while at least. The other Aerialbots were out flying Earth’s blue, blue skies, but there was a limit to their forbearance. “Place one hand on my shoulder and the other on my upper hip guard. Yes, like that.” Silverbolt did the same, arranging his hands the opposite to Skyfire’s, drawing their bodies closer. He offered an arm cable. Skyfire raised an optical ridge but accepted the brief proprioception data transfer. “The rhythm is one two three, one two three, one two three… scan my feet… we’ll make small circles…”  
  
Skyfire watched Silverbolt’s face as Silverbolt taught him how to waltz. Shining with amusement and pleasure at showing the elder seeker something new, something Skyfire hadn’t known already, whole internet downloads notwithstanding. The file Silverbolt had created with Borealis’ help was new; made as a gift specifically for Skyfire. Silverbolt was happy to present Skyfire with a bit of anthropological data, the kind of thing Skyfire had studied in cultures across their home galaxy eons ago, before the war. And the younger jet was also inexpressibly glad to have Skyfire out of CR, out of recharge, on his feet again, after the terrible wounds inflicted on him by Thunderwing. Bleeding out obviously wasn’t always fatal, and memory cores weren’t volatile, but it was hard on all a mech’s systems, and as Air Raid had pointed out, refueling a mech Skyfire’s size had taken quite a while.   
  
Skyfire was sorry to have worried everyone so, but the blow he had intercepted would have killed Nightbeat, shattering the young mech’s much smaller frame, breaching a spark chamber hidden behind much thinner layers of armor and protoform. And Evac’s death had shown them what happened to sparks entangled as progenitor and progeny’s were, when one was extinguished. If Nightbeat had been killed, Prowl and Hound would have gone down like Blades, but might not have gotten up again so readily. Foolish. Skyfire understood the population pressure completely, but the method Prime and the others had chosen was staggeringly risky.   
  
They danced. Rio sent them music – lively waltzes first, then ones where the tempo changed, even cheekily slipping in Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre as a nod to Silverbolt’s line about zombies. Then slower and slower they turned, recalling the scale of galaxies, hurtling through spacetime as they were, yet tens of millions of years in each revolution. Holding each other closer with each turn, in defiance of centripetal physics. A pair of suns coalescing, then, sparks bright in their cocoon of dark matter. Silverbolt let slip his curiosity regarding merges, shivering with a blaze of embarrassment, expecting or half-expecting a half-life of scorn or pity or perhaps worst yet, a sad shaking of Skyfire’s pale helm.  _  
  
 _Too dangerous,_  _Skyfire murmured, his harmonics calm, unperturbed by any of the things Silverbolt was afraid of. __When the war is over; ask me then. Ask me again. It’s too soon for me. Yes, even Vector’s way. I’ve been listening all this time but I don’t know how the others are wrapping their processors around this. Prime could be our Allspark now, we don’t need to risk ourselves. I make Ratchet angry, thinking that. Prime chose. I don’t know, Bolt. It’s too soon._  
_  
Silverbolt was hard pressed to conceal his elation. Skyfire hadn’t said definitively no! It was something.  _  
  
 _Short flight?_  S_ilverbolt suggested, nipping and kissing at Skyfire’s lips, holding his hands warm against Skyfire’s chest between them, between their sparks. An acknowledgement of Skyfire’s wishes and fears, an agreement, from someone who was afraid, too. _  
  
_Halfway to the moon? It’s directly overhead._  
  
 _Yes!_  
_  
Still in robot mode, they engaged their engines; Skyfire warming his systems up cautiously, slowly, running the checks repeatedly and watching the feedback. Not that Ratchet would have let him out of stasis for anything less than full function. Still holding hands, they lifted off the mesa top, toes curling into protective shapes, legs held at careful angles to avoid the exhaust fires which the humans thought looked like afterburners but weren’t. The deltas’ engines were far too efficient than to need afterburners. Holding hands, they spiraled up into the darkening sky, through the thinning veils of air and wind, up through the Heaviside Layer, past the ionosphere, feeling the temperature gradients only vaguely as they continued to kiss and nudge and nuzzle, fins stroking vanes, living plumage, wick and sensate, not dead protein.   
  
Gravitational awareness swept outward like wings from their bodies as they rose, holding hands, into the black, feeling their way, among planets, between themselves, until they found that resting spot, the easy little nest where the faint forces could rock them gently to and fro, neither tugging perilously into freefall nor ejecting from the swing and plunge of the harmonically tuned system. Gravity as music, as color, as textures. The true mass balance point of the Earth-Moon system was inside the volume of the Earth, but there were other resting places, nearer the Moon, where they could hold one another in that silvery light, bodies gleaming, armor bright, optics for each other alone, just for a little while.   
  
White and silver curled around each other in the starlight, meshing their complicated shapes – now the sharp angles and narrow gaps in their structures gave them handholds, footholds, anchors in one another as they slowly spun, giggling with inertia. Cables drew them closer yet. They flew into the cumulonimbus nebulae of their minds; tumbling, rolling somersaulting, spinning, whirling, dancing; freer than immense, heavy bodies could be, powerful engines and arrow-dynamic design notwithstanding. They closed and opened wings of memory, of shared equations of energy and light and flightpaths, the depthless quantum singing of the universe, the ringing, thrumming songs of stars.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
He stood on the copper disk of the sun, his solar sails rustling on his shoulders and flanks, restless to extend, to taste the currents of air in this place. Safeguard coiled on his wrist and forearm, the minicon’s own senses unfurled to admire the workmanship.   
  
The thirteen planets of Cybertron’s home system moved around him, suspended three meters above the floor by AG fields, set on courses logarithmically scaled and delineated by hematite inlays of mathematical poetry – including some of Borealis and Perceptor’s web-published exchanges. Tread and Trample had compromised. The planets, also logarithmically scaled, were composed of melted stones – mostly granites – reshaped to resemble their inspirations, most of them tiled with metal leaf for the cities; Cybertron itself a puzzle-sphere of alloyed complexity. Vector Prime noted all six original moons were represented. The system as it was during the time of the Firstforged.  _  
  
_Crystalline trees lined the outer wall of the cavern, light sources at their bases casting lacy shadows across the domed ceiling. The mosaic floor shifted colors depending on what spectrum one viewed it in; more poetry in arrays of glyphs glowed from a dark background in ultraviolet, fluorescing when the light from the trees passed through the proper wavelengths.  
  
“Who are you?” The unmistakable sounds of weapons systems powering up accompanied the voice, echoing from all three arched entrances to the cavern, though none of the Constructicons had stepped into the tree-light.   
  
“My name is Vector Prime.”  
  
“Liar.”  
  
“Hmm. Are you scanning what I’m scanning?” _  
  
_“You don’t think…?”  
  
“He’s found us, we should kill him.”  
  
Safeguard shifted slightly on his wrist, but Vector kept his hands at his sides, watching calmly as Scrapper and Hook ventured forward, Scavenger and Mixmaster following a little behind. The other four remained in the tunnels, target locked.   
  
“How did you find us?” Scrapper growled, keeping his pistol aimed at the intruder’s helm.   
  
“The humans are quite good at detecting and triangulating vibrations in their planet’s crust. The Autobots have therefore known where you are for some time as well.”  
  
“What do you want?” Hook asked.  
  
Vector watched the planets as they passed through a particularly lovely configuration. “Such beauty. I am glad your creative impulses remain unrestrained.” He looked at Hook. “If Cybertron could be given a sun again, would you be interested in participating in such a project?”  
  
The Constructicons stared at him.   
  
“I am here to convey the offer. The Autobots are proceeding in any case. It is your choice.”   
  
Faster than even Rampage could track, there was a flash of light and the strange intruder was gone. Over the gestalt channel, an argument began that would rage for months.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}> _  
  
_“May I accompany you?” The vivid minicon, Orris, darted out of Wheeljack’s tower and flew to Borealis’ face-height, hovering there as Perceptor and Wheeljack maneuvered the prototype gate-field emitter through the door.  
  
“Of course,” Borealis said. The minicons had helped build the thing, it made sense at least one of them would want to come along when Borealis and Skyfire took it out beyond the Oort for secondary testing.   
  
Orris grinned when the big delta failed to offer her arm or bare a helm port. “You’ve never emplaced a minicon, have you.”  _  
  
“Oh! Um, well, no.”_ She had the basic historical files, with a lot filled in by Mirage’s stories and anecdotes from Bee and Jazz and others, but she knew very little concretely about the minicons. Orris landed on her shoulder and tapped her helm next to the primary cephalic data port. She irised the port open, only a microsecond of hesitation flickering across her CPU. Cephalic ports were – in her experience – only used during hardcore medical procedures.  _  
  
_Orris was glad it was him, not Pulse, initializing this bulk. Pulse wasn’t the most patient mech and could get grumpy when people didn’t follow directions exactly and immediately. __Don’t worry,_  _Orris tight-beamed. It won’t hurt a bit, I promise. He transformed slightly, wrapping himself around the curve of her temporal flanges like a bright blue dragonfly decorating herhelm, jacking in gently and opening the link slowly, letting her get used to that level before settling into fully bonded mode.   
  
It was like most cable links, Borealis thought, reassured, not certain what she’d expected. Then the constraints fell away, and the universe leapt into clean focus as if she was borrowing Perceptor’s optical feed. Every sensor’s range and accuracy increased, minor static interference in her CPU smoothed away, her fuel systems ran more efficiently. Another mind settled beside hers, sharing knowledge and perspective so smoothly it didn’t feel like an other at all. More like an always-locked door had been opened in a mansion she had grown up in, revealing immense arrays of chambers she’d never known were there but now comprehended intimately, down to the last word in the last volume on the library shelves. _  
  
 _It is a bit like gestalt,_  _came a thought through her wonder – from herself or Orris she wasn’t sure. __Oooohhhhh!_  
  
_ She transformed, leaning forward and stretching and tucking bits in and she’d never felt so sleek and catlike, sheathed in power before. Wheeljack and Perceptor loaded the prototype into her forward cargo pod, Perceptor chirping her a data packet of painfully detailed instructions before he headed back inside Jack’s tower to get to work on the next set of plans. Wheeljack waved as she taxied down the tower path to the embassy road, warming her engines for takeoff. Skyfire was already at the test radius, canoodling with Silverbolt while they waited, but one could hardly blame him.  
  
Oh, she could do VTOL, but it sucked power like a sumbitch; if she had a runway she’d take it. With Orris bonded, though, she was tempted to jump for it.Madre de Dios, this feels amazing, Orris! _  
  
 _It does,_  _Orris said, a smile in his transmission. __That’s why there have been periods when my people have had to fight not to be considered valuable accessories. And why Megatron wanted all of us captive. And why we left the war, the planet, early._  
  
 _Holy crap. I guess so!_  _She took off, pointing nose-upward immediately, heading for the big cold dark.  _ _Does it…okay, look, there’s no delicate way to ask this, and my sensory differentiation is muddled or something…so, uh, is it just as good for you?_  
  
_ Orris laughed. __Usually, yes. Like any other deep-level link, it depends on who you bond with. Vector Prime, as an extreme example, is amazing. Like bonding with a young star while overcharged on the finest ultra-high-grade._  
  
 _Oooooooooh! I bet! Heehee!_  
_

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2031 – September  
  
 _Hn. Treating you like a car again._  
  
Bumblebee bristled, looking as outraged as only a very yellow Camaro could. Yes, still a Camaro after all these years. Chevy, in his honor, would perform whatever economic contortions were necessary to come out with a new concept every few years; and since Bee didn’t care as long as his alt mode did what he needed it to do, as long as Mikaela liked it, Bee was happy to oblige them by transscanning whatever new shape the car took that year. Peterbilt had enjoyed a similar renaissance, as had GM; though Hummer had gone under in 2010. Ratchet kept the form and the paintjob decade after decade. Sam thought he did it just to tweak Ironhide’s gears. Which was correct, as far as it went. Ratchet cared even less than Bee about keeping up with fashion. The old H2 worked just fine, even if it was no good for camouflage any more.   
  
 _They are not! They sometimes feel like they’re monopolizing my time, so they use the Lexus._  
  
 _Dani left her jacket in you._  
  
Bee transformed, neatly tucking the scrap of fabric in a cache.  _So what? She’s almost a teenager. They’re a little…distracted. Besides, Annabelle used to leave all kinds of things in you._  
  
 _Not the point,_  Ironhide huffed.  
  
Ironhide emerged from the shadows of the hall leading to the war room. There were lines of red on the black armor now, but the form – though no longer a Topkick – was similar. A pickup was too useful, in and out of battle. A pair of NEST operatives dodged around him as he approached Bee. It was nigh onto midnight, local time, but there were always humans about these days it seemed. Ironhide was – wonder of wonders and don’t tell Ratchet it was voluntary this time – just going in to recharge. It occurred to him that he hadn’t had a sweet little clang with sweet little Bee in quite a while.  
  
Bee glowed under Ironhide’s intent stare, reading his friend’s posture with familiarity borne of long and intimate association. His door-wings fluttered in anticipation. Just as Ironhide reached him, he danced away, off toward the recharge bay to claim a table, laughing and warbling come-hithers, extending a cable and stroking it blatantly so Hide could see.  
  
“Hrrrrmm!” Ironhide rumbled, hot steam blowing from core vents. He took his own time following, watching Bee’s bright form with overt, exaggerated appreciation, desire setting his optics glowing a deeper blue. He coded the bay door firmly closed behind him.  
  
When he reached Bee at last, he slipped a gentle hand around the smaller mech’s waist, drawing him close in a way that was nothing like his usual approaches to Ratchet or Prime or Wheeljack or Chromia. Or even Jazz. It wasn’t about size, nor really age. Age differences weren’t that interesting. There was something about Bee’s gladness, his wry humor, his tensile strength, his willingness to embrace a situation no matter how new and strange. A kind of emotional vigor that Ironhide envied sometimes. Most of the time he just liked the contrast. And he liked the way Bee's helm fit into the curve of one hand, so that thumb and forefinger could stroke both of the sensitive antenna tips at the same time.  
  
Bee wrapped both arms around Ironhide’s waist and hugged him hard enough to make the big mech’s armor creak. Ironhide kissed the crest of Bee’s helm and caressed his door-wings, enjoying the overclocked warbles Bee made, remembering too well a time when Bee hadn’t been able to vocalize even that much. He hitched himself up on the table, drawing Bee lightly after, spreading his legs at a comfortable angle to get them out of the way so Bee could sit between them and be in kissing range. Bee wriggled so delightfully, it was hard to keep one’s hands still on his body, one’s mouth still on his mouth. Though Bee’s mouth was not designed for kissing in the way that Prime’s was, he managed very well indeed, as evidenced by his perennial popularity whenever mistletoe season swung around each year.   
  
Hide nibbled gently on the antennae which Bee fluttered enticingly, warbling and purring and sneaking his hands deep into the fun places hidden behind Ironhide’s armor. Bee made his solar collection net discharge minute sparks through his fingertips. Hide jumped and quivered with each microscopic jolt, grunting and hrrming and scraping his own fingers a little more roughly over Bee’s body. As the charge grew, Hide’s low rumbles became moans and growly thrums. Bee harmonized, several octaves higher – or tridecads, as it were, since the latest fashion in music before the war had broken out in earnest had been a thirteen-part tonal scale.   
  
They seated a set of cables, forging a light body link. Feeling now Ironhide's low energy levels, Bee gathered charge in both hands and thrust them deep between elements of Ironhide's protoform, releasing the charge in little spurts at first, then building to a long, hard surge. Ironhide roared and thrashed and laughed, knowing Bee felt it all; but as Ironhide rocked into overload, Bee held fast, shunting the charge back through Ironhide, watching his friend's face as the old warrior sank into a very brief recharge.  
  
 _Tricky!_  Ironhide said, optics flickering. But could Bee do it again?   
  
Bee chuckled. The body link was still live. He flexed his door-wings and trailed his hands down Ironhide's sides, shivering as the sensation ghosted across his own afferent networks, preparing to gather charge again.   
  
 _You're coming with me,_  Ironhide said, and bared his spark.   
  
...  
  
Jazz had joined them while they were offline; he was cheekily curled up on top of Bee, one hand idly tickling and petting the joint of the nearest door-wing.  
  
“Aaghredrghl!” said Bee.  
  
“Good morning, merry sunshine!” said Jazz, propping his chin atop Bee’s helm to leer amicably at Ironhide.  _Hey, Bee,_  Jazz tight-beamed as Ironhide rolled, tipping them over.  _How come we got three empty growth tanks? What’s with that?_  
  
 _Are you making a proposal?_  Bee asked, rather interested now that the idea had been broached.   
  
 _Well you know old grumpy-pants here won’t so it’d be you and me, na?_    
  
 _Your timing,_  Bee said, thinking about it further,  _is, as usual, more than impeccable. I’m at loose ends all weekend. In fact if you were Prowl I’d say you planned this._  
  
 _Hey! Prowl’s not the only mech who can think ahead. And anyway, you wouldn’t even have to be footloose, oh Yellow One. I got the Vector files from Percy. We can bubble ourselves up a whole trio if we want._  The eleven standard tanks inside the embassy – including five new ones added shortly after Ultra Magnus and his group had arrived – had been almost filled already. Kup and Oratorio’s progeny was growing apace. Wheeljack had added another tower tank to the one containing his and Blurr’s progeny, which was now brewing away with progeny kindled by Wheeljack and Prowl. Besides merging with Chromia, Ultra Magnus – though not quite repeating Elita and Prime’s feat – had rapidly also merged with Nightbeat and then Prime. Then Hound and Bluestreak had wanted in on the action, and Blurr had tackled Prime. Drift and Prowl had gotten meditative with each other and taken it to the logical conclusion.   
  
“While you two jabber your inanities,” Ironhide said, extricating himself entirely from their cuddle, “some of us have duties to perform.” He hadn’t breached their closed conversation, but the way they were making goo-goo optics at each other he knew it was something soppy and embarrassing. Ironhide was heading up to White Sands for a new missile test; something about big missiles that split up into lots of fast, hard to hit little ones – not at all unlike some of those Wheeljack used, though this was one of the independent human weapons companies contracted to the US government which had not been relying overmuch on consultation from the Autobots. Humans were stubborn; mostly they wanted to figure things out for themselves. Ironhide liked that.   
  
“Just don’t forget that their prototype weapons systems are not for target practice,” Bee scolded. “Again.”   
  
“If they can’t withstand anything we throw at them, how can they expect to hold up against the Decepticons?” Ironhide said, very reasonably, he thought.   
  
“Yeah, yeah, you go have fun blowing shit up,” Jazz said. “We’ll be in here having sex.”  
  
“Gaah!” said Ironhide.   
  
“What are you doing?” Tracks said, coming into the med-bay stretching and doing a fairly good rendition of a yawn. Nightbeat was better at it, but Tracks thought he himself had a slight edge in the matter of verisimilitude, having been on the planet longer.   
  
“With whom?” Nightbeat asked, coming in right behind Tracks. “And for how many cookies?” The pair had just returned from Europe. The flight wasn’t onerous or tiring, since sitting around inside a big cargo plane in their vehicle modes hardly constituted either exercise or painful motionlessness, and they had kept in touch with the global cloud mind the entire time. But they had driven “the long way” out from Nellis, which involved a detour through Malibu. And Bel Air since they were feeling frisky. Their latest alt modes hardly raised an eyebrow out there, whereas they were a teeny bit conspicuous driving around Tranquility, or even Vegas, which tended to run more to limos than Lamborghinis.   
  
 _Making a newspark,_  Bee said, as Jazz pulled him into the deeper chamber of the med-lab, where the growth tanks resided behind locked doors. Jazz, as First Lieutenant, always had the codes to get in, even when one of his own progeny was not inside.   
  
Tracks looked contemplatively at Nightbeat. “Hmm.”  
  
“Really?” Nightbeat tried not to wriggle with sudden excitement under Tracks’ scrutiny.   
  
“Maybe after we’ve recharged,” Tracks said, smiling with a mix of affection, thoughtfulness and unrepentant desire that had Nightbeat’s knees threatening to buckle.   
  
 _We’ll spare a tank for you then,_  Bee said.  
  
 _Ah, going to try Vector’s way?_  Tracks winked as he drew Nightbeat up onto a recharge berth with him. They both waved and wished Jazz and Bee luck as the heavy doors slid closed and locked.   
  
 _Actually I’m kind of kidding,_  Jazz tight-beamed solemnly.  _I don’t think we could handle more than one kid of mine at a time._  
  
 _Uh huh,_  Bee said, flattening his antenna and making a raspberry noise.  _Whatever._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The best time to do it, she had decided, was when no one, later, would suspect it could be done. She would not wait for a time when the med-bay was empty, at night with the humans asleep, and the Autobots who had adapted to Earth were also often in recharge. She only needed a short span when the others present in the room had their attention firmly on something or someone else.   
  
The cabinet was only locked mechanically – just enough to keep curious humans safe from the potentially hazardous or poisonous objects within. She had a vibroblade ready in her left firstfinger (what humans, she supposed, would call her thumb); all she needed was a thin scraping, just enough to give Firestar the metallurgy, and enough for the matter converter Wheeljack had designed for them to work with, just enough so its nanoassemblers could start making more of the stuff. She already had the schematics from Ratchet himself. Primus, that had been easy. But then Ratchet would never conceive of what Chromia and Elita intended to do with that information.   
  
Two of Teletraan’s eye-cameras had overlapping fields of view in the med-bay’s main chamber, but if Chromia’s plan went properly, she wouldn’t even need to engage her stealth shields. All she needed was the kind of connection even Shockwave hadn’t yet been able to trace, and a quick loop of one or two astroseconds. Tel might figure it out later, but as long as that later meant after she and the others were back in their home galaxy she didn’t care. She in fact had already inserted the code from a terminal in the inner med-lab where the growth tanks were.   
  
What she didn’t like was that what she was doing might introduce a milliamp of doubt among the surviving Autobot ranks. Once they worked out it had been an inside job, there would be dissention and worry, like at the very beginning of the war. She hated to think it would be so easy for everyone to backslide in such a dangerous way from one tiny act of theft, but the idea had imbedded itself in her CPU and would not be reasoned away.   
  
Getting rid of Shockwave was too important, however, to let her niggling doubts get in the way, or impede her progress, or slow her hand once the moment came. She would need to be fast as Moonracer, certain as Elita herself.   
  
Unstoppering the latest vintage of Ratchet’s high-grade provided her with the perfect opportunity. The process – when done correctly – took thirteen years and this was the first batch Ratchet had made since landing on Earth; though he’d of course had several vintages in reserves aboard the Ark, the last of which he’d recently sent Skyfire up to retrieve. It had felt wrong, somehow, to send Borealis. Ratchet didn’t want to analyze why too closely but it was making him slightly tetchy. Today he was in a good mood, however.  
  
Since it didn’t look anything like a still, most of the more official – and officious – humans thought the apparatus was just another piece of medical equipment. Distillation was chemically incorrect as a label for what Ratchet did to the raw energon, but it got the idea across. With regular mid-grade it would take more than most mechs’ reservoirs could hold to induce an overenergized stupor. High-grade’s useful energy density was much higher, though, and the effect was like wine, if you didn’t mind some fairly egregious translational generalizations. Ultra-high-grade, or Wheeljack’s moon-grade, was even more energy dense, with an effect broadly akin to hard liquor. There were safety protocols that prevented a mech from damaging their own systems with too high a grade, but of course, like sapient species throughout their own galaxy, the Milky Way and every other galaxy that anyone had ever contacted, the Cybertronians had figured out how to bypass common sense in order to alter their consciousnesses.   
  
Perceptor wouldn’t touch more than a few liters of high-grade, but one of his specialties was chemistry, so he always liked to be present for the analysis, perhaps sampling a few milliliters from some generous person’s cylinder. Bluestreak, who now wore arms and a remarkable rifle that Perceptor had made, was happy to be the generous one for this round. Even more happy to slip one of his new arms around Perceptor’s trim waist.   
  
“Perfect!” Wheeljack said, as Ratchet dispensed the first cylinder to him. The colors, the EM and hadron fields, the addition of just the right ionic impurities; all precisely different from standard recipes, blended by Ratchet’s experience into an unmistakable brew. Wheeljack had no problem praising his competitor’s work if he got the first sample. Every mech in the room leaned forward, fans and ionic air impellers working to bring the heady aroma down into appreciative chemoreceptors.   
  
“Niiiice,” Bee and Jazz said together, sharing a large cylinder between them.   
  
Chromia watched everyone watch the dispenser. She triggered her bit of code and waited 0.35 nanoseconds to be sure the loop was active. There. Unlock the plex door, reach in, curl a hand around the shard, single swipe with the vibroblade, scan to be certain of the sample, withdraw, relock. Done. 1.3 astroseconds. She didn’t even have to move away from the cabinet, simply putting her hand behind her back while the vibroblade withdrew, drawing the sample into her fingertip with it. She had a small vacuum vial in her other hand; she injected the sample into it and cached the vial with the rest of the smaller supplies Ratchet had pressed on her to take back to Firestar.   
  
Opening another tiny niche in her other hand, she touched another small object, a very specialized emitter Elita’s team used to confuse their energy signatures, to a few surfaces near the cabinet. If someone scanned very closely, they would pick up quantum traces that would throw them pretty much entirely off the trail.   
  
“Hey!” Chromia hollered, moving to stand next to Ironhide. “Make sure there’s enough to go around for everyone! That means no doubles, Cliffjumper!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **Perceptor? Would you join us in the war room for a moment?**  
  
 _I’m just in the middle of—! Oh very well, let me finish this bit of lattice meld and I’ll be right up._  
  
 **Sorry, Perceptor. As soon as you safely can.**  
  
 **By which he does not mean twelve hours from now,**  Vector Prime added. Perceptor would have dropped his microfusor if it hadn’t been built into his hand.  
  
…  
  
“Those ruffians!” Perceptor huffed, head fins going spiky and aggressive.   
  
“They are,” Vector Prime said, “by all your accounts, expert builders and inventors in their own right. If they choose to aid you, your goals can be accomplished in a quarter of the time you have calculated.”  
  
Sam was all for that. One hundred years instead of four hundred? With medical technology going the way it was, he thought he stood a better than even chance of living just – barely – long enough to see it happen. If anything had gone wrong with Nathaniel’s birth, Sam knew First Aid had been poised to pepper Mikaela and the baby with IVs, breathing tubes, ECGs and cardiac stimulants and who knows what else. Aid would have turned himself inside out to keep them alive. Sam tried to quash the sobering aspects of this line of thinking, but the subject had been coming up a lot lately. Still, it was pretty funny to see Perceptor get his figurative knickers in a twist like this.   
  
“They withdrew from conflict of their own volition,” Optimus pointed out. “Do you think they are likely to join us, Vector?”  
  
“They might, eventually,” Vector said, smiling. He’d caught the beginnings of the Constructicons’ argument as he had left them, but he did not know them well, individually or as a gestalt. There was a chance they would dispute the matter for long enough to make their proposed involvement a moot point.   
  
“If they join us,” Optimus said, turning to Perceptor, “will you accept their help?”  
  
Perceptor glared impressively at both Primes. “For the sake of Cybertron,” he growled. “Yes. With my cannon fully charged and enabled the entire time.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 - October  
  
The important strategic planning had been done, latest packets of data exchanged, uploads and downloads among friends old and new performed, and the  _Sparkreaver_  was ready. They could leave any time now. And so the leave-taking could be as soppy and maudlin as any of them could wish. As usual, Ultra Magnus and Kup’s groups were sailing toward the heart of danger, and Chromia would submerge into secrecy again with Elita’s team. None of them could be sure of seeing each other again after this.  
  
Magnus clung to Optimus, the latter taller now, which felt strange, clinging as if he had no intention of letting go any time this century. Which they could do, if they wanted, Sam thought, grinning. All the blue on Prime and Magnus was full of solar collectors like Bee’s yellow was, and standing around down here in southern Nevada they were guaranteed to get a lot of sunlight.   
  
The press, Sam was amused to note, had been kicked out to the old perimeter still maintained by the US military as an adjunct to Nellis, kind of unofficial these days, but Lennox had whole skeins of strings he could pull. Tel would certainly send the press nice feeds of heroic Autobots boarding their troop carrier and leaving the planet, but Sam was pretty sure no one outside the immediate premises needed to see the sheer amount of smooching and groping going on right now.   
  
Vector Prime was leaving, too. He and Safeguard would accompany Ultra Magnus’ group to Chaar’s vicinity, though only for a while, before having to resume his more cosmic duties. However that worked, with someone who supposedly could travel in or outside time or something like that. Vector’s explanations made Doctor Who sound like what it was – a kids’ show. Sam tried not to think about it too much.   
  
"Will we see you again?" Ratchet asked Vector, pulling back slightly from their embrace so he could see the ancient Prime's face. He felt for a moment very young and inexplicably shy and utterly unlike himself.  
  
Vector pressed Ratchet’s hand low against his torso. Power and a strange, half-untranslated kind of knowledge passed between them. “Indeed some aspect of you and I shall meet again. Who do you think built this body?”  
  
Ratchet gaped at him, rendered entirely speechless; a rarity that hadn’t occurred for decades. Vector chuckled and kissed him and drew away, following Kup up the boarding ramp into the troop-carrier.   
  
Safeguard flew up to Skyfire, who stood out in the desert, watching the preparations around the  _Sparkreaver_  going on in orbit directly above them. He looked to the minicon, though, as he approached, and held out his hands. Safeguard landed on a fingertip then ran nimbly up hand and arm to hug Skyfire's cheek spar.   
  
"Keep yourself safe," he said.  
  
"And you," Skyfire said. "And keep him safe, too, though I know you do, you will, you always have."  
  
Just as the boarding ramp began to close, Drift bolted out, sprinting first to Perceptor, then Prowl for a last, quick but heated kiss before leaping back to the ramp again and disappearing inside. Laughter echoed from those on the ground and those in the ship. Many of Ultra Magnus’ crew clapped Drift on a shoulder with good-natured teasing, when before there had mostly only been cold stares. The dance at Burning Man had loosened everyone up, as well as cementing the bonds among them more tightly.   
  
“I think Vector Prime enjoyed his visit,” Bluestreak said, leaning rather wistfully on Red Alert’s shoulder. Red looked at him and made a noise suspiciously resembling a snort, though he patted Blue’s aft in an affectionate way before he and Inferno returned inside the embassy.   
  
“Enjoyed is right,” Trailbreaker said. “I think he ‘enjoyed’ every single one of us at least once.”  
  
“Even Gears!” Huffer laughed.  
  
“Mmm, yes he did,” Mirage hummed, stretching in a way that had everyone’s attention. Hound’s and Thundercracker’s engines revved loudly.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _What was that you just threw?_  Iceneedle demanded, moving closer over the hull. He hadn’t deployed any of his weapons systems yet, but Mez had better scanners than most of Turmoil’s crew realized and he could tell Iceneedle was just waiting for the slightest excuse.  
  
Mez deliberately made a show of not turning his welding torch in Iceneedle’s direction. Outer hull repairs and maintenance had to be done manually; the _Flay_ ’s self-repair systems had been damaged and no longer covered the outside of the ship. Apparently it was as much a software issue as hardware; though certainly the thick alloy plating had grown unmalleable over millennia of exposure to hard cosmic radiation. Doing said repair and maintenance wasn’t exactly a punishment duty per se. More like Turmoil making sure even his most senior officers didn’t get too uppity. Mez had gotten into a few too many fights lately. Including a brawl over nothing with Iceneedle which had turned ugly. Iceneedle was still missing part of his right hand and a chunk of helm, and was pretty torqued off about it.  
  
The item Mez had tossed out into the surrounding void with such seeming casualness – though in fact he had calculated imparted speed and direction very carefully indeed – was a detailed replica of a Green Lantern power ring. He was normally much more cautious about when he launched his little baubles, but Iceneedle had been over a ridge, out of sight, Mez had thought. A moment of carelessness. Something he couldn’t really afford.  
  
When Mez didn’t answer instantly, Iceneedle folded a pistol out of his left forearm and drew a bead on the tiny, tumbling object.   
  
 _Just a piece of debris from this vent, you moron,_  Mez snarled, closing the distance between them. He grabbed Iceneedle, spoiling the shot. Plasma fire arrowed away into space, missing Mez’s helm by centimeters. In fact the collateral discharge, as Mez intended, singed his cheek flange most convincingly. He seated a fast cervical cable, booting in a medical override someone had reluctantly given him and dug his fingers into a panel in Iceneedle’s side, unlocking and opening the cache. A cache of his own opened on the inside of his wrist, and a small object, jarred by the two mechs’ struggling, was tumbled into Iceneedle’s cache. Mez keyed the panel shut and commenced to punching Iceneedle hard and repeatedly all over his torso, but especially making certain to dent the panel, covering whatever marks his forced entry had made.   
  
Still cabled at the neck, Mez pushed another little file through; something he’d had prepared by an expert at very realistic holograms and sims. Iceneedle himself would now believe the memory to be real, as cross-references and organizational tags, as well as supposedly unforgeable time stamps insinuated themselves through his memory core.   
  
 _What’s this?_  Mez asked, holding up another small object he’d let slip from the hidden wrist cache. He released the neck cable, but grabbed Iceneedle hard, forcing him around and frog-marching him to the nearest airlock.  _Sending secret messages are we, Needle? I bet Turmoil would like to know what’s in this funny little ring, and who’s it for._  
  
 _No!_  Iceneedle screeched.  _NOOO!!!_  
  
...  
  
“You know what happens to traitors, Mez,” Turmoil said. “Clean up when you’re done.” Turmoil left them, heading for the bridge, leaving them in the center of a wary crowd in the middle of the landing bay.  
  
“NO!” Iceneedle screamed. “I swear it was him! He was the one dropping…dropping my… no! It’s his! Not mine…not mine… noooo…” His voice trailed off as Mez jammed his pistol up under his chin. Inevitability sometimes has its mercies, in Cybertronian minds as with many others.   
  
Mez fired.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 – November  
  
Approaching Earth from a distance never got old. It occurred to Borealis that comparing planets to jewels scattered so thinly across the velvet of the firmament was really demeaning a planet and overestimating the complexity and value of gems. But the idea kept surfacing anyway.   
  
“Oh I agree, you know,” Perceptor said kindly from her cockpit. “Planets are always beautiful. We who are made of them will always believe so, I think.” And those for whom planets were a safe haven against the deeply harmful environments of space would find them so even more.   
  
…  
  
Two days later.   
  
Thick colloid drained. Plex rose into the housing set into the ceiling. Borealis had never seen the process from this side of the tank before – she had just missed the actual opening of the Protectobots’ tanks, though she’d arrived in time to meet them as they’d named themselves. The mech stepping down from the tank was tall, more slender than Borealis had been, and strangely jointed.   
  
Ixchel had never been a mother, Borealis remembered. She would have had to have a C-section; her pelvis too fused to separate properly to allow vaginal birth. It would have been possible, but FOP was genetic, inheritable as well as being more usually a spontaneous mutation. Ixchel had chosen not to take the chance. Borealis could retrieve no feeling of regret for this; there had been nieces and nephews aplenty, and Ixchel had had enough other joys and occupations in her life that she had never felt cheated or empty for the lack of this one basic and fundamental human endeavor.   
  
Now Borealis was, in a sense, a mother. And it felt…odd. She was not concerned with tracking down how exactly, simply accepted the sensation. The change to her personal existence was minimal; the new mech would need no two decades of rearing, no diaper changes or breastfeeding. No waking up in the middle of the night to comfort and attend a wailing infant. This was bad how? Borealis grinned. Not that there weren’t risks. The shared optical feed of Blades collapsing on Mars graphically illustrated that.   
  
 _Forging_ she, Ratchet tight-beamed to Borealis. He’d driven up to Oregon to join them. This wasn’t the first second-generation progeny - Oratorio and Tracks had merged some years before, with Freeway the result – but it was Ratchet’s first…oh if everyone insisted fine he’d call it…grandchild.  _Not many of those left, among us Autobots, though Prime says there’s a big group of them among one colony of neutrals, and a few more scattered in other colonies. I can’t tell what to make of those spark anomalies, though._  
  
 _They might not be anomalies,_  Perceptor pointed out, even as he was taking the new mech’s hands. Including the main spark in her chest, the new mech had twelve spark nodes throughout her torso and limbs, with tenuous but measurable strands of sparkmatter linking them. “Welcome,” he said aloud. “How do you feel?” She had been silent in-tank, even more shy and retiring than Metroplex had been until recently. They didn’t know her name yet. Perhaps, like Borealis, the new mech didn’t know it yet either. During the entire time in-tank, this one had had an air of silent watchfulness and observation. She had perhaps gleaned from the nevertheless broad cacophony of transmissions around her that she had not been required to speak. Therefore she had not.   
  
"Operational within normal parameters," she said. "Where is Glyph?" They could feel her scanning.  
  
"Glyph's in Borneo," Borealis said. "Do you want Tel to patch--"  
  
 _I'm here,_  Glyph transmitted from the other side of the planet, via Teletraan's line.  _What can I help you with?_  
  
 _The Allspark glyph translations you've been discussing with Prime?_  
  
 _Yes?_  
  
 _Could you explain the...the... oh..._  With a faint squeak, she fell to pieces. Twelve little mechs dropped to the floor and ran around, eeeing and oooing at everything they saw and touched.  
  
"Ratchet!" squealed one.  
  
"Perceptor!" and "Borealis!" said others, who climbed their progenitors swiftly to hug their helms. Two more climbed Boealis after running a circuit around the inner med-lab. Ratchet had had the foresight to keep the doors locked.   
  
"Cookie!" crowed another, pulling something out of the base of the single unoccupied tank.   
  
"That's not a cookie!" Ratchet cried, lunging at the wee mech, who scuttled off and hid behind Perceptor's left foot.   
  
Cuddling the mechling in his arms, Perceptor turned, bending, to the one at his left heel. "Do please give that to Ratchet, my dear. It belongs in the colloid matrical filter; that's where it can do its work, that's where it fits. Ah!"   
  
The little mech in his arms squirmed free and jumped to the floor as the other ran up to the unocccupied tank and returned the piece to its proper place. All twelve rushed together from wherever they'd been scattered and the whole mech stood, stately and tall once again, grasping for poise and neatly attaining it.   
  
"I do apologize!" she said, extending a hand toward Ratchet. "I know it worries you when we're weird. I didn't mean to be weird. It felt right to extend myself. I guess my name should be Tessera, then."  
  
Perceptor beamed at her. "Very good!"  
  
Taking her proffered hand, Ratchet looked up at her kindly. "I only worry because I want you newsparks to be safe, to be well, and to find your own niches among us. I worry that I cannot help you if I don't understand what kind of being you are. You seem to be a mech who can split herself into several smaller individuals; whereas a gestalt classically is a group of mechs who join to form a single entity. Your configuration may be unusual, but it falls within the parameters of our species."  
  
"I understand." Tessera nodded gravely.   
  
Borealis bent over laughing, bracing her hands on her knees; then knelt and scooped everyone up in a massive hug best accomplished with arms thirty-five feet long.   
  
The person growing in the next tank over watched with bright but not quite completed optics, swaying with laughter.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2031 – December  
  
 _Plexie, let me out._  He pressed his hands against the translucent tank wall, wishing it was transparent instead, thrashing what he thought of, for the moment, as his tail.  
  
 _You’re not done yet,_  Metroplex scolded.  _You’re supposed to stay in there for at least another six months._  
  
 _You’re not done yet, either, and you’re doing stuff! I want out._  
  
 _I’m not_  doing  _anything. I’m listening._  
  
 _Whatever. I don’t care. Let me out. I know you can jigger the tank. Come on, pleeeeease?_  
  
 _Your legs haven’t even differentiated yet._  
  
 _So what. All the important stuff is up and running. CPU, memory core, spark chamber. I have hands! Pleeeeeeeeexieeeeeeeee leeeeeet meeeeee ouuuuuuuuut._  He thrashed in the tank, wondering if he could tip it over, despite the anchoring machinery.  
  
 _You won’t shut up until I do, will you._  
  
 _Nope!_  
  
 _You’ll start singing “Henry the 8th” or something, won’t you._  
  
 _Yep!_  
  
 _Ratchet’s going to pitch a—_  
  
 _Don’t care! He’ll get over it! Let me out! Let me out!_  
  
 _Oh dear,_  Metroplex said, sounding quite a bit like Ultra Magnus.  
  
…  
  
“Oh slag.”  _Teletraan, shut that down! Don’t let—! Slag!_  Ratchet shuttered his optics, fending off Optimus’ concerned queries for the moment. Massachusetts! Why did he have to be in Massachusetts when something like this happened? First Aid and his brothers were in Somalia. Wheeljack and Perceptor were out near the Oort with Borealis and Skyfire. Hoist, Catscan and Lifeline were in Oregon, closer, but it would still take any of them hours to drive down and…and it was already too late.   
  
…  
  
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, nice shootin’, Tex!” Sideswipe whistled as he rushed the med-bay with Mirage. “What are you doing, kid? You’re still in pollywog phase.” The new mech sported bright colors, with an incomplete chameleon mesh, over his helm and shoulders and arms, streaks winding their way down his chest, but the rest of him was still that warm, soft, mid-tone grey; ridged and rippled, hinting at what the structures would become once the differentiation and growth cycle was completed.  
  
“Oh no,” Mirage whispered, running to catch the protoform as it slithered out of the growth tank. They both ended up on the floor – it was a fairly sturdy protoform. Forging  _zhe_ , like Bee, or Mirage himself, though Mirage was a different, smaller, class – or would be once it was done growing. Sideswipe helped Mirage get the wiggling protoform onto the nearest repair table. It would probably just fall out again if they tried to stuff it back into the tank.   
  
“Hi!” the protoform giggled. “My name’s Hot Rod! You’re Mirage and Sideswipe. I’ve been listening!”  
  
“Hey, kid,” Sideswipe laughed. He held one of Hot Rod’s arms so Mirage could get the monitoring cable plugged in. Ratchet had stopped swearing long enough to give directions and demand a feed.   
  
“Welcome, Hot Rod,” Mirage said, half singing the Iridium Tower melody in his harmonics. Hot Rod watched him intently, swaying close. “I am very pleased to meet you. What happened, do you know? Did the tank malfunction?” Kup was gone and Rio was on Mars. Why was Rio on Mars when he had progeny so close to decantation? Mirage’s CPU hopped around in frightened circles for two or three nanoseconds.   
  
“Nah! I just wanted out of there. I wanted to meet everybody. I want to go see Metroplex!” He bounced a little on the table, the long, tapering coil of protomass that would become his pelvic assembly and legs flipping about like an eel.   
  
“Metroplex?” Red Alert strode into the med-bay.  _Tel?_  
  
“I believe our young cityformer tampered with Hot Rod’s tank mechanism,” Teletraan said. It was hard to tell if he was disapproving or amused.   
  
…  
  
 **Will? This can’t be an official request…**  
  
Lennox snorted.  _Just ask, Optimus._  
  
 **Ratchet is at MIT. He needs to get back to the embassy as quickly as possible.**  
  
 _And all your big jets are off-planet. Not a problem. Ratchet?_  
  
 _Yes, General._  
  
 _A C-23 will be waiting for you at Hanscom AFB to take you to Nellis. You’ll be there in five hours, tops. Safe flight._  
  
 _Thank you, Will._  Five hours, Ratchet thought. If his energy systems aren’t mature enough, Hot Rod could die before then.  
  
 _Yeah, yeah. Just tell me what’s up when you get a chance, all right?_  
  
 **Affirmative. Thank you.**  
  
…  
  
For some reason, no one expected Ratchet to be able to move that fast; but those long legs weren’t there for nothing. A way had been kept clear from the hangar entrance to the med-bay as soon as the C-23 had landed. Sideswipe ducked out of the med-bay, preferring to be out of range once Ratchet arrived.   
  
On the table, Hot Rod looked from Mirage to the doorway, worried now. Ratchet was going to yell at him. A lot. Mirage smiled and winked.  
  
“Hello, there,” Ratchet said softly, approaching at a walk. He took one of Hot Rod’s hands, pressing his other hand gently to the new mech’s bright crimson and orange-red and maroon and dark violet-red helm. Hot Rod felt some of the scans go through him, tickling a little. He squirmed.  
  
“Hi, Ratchet. I’m sorry…”  
  
“Hush. It’s all right, Hot Rod; we just want to make certain your vital systems are working well enough for you to be out of the tank like this.” Ratchet moved the hand from Hot Rod’s helm to the youngster’s chest. “Can you open up for me?”  
  
Hot Rod squirmed again. He could tell he had programming for this, but somehow the message from his CPU wasn’t getting to where it was supposed to go. Or something. He wasn’t sure.   
  
“That’s all right, you’re fine. I’m going to do it for you, do you consent?”  
  
“Oh. Y-yes.”  
  
Mirage squeezed Hot Rod’s other hand and grinned. “Ratchet has very gentle hands, don’t worry.”  
  
Without a further gesture, Ratchet engaged a bit of medical code and Hot Rod’s chest opened fully; formed and half-formed armor plates sliding aside, protoform components parting and rearranging, panels opening, granting access to the vital, relatively delicate systems and components within. Ratchet kept a feed open for Mikaela, who had stayed at MIT, her alma mater, to complete the series of lectures she and Ratchet had been scheduled to give at the Stata center – one entrance of which had been expanded to allow Ratchet to roll inside in vehicle mode before gingerly transforming, ducking through the irregular architecture, with center managers holding their breath, until arriving safely in the auditorium without having scuffed so much as a single tile on the floor.   
  
 _Can I see too?_  Dani asked, mostly not plaintively, bouncing on her seat in the back of the lecture hall.   
  
 _Keep it on the private channel, okay?_  Mikaela reminded her, patching Ratchet’s feed over.  
  
 _Yehhhhhs, Mom,_  Dani groaned. She’d  _grown up_  with twelve zillion kinds of security measures, for Primus’ sake.   
  
Mikaela remembered herself at twelve – largely because of  ~~arguments~~  discussions she’d had recently with Sam – and let the comment and the tone slide, resuming her lecture with what she hoped hadn’t been too obvious a pause.   
  
It still struck her as strange sometimes, to consider that she had ended up going to MIT. Mikaela Banes, daughter of a felon and, not to put too fine a point on it, a step or two up from trailer trash. Not big steps either. With Sam going to Princeton, she had stayed at home, figuring her high school grades hadn’t been remarkable except in physics and math, and she hadn’t taken as many of those kinds of classes as she could have. Trying to fit in with the ideal of pretty girls not being smart. But halfway through Sam’s last undergraduate year, she’d said slag that, and, with Ratchet’s encouragement, applied to MIT’s cybernetics engineering program. She’d stood in the middle of a drafty hall and faced down rows of sneering white and Asian and Indian men to take an oral entrance exam. Inquisition was more like it. Maybe her apprenticeship to a highly advanced alien life form had given her an unfair advantage, but the bottom line was she knew more about robots than all those guys put together. She was happy to share.  
  
She had graduated Magna Cum Laude. And then went back to the old bike shop between stints at the Nevada embassy when pitched battles with the Decepticons meant even Ratchet was glad of a little repair help. Eventually, Sam’s ambassadorial salary, plus her own remote professorial salary, had enabled her to not only open her own shop for a while – which she’d sold later to her own apprentice, Rafaella - but to start collecting some pretty fancy bikes and cars of her own. Their apartment in DC, posh as it was, didn’t have room, so she still housed the collection in an old warehouse not far from where the Autobots had first hidden after Mission City. It was a fun juxtaposition. She had Corvettes and Camaros, including practically the twin of Bumblebee’s old first piece of crap alt mode. Antique Harleys and a custom chopper that looked like the Batmobile’s delinquent little brother, and, oh baby, a 1974 Ducati Sport Desmo Special. She still had her old blue scooter, in a corner, kept under a protective tarp. A reminder of a close encounter with Barricade that had thankfully never been repeated.   
  
At the embassy, Ratchet poked around in Hot Rod’s innards, testing connections, observing the energon pumps’ efficacy, monitoring temperature gradients and energy use. The spark chamber was solid, well-formed, the lively young spark generating perfectly, spinning a little fast at the moment in mild anxiety. Ratchet plugged in a cervical cable, initiating the link as soon as Hot Rod realized what he was doing and acquiesced.  
  
 _I was concerned about your energy conversion and dispersion systems, Hot Rod,_  Ratchet said.  _But they’re doing fine. I’m going to check your wiring, though, all right? There. The full conscious connections aren’t complete to your outer structure and armor. Though I can see you can move your caudal end perfectly well…stop flailing, please._  
  
“Sorry, Ratchet; it tickles!”  
  
“There.” Ratchet sent another small series of commands and Hot Rod’s torso put itself back together. “If you insist on remaining outside the tank you may. However, I must inform you that by doing so, the development of your legs and surrounding structures will be delayed. Probably by ten months.”  
  
“Can I go in swimming in Metroplex’s tank? Will that help?”  
  
Ratchet covered his optics briefly with a hand. “I…don’t know how much help it would be, unless you spend most of each day in there. Metroplex?”  
  
The cityformer had never used the embassy-wide comm system before, preferring to remain in her tank, only occasionally talking with physically-present visitors or the AIs. She didn’t dare not answer now, though. “Yes, Ratchet?”  
  
“You let him out?”  
  
“Yes, Ratchet.”  
  
“Do you mind if he joins you in your tank?” There was still some room in there; Metroplex had another five years or so to go, Ratchet thought. Her drones were doing well, following their symbiont’s glacial developmental pace. Drone wasn’t the proper term, really, though each could and would readily give up its independent functioning when in proper bond with the cityformer. It was a fuzzy distinction. In any case, they could refill Hot Rod’s tank and put him back in if they had to, but Hot Rod apparently didn’t want that. Ratchet asked Smokescreen to gently test the new mech for claustrophobic tendencies at some point later.  
  
“No, I don’t mind.”  
  
“On your head be it. Especially since Prime’s on his way back from Paris now.”  
  
“Yes, Ratchet.”  
  
“Piggy-back?” a beaming Hot Rod called to Sideswipe, who was peering around the door-frame. Hot Rod held his arms out and Sideswipe came forward, making it halfway across the chamber before he realized he was doomed.   
  
…  
  
Ratchet stood amid the mist screens in the Security office to use one of Red’s high-encryption channels.  _Kup!_  
  
 _Whaddya want?_  
  
 _I blame you!_  
  
 _Oh you do, do you?_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _Heh heh heh!_  
  
Red Alert patted Ratchet’s shoulder sympathetically but declined to comment further.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2032 - January  
  
For someone so large, Borealis could nevertheless move very quietly and unobtrusively when the need arose. She reached down over the heads of the mechs gathered around Hot Rod’s table and picked him up. “C’mere, Squidge.” Jazz’s nicknames were irresistible.   
  
“Hey, Borealis!” Sideswipe said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in space?”  
  
“Perceptor said I could come down to see you.” Or rather Perceptor had hinted strongly that he wanted to go down to see the new person, but that Borealis perhaps should go in his stead, in addition to her own reasons. He would want all of her observational files when she got back to the Oort.   
  
She carried him out through the hangar, ignoring the curious looks from the human staff and visiting ambassadors, and outside into an unseasonably warm, blue-skied evening. She cradled him against her chest in such a way that he faced more or less outward. He wrapped his “tail” around her wrist; affectionate rather than nervous at being up so high.   
  
Wheeljack had proposed building a wheelchair for him, except that there never seemed to be any shortage of mechs willing to carry him around; which Hot Rod seemed to enjoy immensely. Borealis mentally added herself to that list. Any time anywhere.   
  
“Are we going flying?”  
  
“Would you like to?”  
  
“YES!”  
  
Borealis grinned and shifted her engines to root-mode optimum thrust. Her feet lifted from the ground and they soared up above the Nevada desert, spiraling slowly so Hot Rod could see.   
  
“WOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!” he shouted, though he held onto her hand very tightly.  
  
…  
  
They followed a lazy arc over the Pacific, heading for Hawaii, where Seaspray was working on something for Beachcomber. “Care to try swimming next?” Borealis asked Hot Rod.   
  
“Ooo! Uh, sure, why not?” He sounded only about 87 percent sure, but she nosed down anyway, rolling lazily and drawing her limbs and armor in tight, clasping Hot Rod to her chest with one hand and extending the other with wrist and hand covered by her forward chine. It wasn’t a bad dive for someone a hundred feet tall.   
  
Hot Rod meeped and curled up under the protecting spans of her long fingers. He thought about pinching his central helm buttress as though holding his “nose” – Borealis would get the joke. But the clear, warm turquoise waters he could now perceive through the dispersing curtain of bubbles from their entry distracted him. There was so much sound! He could hear whales talking hundreds of miles away, and dolphins clicking closer by, and fish snapping and crackling and nipping bits off the nearby coral reefs – albeit much of the more distant sounds were obscured by human watercraft. Seaspray had been working with the US Navy and other groups – mostly non-government research facilities and a few shipping companies – over the decades, designing quieter engines with the technology the humans already had or were so rapidly developing with or without the Autobots’ help. It was in some ways a slow process. From environmentalists’ point of view anyway. Seaspray thought things were getting on by leaps and bounds and now understood Prime’s worry that the humans would soon outstrip their own remarkable ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions.   
  
 _Um, how deep are we going?_  Hot Rod enquired, in what he thought was a delicate, very diplomatic tone.   
  
 _Pacific floor is four to six thousand meters around here,_  Borealis told him, grinning, harmonics clearly amused.  _Well within our operational parameters. Gas giants are hazardous. This is just fun!_    
  
 _Will you take me up to space?_  
  
 _Not until your legs grow in, kiddo. There's too much hard radiation, might hurt you._  
  
 _Okay. Well, later, then? When I’m finished?_  
  
 _Yes, Squidge, when you’re finished I’ll take you to space._  
  
They met Seaspray at the Pele’s Pit vent of the Lo’ihi seamount, twenty-two miles off the southeast coast of the Big Island. In a hundred million years or so, the chain would have a new island. Beachcomber and Skyfire had placed small sensors there during their first visit several years previously, and Seaspray was checking their positioning and functions and adding a few more; necessitated by a couple of new eruptions.   
  
 _Hi there, Lissi!_  Seaspray called, waving. They could see him by his heat signature as well as the glow of the downward-pointing lights he had on.  _So you must be Hot Rod!_  
  
 _Hi! You must be Seaspray. Is that fun?_  
  
Seaspray considered this.  _I guess so, in a way. It’s useful, scientifically. Maybe not for kicking Decepticon tailpipes but you never know._  
  
 _So, doing something useful is fun?_  Hot Rod didn’t seem convinced. He looked up at Borealis, who schooled her expression just in time.   
  
 _Yes,_  Seaspray said.  _That's a kind of fun, sure, if the work is interesting or if you're with friends._  
  
Hot Rod struggled against her grasp so Borealis let him go, hoping he didn’t damage his aft end on the rugged lava, but thinking perhaps he might actually gain some mobility using his “tail”  _as_  a tail down here. The density of the water wasn’t quite enough, she calculated, to make him buoyant. Perhaps Seaspray would help him make vacuum balloons, which were what Seaspray used to keep himself neutrally buoyant.   
  
Hot Rod sank to the seamount’s rough, sloping surface, clinging for a moment to the crater walls of Pele’s Pit. Seaspray watched him with a soft, almost sad look on his face.   
  
 _I had a shape like that once,_  he said.  _For a while. A long time ago._  Hot Rod looked at him.  _Move your tail like this,_  Seaspray said, demonstrating with one arm.  _Yeah, like that. It’s not a bad swimming shape, once you get the buoyancy worked out. Here, gimme a cable and I’ll give you the vacuum bubble codec._  As they were doing that, Borealis settled on her ventral surface on a relatively flat ridge of sulfur-colored cooled lava, propping her chin in her hands, feet waving slowly behind her, ankles crossed. Seaspray grinned, intercepting her thoughtful glance.  
  
 _There was a time when the Decepticons thought they had all but wiped us out,_  he said.  _So they went ahead with their plans of empire, conquering planet after planet. They were a great and terrible Outside Context Problem, like the Conquistadores were to the Aztecs and Inca. But we Autobots weren’t as defeated as they thought. And Megatron let his forces stretch out too thin, taking more volume than he could hold. There, Hot Rod, try that. Put most of them in your shoulders and…uh, where your hips will be when you grow them…yeah…and along your midline spinal strut if it can take the stresses?_    
  
 _His spinal strut isn’t fully formed or attached to anything at the caudal end,_  Borealis pointed out.   
  
Seaspray waved his arms to catch Hot Rod’s attention.  _Wait, wait, Ratchet will disassemble me if you break… Just one, then, up in your chest. Fine. Now expand ‘em. Slowly!_    
  
Hot Rod’s torso expanded only a little before he began to rise, his tail whipping and curling as though trying to catch on to the rugged stone of the seamount, to keep himself from sailing off to the surface. He collapsed the bubbles slightly and remained where he was, effectively floating about three meters over the crater’s rim. The bubbles didn’t need to be very large, even to float a fifteen-foot long metallic robot. The difference in density between ocean bottom water and vacuum was quite energetic.   
  
 _I can swim!_  Hot Rod caroled. The wild oaring of his tail swiftly settled down into an efficient lateral undulation, like a fish rather than a marine mammal. Seaspray and Borealis watched, smiling, as he swam circles around them, up and down, figuring out how to shift his buoyancy.  
  
 _He’s got decent three-dimensional thinking,_  Seaspray murmured.   
  
 _Uh huh,_  Borealis said, rearranging her wings and rolling over to watch Hot Rod’s antics.  _I take it that planet Megatron thought he could hold was a waterworld?_  
  
 _Yeah._  Seaspray placed another sensor.  _The native sapients just about had their own rebellion started before we got there. Their obvious forms of technology had been suppressed, but they had some really nice nano-scale stuff, really clever. I don’t think they needed us, but we helped, gave ‘em a trigger._  
  
The other galactic civilizations – both here and in M100 – were still only distant contacts to Borealis, but she had big chunks of the Cybertronian version of an “Encyclopedia Galactica” in her memory core, which she’d perused cover to cover so to speak, on the long flights back and forth between Earth and Cybertron. There were several cataloged liquid water planets, and all of them sustained life. The regret in Seaspray’s harmonics kept her from asking which one he’d left behind.  
  
 _Whales!_  Hot Rod shouted, swimming back to them and waving his arms.  _One’s almost big as you, Lissi!_  
  
Seaspray’s optics brightened.  _Balaenoptera musculus! Don’t often see them around here like you do the humpbacks._  He scanned in the direction Hot Rod indicated.  _Mother and newborn calf. 28 meters for the mom, seven meters for baby. 172 and 2.5 metric tons respectively._  
  
 _Wow,_  said Borealis.   
  
Hot Rod, who was only five and a half meters long, if he stretched his tail out as far as he could, swam near the surface, where the water was warm and sapphire blue. Mother and calf stayed close, up in the mirror-bright, satiny waves. Hot Rod wanted to touch them, but didn’t want to upset the mother, or get caught in the wash of a tail wide as Powerglide’s wings.   
  
 _They’re looking at me!_  he whispered.  
  
 _Listen at 10 to 40 Hz. They sing, too._  
  
 _Whoa. What are they saying?_  
  
 _They’re calling across the entire ocean, keeping in touch with friends and family far away._  
  
 _Like Prime does?_  
  
 _Yes, Hot Rod,_  Seaspray said.  _Like Prime does._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2032 - April  
  
He was tired. Not the kind of tired that went away after a thorough recharge, but a mind tired, an emotionally drained tired. The things people were doing to each other, had been doing to each other – in Somalia and other places – for longer than First Aid had been alive, were appalling. Even Defensor and Glyph together had been able to do very little to help. It was, Prime had said, perhaps the kind of situation where a culture had to kill itself, or almost do so, before things could get better. It had seemed a harsh judgment for about seven milliseconds until First Aid had realized that Prime wasn’t really talking about the humans. Or not just the humans.   
  
Nevertheless, First Aid did the same thing he always did as he walked into the med-bay at the embassy in Nevada. It didn’t take long. It wasn’t a transscan per se, but he’d been programmed to be thorough, and Streetwise added another dollop of insatiable curiosity to their mix. So when he scanned the med-bay, meaning only to make certain he knew where everything was now, in case Ratchet (who liked to tinker, much like Wheeljack; though Ratchet’s reaction to said comparison was unpredictable) had decided to redesign something or Mikaela had moved something that maybe someone might need in a hurry – which she would do only because sometimes she needed it in a hurry and wanted it where she could reach it without going for the waldos. First Aid noticed that aside from the usual small changes (the air molecules weren’t going to be the exact same ones obviously, and dust accumulated; composed not just of human skin cells but out here in the middle of the desert the desert itself tried to move in pretty much all the time) there was something else different, which was a thing that had not been different before. Something that wasn’t supposed to be different. Something small. Something he would have missed if he wasn’t habitually thorough like this.   
  
He paced the chambers, front and back, scanning and looking more closely this time. Even so, it was only because he was looking very carefully that he found it. And then he didn’t want to believe what he’d found.   
  
 _Ratchet? Could you…come in here, please?_  
  
 _On my way._  
  
…  
  
Ratchet held the shard, turning it slightly back and forth, analyzing the microscopic scoring marks within the tiny scratch that had been made on the back side. “Vibroblade,” he said. “There’s a very faint energy trace. Not Autobot.”  
  
“Lockdown.” Prowl bowed his head, riding a hot surge of anger the likes of which he hadn’t felt since finding Barricade. He wanted to hunt Lockdown down the same way, with the same disregard for anything or anyone else, the same singularity of purpose. It had been a relief to surrender to such a purpose, such a narrowness of thought. He did not, as had become his wont, hide this rage from the seekers.   
  
 _You’re a hunter, like us,_  Thundercracker said, on what he was trying not to think of as their trine channel.  
  
 _Yes,_  said Prowl, accepting this.  _I have become so._  The recent interlude with Jazz had made Prowl more aware of his embodied life before the war. When he had not been a warrior. A civilian, and though living in socially complex times, nevertheless with in many ways what was a simpler life.   
  
“How could he have gotten in here?” Bluestreak asked. “He’s not like Ravage! I think someone would have noticed!”  
  
Teletraan and Red Alert were unwavering. “Unless Lockdown has Mirage’s cloaking net,” Red said, “there is no way a Decepticon could have gotten inside the med-bay, left just enough trace to make us suspicious, then got out again without anyone, even Tel and Metroplex, noticing. That only a small portion rather than the entire shard was taken suggests that whoever did this hoped the theft would go unnoticed for a certain length of time.”  
  
“So it could have happened years ago, well, as long ago as when Ratchet got it out of Prowl, anyway?” Bluestreak asked.  
  
“I don’t think it was years ago,” First Aid said. “I scan like that whenever I come back, and we’ve only been out a few months, just since after Thunderwing.”  
  
“So it’s either one of us here on Earth or someone who just left with Ultra Magnus and the others.”  
  
Prime shook his head. “I don’t want anyone making wild accusations. Nightbeat, Streetwise, this is, I believe, right up your alley. Please exercise restraint.” Prime didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking. If someone – well, someone non-human; he could well imagine a human desiring a curious metallurgical specimen, for a collection or to sell; but how would an unaided human scrape a curl of spark chamber-hard alloy off the shard and then leave a faint energy trace that would point so clearly to a particular mech? Lockdown was a worry, but Prime suspected this was a frame. So. If a Cybertronian was the thief, it was possible it meant they wanted to reproduce the mechanism. And that wasn’t a fun idea at all.   
  
“Understood,” Nightbeat said.  
  
“We are the very soul of discretion,” Streetwise said, bowing.  
  
“Oh dear,” said Tracks.   
  
“We don’t know that Lockdown doesn’t have something like my stealth cloak,” Mirage pointed out. Lockdown, according to Prowl and the Lambo twins, liked taking trophies. There had originally been twelve mechs who’d had the pan-spectrum cloak installed. And twelve others with scanner suites like Hound’s. A Hound for each Fox.   
  
“No,” said Jazz, shifting uncomfortably. “Only nine of the twelve were accounted for. …Well… Nine of the ten we know were killed.”  
  
“Sleight is alive,” Prime said, at Mirage’s radiant look. “Alive and with one of the neutral colonies.” Mirage, unlike most of the other Autobots, had never asked Prime about the survival of old friends. He had observed from the experience of others that the vast majority of the time the answer was no.   
  
 _Shall I contact Ultra Magnus?_  Red Alert tight-beamed to Prime.  _They might be willing to turn around and come back. At least until we get this solved._  
  
Prime considered. Voices murmured within the Matrix though he hadn’t enquired of them. No imperatives emerged from the susurrus, but he remained aware of the restlessness within.  **Yes,**  he told Red Alert.  **They’ll be in Chaar’s arc-volume by now. Code it for Magnus only. Conceivably this might be a prank. Let’s not get everyone up in arms.**  
  
 _Or at least let everyone think we’re not concerned yet,_  Red said, nodding and returning to the Security office.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2032 – May  
  
Powerglide circled around for another pass to be sure his optics weren’t playing tricks on him. Yep. There they were, doing what he thought they were doing.  _Yo! Trailbreaker!_  he tight-beamed.  _What gives?_  
  
Sitting on the side of the road, outwardly relaxed, his optics off, Trailbreaker’s peaceful little smile widened.  _If Prime really laid back in a bed of Earth flowers like this, he’d squish them. So I thought I’d give him a hand._    
  
Only a slight shimmer gave the heavy duty force fields away. Prime lolled spread-eagled over the field of poppies and lupine, those beneath him bent slightly so that he seemed to be floating on a shallow, bright orange sea flecked with purple and green. He’d been doing nothing more strenuous than watching the clouds and had seen Powerglide’s flyby. He waved at the little aerobatics plane then laced his fingers behind his helm and crossed his ankles in as fluent a show of contentment as any bilaterally symmetrical humanoid could display. Powerglide laughed.  
  
 _Have fun, Boss!_  He waggled his wings then resumed his course north to the Oregon base, feeling lighter than air.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2032 – September  
  
The pleas for their help in international rescue and humanitarian aid efforts were getting harder and harder to put off. First Aid, however, was adamant. They could run around the western half of North America for a while; there were things there that needed doing, too; but with the deltas gone so often to the limits of the solar system, Aid did not want them straying too far when Evac and Blades’ progeny was so close to decant.   
  
The new mech had grown into a typical seeker-class zeta, like Skydive and Fireflight, peering and scanning curiously about from the tank, transmitting an occasional greeting or answer to one in a soft and, so far, uncomplicated tone. Tracks had pronounced him completely adorable.  
  
“Welcome,” the Protectobots said, as they took the new jet’s hands and drew him into a six-way hug.   
  
“Hullo,” the jet said, big, round optics glowing bright. “I’m Breakaway!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 – July  
  
Ratchet rechecked and re-calibrated and rechecked again. He was up at the Oregon base while Perceptor was still in space, (though Perceptor would return to Earth with Skyfire in time for the decantation. They hoped.) checking them over to put Hoist’s mind at ease and to visit with Catscan and Lifeline.   
  
 _Perceptor,_  he tight-beamed carefully. Putting another two layers of encryption on just in case. Perceptor’s progeny were always too clever by half. And he’d had no idea what to expect of offspring from Vector Prime. Now he’d gotten a bit of a clue.  
  
 _Yes, Ratchet?_  
  
Oh, slag you, Ratchet thought. Perceptor already sounded smug.  _They aren’t any forging I can identify._  Not that Tessera had been entirely typical, but Perceptor had managed to dredge up a precedent from the most ancient files in the Archive copy. Gestalts and anti-gestalts. Ratchet had thought these four were going to be  _je_  like Arcee, and he’d been glad of it. But these four had  _wings_. Even Tracks’ forging wasn’t this weird.   
  
 _The get of a Firstforged; what were you expecting?_    
  
 _You’re enjoying this, aren’t you._  
  
 _Oh yes._  
  
…  
  
Five days later.  
  
Usually – or given the small sample they had so far – when a group decanted together, it meant they had chosen to be a gestalt, or were twins. Or in this case, quadruplets. Except these four had been simply kindled at the same time by the same progenitors. Their sparks had been formed independently, not split. Ratchet didn’t know what to make of it, but he was glad it was Perceptor up there in Oregon, handling things at the final stage, rather than him.   
  
Catscan and Lifeline had observed the growth process with fascination from the beginning. They were pleased to be allowed to be present for the decantation as well, though Perceptor and Hoist assured them it was no different than watching anyone newly sparked come down off the kindling platform. These weren’t going to be altricial young, like humans had, even if they’d been made on the humans’ planet.   
  
“Even so,” Catscan said gravely. “We have not seen new people made in a very long time. I am more glad than I can say that you here have found a way to do it, despite what happened to the Allspark.”   
  
“It is a pity Vector Prime did not stay longer,” Lifeline said.  
  
“Yes,” Perceptor murmured, his fins and vanes sinking for a moment against his helm. “No doubt he will meet them at some point in the future.” He grinned.   
  
Four plex cylinders rose, four small, angular mechs stepped down, optics on Perceptor.   
  
“Spark of our sparks,” they said, reaching up to touch his face as he knelt to gather them in his arms.   
  
“Do you know your names?” Lifeline asked.   
  
“Celaeno, Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone,” they said. Furies.  
  
They vanished with an inrush of air, reappearing on the mountainside, drinking in their first sight of the ocean. Perceptor, holding nothing but air, fell back onto his aft.   
  
“Teleporters!” He murmured, regaining his feet only to lean hard on Catscan. “Oh dear.”  
  
 _Skywarp’s gonna be fragged off, when he finds out,_  Thundercracker opined, flying in tight formation with Strake at 40 thousand feet directly above.  _He assassinated every other seeker with the ability._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 - August  
  
“Hmm?” The sunwarmed hands on his chassis at first only vaguely impinged on Perceptor’s consciousness. Various subroutines linked to his sensors told him who it was. A bit of a surprise, since despite the nakedly geological landscape around the embassy, Beachcomber didn’t really spend very much time down there.   
  
Beachcomber touched him often, but sometimes Perceptor got a clue that his smaller friend had more in mind than a simple hug. The wandering yet deliberate groping was pretty much a giveaway.   
  
 _Hey._    
  
Perceptor aimed the microfusor in a safer direction and leaned down to nuzzle Beachcomber’s helm. After the preliminary tests outside the Sol system, Perceptor had tweaked the design of the gate emitters a little more. Which meant he also had to modify the machines he and Wheeljack were building that would help make the machines that would manufacture the emitters on a more industrial scale. Most of the structural framework could be built thus, but some components were going to be fiddly and delicate and would best be at least calibrated by hand, as it were. Wheeljack still wasn’t happy about the unconventional design, but he could hardly complain too much when Vector Prime himself had approved of Perceptor’s innovations.   
  
 _If we made more science-bots,_  Beachcomber hummed,  _They could help. You wouldn’t have to work so hard._  
  
 _Oh ho! Is that what you’re after?_  Perceptor powered off his tools and turned in the loose circle of Beachcomber’s arms, bending lower yet to kiss the geologist properly.   
  
 _Hoist and Grapple have more tanks ready, if you want to._  
  
 _Hmm! How many, if I may ask?_  
  
Beachcomber laughed. He knew Perceptor wanted to try Vector’s ancient method again, if only to prove it worked with someone other than a Firstforged. Beachcomber was certainly game. Rutile had been on Mars for almost nine years. Aside from the brief visit afforded – unfortunately – by Thunderwing’s arrival, Beachcomber hadn’t seen him in the metal for most of that time, and he missed him. Well. Subspace comm was essentially lag-free, so they didn’t even have to wait the four minutes each way for a conversation. But Beachcomber liked bodies. He liked watching people’s optics as they spoke, liked watching how they moved, liked feeling their energies and warmth. It wasn’t an obsessive need by any measure; it was just nice. “Twenty,” he told Perceptor. And grinned as his friend’s head fins and vanes stood straight up for a second before waving about rather excitedly.   
  
 _So we have a total of twenty-five there, plus eleven here._  Ratchet had given Metroplex a stern talking-to and there weren’t likely to be any more premature decantations. Hot Rod’s legs had indeed finally grown in properly, but it had taken almost another year for them to be fully developed and transformable. Hot Rod, despite all the scolding, didn’t seem to mind.   
  
“Do you want to drive back?” Beachcomber asked hopefully. They could get Skyfire to lift them over, but the drive would be relaxing. Well. It would be relaxing for Beachcomber. Perceptor, if he was in the mood to fret over wasted time – which was most of the time these days – might find a few extra hours delay aggravating.   
  
 _Borealis is bringing Rutile down from Mars,_  Perceptor said.  _Why don’t we drive?_  
  
Beachcomber did a little whirling dance he might have learned in the Sahara or from dervishes in India during his wanderings with Miles, and his smile shone brighter than a sun.  
  
…  
  
“Do you really think we should make enough to fill all twenty tanks?” Beachcomber stood in the center of the new circular chamber Hoist and Grapple had hollowed out of the mountain. The space was relatively spare and smooth-walled, but Grapple was in the process of carving bas reliefs and groined arches in the ceiling. Beachcomber had found the column of sturdy basalt in an old, choked off throat of the volcano, and he and Grapple had planned the structure carefully, taking the tectonic instability into account. The ceiling was quite high and already the fluted and crenellated shapes aloft were beautiful. Tanks lined most of the circumference, though there was room left for more, fitted snugly, if they wanted more in the future.   
  
Perceptor had argued that perhaps confronted with a period of time when they couldn’t merge would induce more of his team to want to. Hoist and Grapple had had Theodolite back in the 20’s, but had not repeated the experiment. At least not with each other. Hoist had later produced Rollbar with Inferno of all people. Perceptor had no idea what that had been about, other than perhaps to see if two large mechs might tend to produce another large spark and hence large mech. Rollbar was smaller than both of his progenitors, though. Perceptor didn’t think it had anything to do with progression toward the mean – look at Metroplex and Groove, both were “Prime Kids” as some people were calling them, but though Prime needed to donate as much mass as possible for each protoform, the resultant size of the fully-formed mech seemed to have more to do with both the intentions and needs of the progenitors and the wishes and decided upon form of the newspark itself.   
  
Or maybe the Allspark, having created all of them, was yet messing about with them. Perceptor might want to have a word with it later, if that was the case.   
  
Beachcomber insisted that not only was Perceptor’s rather mean-spirited strategy not going to work, but that Gears and Huffer and the others knew perfectly well how happy merges and newsparks made Perceptor and wouldn’t take up a tank with their own progeny even if they wanted to.  
  
“And if we have that many at once, we’ll have to do it down here,” Beachcomber pointed out. He didn’t mind. It was a nice enough cave, putting it that way, though he liked flowstone and travertine and the natural formations that filled many caves better. “Hoist couldn’t carry that many down from the mountaintop; he’d melt and they’d go bouncing off across the landscape and who knows what would happen?” He suspected that unbodied or otherwise unsupported sparks would burn out and die, but the image of little glowy spheres bounding about was nevertheless amusing. Except they’d cause fires and burn down the forest. That wouldn’t be as fun.  
  
Perceptor drooped. “Oh, Hoist, I am sorry. You are correct, Beachcomber. We…we can have starlight some other time.”  
  
“No, no,” Hoist said, “go ahead with a multiple topside, I have it sorted.”  
  
“How, exactly?” Perceptor asked, pinning Hoist with an intent stare.  
  
“You’ll see,” Hoist said merrily.   
  
 _Hey, Hoist! I’ll give you a boost up and down,_  Powerglide offered, currently cruising at five thousand meters.  _Powerglide can do! And does!_  
  
“Very well,” Perceptor said, amused.  
  
Hoist clasped Beachcomber and Perceptor’s shoulders and turned them around, propelling them from the chamber. Ven was already sequencing up the tanks’ systems, filling them with growth medium and drawing up the requisite amounts for each of protomass from the store they kept of that donated by Prime earlier. “Go on, have your starlight.”  
  
They leaned in, hugging Hoist, and he kissed them and patted their helms.  
  
 _To the summit, then!_  Perceptor called, running and leaping up the mountainside, Beachcomber keeping pace despite much shorter legs.  
  
…  
  
Stone beneath them, stars above, moonlight limning every edge, glowing in Perceptor’s lenses. Beachcomber, swimming the endless, dark sea of possibilities, illuminated by rafts of jellyfish spark-shades, now understood Perceptor’s complete and joyous love for these multitudes. How could one choose just one? Or twenty?  
  
…  
  
Perceptor tried to lurch to his feet, tried to keep the whirling sparks safe in his arms, against his own spark, but they seemed to want to orbit, and Perceptor's legs seemed to be offline somehow.  
  
 _Easy, Perceptor, I have them,_  Hoist said, stealing a kiss as he scooped the new sparks one by one into something he was carrying. Beachcomber refocused his optics. It looked like some kind of metal tray, with …indentations? Cups? Just big enough to hold each spark, bubbling and bouncing or spinning thoughtfully, glows spreading over the edge of the whatever it was. Beachcomber was sure there was a name for it somewhere in his memory, but his systems were shutting down; he hadn’t tried Red’s trick this time. He wanted to rest, just rest on Perceptor’s comforting warm body.  
  
…  
  
Beachcomber came to laughing. “A muffin tin!” He rolled around on Perceptor’s chest, kicking his feet in glee. “Hoist made a giant muffin tin to carry our spark-babies to the tanks! That is totally awesome!”   
  
Perceptor chuckled. “Ordinarily I’d say he watches too much Food Network, but in this case his culinary obsession proved most valuable.”  
  
 _Awake at last, hm?_  Hoist said, replying to Perceptor’s query regarding their new progeny.  _One of them twinned, by the way. I had to put them in the same tank, but the protoforms have split properly and seem to be doing just fine._  
  
Perceptor sat up, holding on to Beachcomber to keep him from tumbling off the crater’s rim.  _WHAT? Twins! Really? Have you told Ratchet?_  
  
 _Yes, I sent him the tank feeds. He concurs that they appear to be a perfectly normal set of spark twins. Not that twins are ever normal – yes I mean you, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker!_  Hoist chuckled. The news was spreading fast around the cloud mind, bringing with it streams of congratulations and affection and laughter and teasing and running warm beneath it all Prime’s encroaching hope for their future.   
  
…  
  
 _You’ve just dropped four out of their cans,_  Brawn said, later, through the cloud mind, gaping in disbelief.  _Now you drag Beachcomber into tossing off_  how many  _more?_  
  
 _Sounds like an obsession to me,_  Cliffjumper added helpfully.  
  
 _Yeah, and he’s hogging all the tanks!_  said Powerglide.  _Sheesh!_  
  
 _It’s those child-bearing hips,_  Sunstreaker chimed in.  _He can’t help himself._  
  
 **Don’t let them rattle you, Perceptor,**  Prime said, placing a hand on Perceptor’s shoulder as they surveyed the twenty new tanks and their even newer occupants. After a week, the same jibes were getting old and Perceptor was trying not to succumb to getting into A Mood. “What you and Beachcomber are doing is wise and necessary. The Decepticon lines are wearing thin, and I grow weary of this war.”  
  
Perceptor regarded him sharply, large optics very wide, mouthparts open slightly. “I’m afraid I’m not as reassured by that as you no doubt intended me to be.”  
  
Prime chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning anything rash.”  
  
“No. You wouldn’t. Just something permanent.”


	71. Baby Boom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Chromia rejoins Elita's platoon; Elita decides who gets the spark chamber mod; Breakaway goes into integration; and Galvatron is actually fairly sane for a bit. Until he isn't.  
> There is a space battle, and then a ground battle, and then there is much snuggling. Also quotation smorgasbord! XD

2032 – May  
  
 _Slag, Chromia!_  Springer hollered through the airlock window.  _We fragged the Iacon sentries when we picked you up, remember? We can set you down on the… Never mind._  
  
With a jaunty wave and a mimed blown kiss, Chromia curled into cometary mode and dove out into vacuum. Springer watched the bright glow of her re-entry and shook his head.   
  
 _She jump?_  Kup queried from the bridge.  
  
 _Yep._  
  
 _Heh._  
  
…  
  
“Ultra Magnus, incoming subspace message from Optimus Prime,” said Axalon, the new ship’s AI – a subnode of Event Horizon written to replace the _Sparkreaver_ ’s lost former AI.  
  
“He misses us already,” Springer said.  
  
“Level 5 coding, private, for Ultra Magnus,” Axalon continued. Amused clicks and hoots spread around the bridge crew. Ultra Magnus quirked a corner of his mouth upward and plugged in an arm cable. Axalon chirped him the encrypted message.  
  
Magnus was well practiced in concealing his reactions. He listened to Optimus’ précis of the sliver’s theft, and the subsequent outlining of possible outcomes and surrounding events, giving no outward indications of anything amiss by posture or fields.   
  
“Siren,” he told the  _Sparkreaver_ ’s medic and science officer, “I want every microvolume of the ship scanned. This is what you’re looking for.”  
  
“Huh. That’s a peculiar alloy. What’s it used for?”  
  
“That is inconsequential. Please inform me of the results of the scan as soon as it’s complete.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
Magnus projected a 50 percent chance they’d find the thing. Chromia had already left.   
  
Slag.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2032 - December  
  
In the cool privacy of her mind, behind a dozen layers of firewalls, Elita had assessed the talents of her crew and chosen the handful who stood the best chance of getting to within five kilometers of Shockwave. By whatever means necessary. She had assembled them here in the narrow, triangular space under two buildings that had collapsed on each other, their support structures interlocking in fatal embrace, and now, millennia later, providing a small, safe haven in what until recently had been very dangerous territory. They were within twenty kilometers of the crater where Kaon had been.   
  
“I’m tempted to set up a lottery,” she said, watching their faces. “But I thought I’d let any of you who are so inclined argue your case as to why you would be the best one for the mod and the mission.” All of them had volunteered, after Chromia had returned with the sliver of spark chamber alloy and the schematics for the collapse mechanism she’d gotten from Ratchet. Everyone wanted to be the one to vaporize Shockwave into his component atoms. Elita would let everyone have their say.   
  
“I’m fastest,” Moonracer said, jumping in first before anyone else had gathered their arguments and engaged their vocoders. As usual. “I have the most advanced cloaking system since Magnesia was killed. I can get that close to old Shocks before the Cons even know I’m there!”  
  
“I’m the toughest of you lot,” Chromia declared. “And I’m patient. I think stealth is a good option, but if that fails you need to be prepared to take a pounding, and hang on until they bring you to his experimentation labs. He’ll want to take any of us apart – we’ve given him so much grief over the eons. Also, he knows I’m a stand-up kind of fighter. He knows I’d rather just shoot him in the face without any prancing about. He won’t expect me to be carrying a hidden weapon, let alone something like this.”  
  
The eulogies continued. Firestar. Soliton. Maserblade. Cyclis. Pathfinder. Tripwire. Pixel. Spiral. Some were small and fast, others were big and tough, old and crafty, experienced or creatively stealthy. Elita listened to each one, weighing the options carefully, giving each trait proper consideration.   
  
“I have the largest spark chamber,” Elita said, once they had finished. “Minimum blast radius twenty kilometers.” Everyone knew Shockwave would particularly enjoy killing her, and that Elita would not ask any of them to do something she herself was unwilling to. Swift glances and tight-beamed comms were exchanged, overtaken by the stillness of intense calculation.   
  
"What do you think, Beta?" Elita asked of the air, not bothering to look up.   
  
A dark green mech unfolded herself from the angled ceiling. She was the same forging as Elita but a much, much older model. "I think you're all idiots."   
  
"Oh yeah?" Moonracer bristled.   
  
Beta rearranged her root mode to stand between Elita and Chromia, pounding on one hip gimbal to get it to align properly. "Yeah. Give me the mod. I'm the most logical choice. Only got another couple vorns left in this old spark anyway." She thunked her chest, lifting her armor to make it sound more hollow. Chromia pinched the bridge of her mid-helm buttress. "Besides, except for maybe Lita here, I'm the one old Shocky's gonna most want to get up close and personal with to gloat. Who do you think took his left hand?"   
  
Moonracer widened her optics. "That was you?"   
  
Beta made a deprecatory click. "Was a while ago, but yep. He won't have forgotten, I guarantee."   
  
Elita regarded her for a long time. "Very well. Firestar?"   
  
"I can be ready in six orns, Elita."   
  
"Do it."   
  
…  
  
"Fragged thing's heavy as slag." Beta said, surprised and gratified to find herself coming out of deep stasis. She hadn't been sure she would, old as she was.   
  
“How do you feel otherwise?" Firestar asked. She had the stats and feeds already, but she knew it was always good to get a subjective report in case something subtle was glitched. Sometimes it was your first and only warning that something was wrong.   
  
“What’s that phrase Borealis used?” Beta said. “Fit as a fingerling.”  
  
“Fiddle,” Chromia muttered, rubbing her forehelm.  
  
Firestar gave them a rueful smile. "All right, there's no way to physically test this thing, but my sims say it's in right, and the specs are as close to the file we got from Ratchet as can be, given the forging differences between you and Prowl."   
  
"Nornir, are you ready?" Elita asked.   
  
"We are," Verthandi said solemnly. Her sisters nodded.   
  
Elita nodded and embraced each of them. She didn't need to say to be careful, to be cautious, to make this look good because they'd only have one shot.   
  
Beta had had her last night of shared love before the procedure had been performed, while she could still open her spark chamber. They had layered the "armor" on heavily as Prowl's had been, to make a bigger boom, as Firestar said. She'd run the math again, given what they knew of Prowl's spark and the alloy used in the collapse mechanism. She didn’t think Ratchet's perimeter of twelve kilometers when they had first discovered the thing would have been far enough. Prowl would have gone off like a gigaton thermonuclear bomb.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 – January  
  
“Good morning, Wayalong,” Maggie said fondly, sipping her first coffee of the day and smiling up at the young zeta-class seeker as he sat on the floor next to the couch in the human-scaled entertainment area to watch the news with her. For once, she’d beaten out Jazz’s talent for nicknames; “Breaker” or “Breaks” hadn’t caught on like “Wayalong” had. In her honor, Breakaway had taken on an Australian accent. The best part was that he didn’t sound anything like Paul Hogan or Steve Irwin.   
  
“Morning, Maggie,” he said. He could just plug into the cable signal of course, and get the news faster, but there was a social aspect to watching TV that Breakaway had parsed right away. That and he found the wash of photons and sound from the tube relaxing.   
  
“A medical helicopter crashed Sunday in Spring Valley, leaving three injured,” droned the reporter on the screen. “Sources say the helicopter was 200 feet above the landing pad when its engine failed…”  
  
Lucky they weren’t killed, Maggie thought, patting Chipchip, who had just transformed and was perched on her shoulder.   
  
“…The three crew members on board, a pilot, flight nurse and a paramedic were all listed in fair condition Sunday night…”  
  
“Wayalong crash?” Chipchip warbled, jumping off Maggie’s shoulder onto the couch back, running its length to perch at the end nearest Breakaway.   
  
“No, honey,” Maggie said. “Wayalong’s fi—” She put her mug on the coffee table. “Breakaway?” He was hunched over, one hand pressed to his chest, optics flickering.  
  
Running metal feet sounded from several directions before she could get up. First Aid and Hot Spot reached them first; Hot Spot lifting Breakaway to his feet as First Aid took his hands and scanned. Maggie caught Chipchip before he could launch himself at the big bots to “help”.  
  
“She burned,” Breakaway whispered. “She burned…”  
  
Maggie swallowed, realizing Evac’s death had not exactly been instantaneous. Blades shouldered between his brothers and took Breakaway in his arms as they all steered for med-bay. Ratchet watched from the door, but the Protectobots had things well in hand.   
  
“She saved us,” Blades said softly. “Listen, Breakaway, listen. She saved everyone.” Cables slipped between the gestalt and Blades’ progeny, letting him into the peripheral levels, letting them bear some of the brunt of his memory. Ratchet scanned them, then nodded to Aid and left them, closing the med-bay doors as he cleared them.   
  
“What were you watching?” Ratchet asked Maggie, coming around the partition and crouching beside her, holding out a finger for Chipchip to nuzzle. “ _Blackhawk Down_?”  
  
“No. No, it was just the news, but there was a medical chopper crash east of Vegas yesterday. Is he…integrating?”  
  
“Ah. Yes, he is.” Ratchet faced the TV but paid it no attention. “I was afraid he might go hard.” Breakaway was taking the inward route, trying to coil his mind up inside, away from memories of pain and the death of his progenitor, and the cacophony of inputs that all mechs had to learn to deal with. Blades and his brothers would bring him through as though he was part of their gestalt. Loss of one parent, gaining four.  
  
“Chipchip didn’t, though,” Maggie said, stroking the microbot’s anemone head. Ratchet extended a fine manipulator to pet him as well.  
  
“No. The microbots are clever fellows, and Prime gave them excellent programming.”   
  
By which he meant, Maggie understood, that the micros, smart as they were, were not very emotionally sophisticated, compared to their larger brethren.  
  
“We had things like them on Cybertron, mostly what you’d consider ‘wildlife’. Rustlets, scraplets, glitch mice, cleaner puffs.”  
  
“So, you could talk with your critters?”  
  
Ratchet grinned. “Very handy, too. Whenever a pod of glitch mice tried to burrow into my equipment I simply had to persuade them that there were better habitats elsewhere.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 – January  
  
“Come in, my generals; join me,” Galvatron purred. He spread his arms in an elegant gesture indicating the plasma pool in which he’d been soaking for the past quartex. “Not you, Jhiaxus. Get your own pool. You stink of …whatever you’ve been disassembling lately.”  
  
“Half-organic aberration,” Starscream sneered, as Jhiaxus stalked over the narrow crater rims between pools, jumping into his chosen one so the glowing, fuming contents slopped over the sides.   
  
Galvatron drew Turmoil and Bludgeon close, biting their helms, fondling their chests. “Bludgeon, you and Jhiaxus will go to Earth. Thunderwing did not succeed in killing the Prime. Perhaps your combined forces will. Turmoil, you will remain in this vicinity. You have repeatedly failed to destroy the Autobot seeker gestalt. I trust you will remedy that.”   
  
“Yes, my Lord,” Turmoil said, arching obediently under Galvatron’s hands.   
  
“Soundwave,” Galvatron continued, “my most loyal commander, you will also remain, as my second. Shockwave must continue his great works undistracted.”  
  
“What of me, my Lord?” Starscream inquired.  
  
Galvatron held Starscream’s face in his talons, drawing him to within millimeters. “You and Skywarp will accompany the others to Earth. Bring Thundercracker to me – his entirety being a larger target than merely his head. I trust you can therefore accomplish that one small task.”  
  
“Yes, my Lord.”  
  
…  
  
Galvatron arose from the plasma bath with renewed determination. Cyclonus, faithful to the last, standing guard, foolishly with his back turned to his master, did not anticipate the caress nor the blow that followed, merely accepting both with little reaction that might further provoke. Galvatron strode past him, down the narrow stone and metal walkways between alternating lava and plasma pools under the cavernous, orange-lit ceiling.  
  
A seam of almost pure iron flowed through the wall of the cavern he sought. More than enough mass for what he intended. Cyclonus followed him. Well enough. If he was caught in the lightning so be it.   
  
“My Lord?”  
  
“Be silent.” Galvatron faced the glittering, banded seam of magnetite and hematite, black and red through the ruddy stone. Yes, plenty of raw material. The Allspark could accomplish both parts of the process after all, why should Galvatron waste time and effort better allotted elsewhere when his new soldiers might be induced to assemble themselves? He’d felt himself growing in the plasma bath, knew Optimus would be experiencing the same odd phenomenon. No doubt that fool Ratchet would be trying to pry the Allspark matter out of Prime. Galvatron smiled.   
  
Now, for the future of the great Cybertron Empire. Galvatron opened his chest. Cyclonus might have taken a step back, Galvatron was hardly aware, certainly did not care as long as he kept any other intruders at bay. Especially Starscream.   
  
He called up the power, spinning his spark faster, heavy, shot with violet, his armor crazed with blue energies that broke open the borders between dimensions. Now! Claws of blue flame tore long gouges from the rock, pulling, weaving, melting, clarifying, rearranging atoms, forming the mass into a simple but effective shape.  _Now!_    
  
The shape hollowed, hallowed for that which would fill it. Spark of life, of power. Galvatron tipped his head back, opening wider, broadening the conduit, roaring his triumph as a massive spark spun to ignition in the center of the slowly cooling frame prepared for it. But the enormous spark burned too hot, and the body began to melt once again even as it tried to solidify all the intricate workings that made up the innards of a Cybertronian.   
  
Cyclonus caught Galvatron as he fell back, the Allspark-generated lapse of consciousness taking his leader once again. The half-formed creature emitted a single groan before consuming itself in white fire, collapsing, and a glowing-edged well appeared in the floor as the thing sank out of sight. Cyclonus wondered briefly how far down it was going to go, then decided he did not want to remain in the chamber to find out. He hauled Galvatron’s inert form along the tunnels, over the narrow ways, up and up, out into the sharp-edged night of Chaar under cold uncaring stars and the black teeth of broken mountains.   
  
…  
  
 **Ah, no…**  Optimus was halfway to the med-lab when the double impact of creation and destruction struck him down.  
  
…  
  
Galvatron attempted to create a fully-formed Cybertronian again. And again. Some self-destructed the moment they became self-aware; some melted into puddles of slag – though none so spectacularly as the first. Some cooled too quickly and shattered before the spark could properly seat itself. One survived and named itself Slog and was quite, quite mad, and the Decepticons were glad to let it do the things it did on the other side of the mountains as long as it didn’t bother them with too many requests for severed limbs and corpses and the wounded who might live long enough to be interesting.   
  
After a while Galvatron continued only partly to rebuild his army. He knew at each incident the awry ensparking distressed Optimus. Yes, Brother, feel each misbegotten life, each necessary death. The Autobots might share in his misery, Galvatron thought, might be demoralized once the Decepticon forces were gathered and ready to take the final assault to that miserable mud planet they seemed so fond of. Infected. Easy to manipulate. Perhaps even on the edge of madness. Optimus had always shared himself too freely.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 - February  
  
Ratchet watched fondly as First Aid went from tank to tank, not just checking the readouts, but  _looking_  at the protoforms and scanning directly, comparing them to a projected holo from his left wrist of the protoform in the second tank in Wheeljack’s tower which contained the progeny of a merge between Jack and Prowl. Progeny who should have decanted by now, but hadn’t. The growth rate seemed to have synched with that of four others – merges by Ultra Magnus and Prime, Bluestreak and Hound, Prime and Blurr, and Drift and Prowl.   
  
“We…should move that tank out of Wheeljack’s lab so it can be close to the others,” First Aid said, his harmonics burring with excitement.  
  
“Gestalt?” Ratchet asked, even as he sent hails to several people who would be needed for the relocation.  
  
“Gestalt!”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2033 – September  
  
Sam waved at his aide as he left the office. The aide had a finger pressed to his earpiece and was patiently explaining, “Ma’am… Ma’am, you  _are_ speaking to a human being. Yes, I’m sure…”  
  
Smirking, Sam rode the elevator down to the garage and walked with springy step to his reserved spot. Bumblebee wasn’t in car mode. He was huddled against the wall, armor pulled tight.  
  
“Whoa, Bee? Are you okay? What happened?” Sam rubbed Bee’s forearms, tugging at the robot’s clenched hands.  
  
“Not  _them_ ,” Bee whispered. “I don’t want them to come here.”  
  
“Who them?”  
  
“The Terrorcons.”  
  
“Eugh, that doesn’t sound good.” The name translations could be appallingly blunt sometimes. Bee sounded  _afraid_. Sam knew fear only made Bee more brave, but it was disconcerting to see.   
  
“They aren’t.” Bee looked up. He could project images to show Sam, but he didn’t want to. “The other Cons don’t like them either. You can’t order them, only aim them in a general direction where you don’t care whether or not there will be anything worth salvaging later. They deliberately take monstrous shapes. The worst nightmares of every species they destroy; diseased things, the deformed, incomplete twinning, things that live only to kill or eat. I don’t like it that they’re coming here.”  
  
Even Thunderwing hadn’t upset Bee so much. This candor was somehow reassuring, though. Humanity was better at defending itself these days. Sam leaned on Bee’s arms and hooked his fingers around Bee’s jaw spars. “You know when grownups tell you everything’s going to be fine and you think they’re probably lying to make you feel better?”  
  
Bee chuffled and squeezed his optical shutters at him. A Bee-smile. “Yes.”  
  
“Everything’s gonna be fine.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Oh my god,_  Lennox said on the main cloud mind channel.  _Who had babies?_  He curled an arm around Sarah’s waist and whirled her out of the way as a small robotic …rhinoceros? The hell? went galloping by, hotly chased by a robotic lion and two more or less human-sized biped robots waving their arms and shouting.   
  
“Sorry, man,” said a smooth voice from the shadowy reaches of the hangar. “Those’re mine.”  
  
“San Diego Zoo?” Lennox asked, setting Sarah down before his back went out.   
  
A tall, unusually broad-chested mech emerged from the stem corridor and, putting two fingers to his mouth in a gesture unnecessary except for the warning it gave, emitted a piercing whistle. “Yo! You four! No running inside! How many times we have to tell you?” The four came pelting back, skidding to a walk as they crossed the hangar threshold. They clustered around the tall mech’s legs.  
  
“Good morning, Will, Sarah,” said Prime, striding forward to welcome them. The lion-like bot gave a prodigious leap up into Prime’s arms, settling to be scratched behind the ears with a remarkable – and loud – facsimile of a purr. “This is Blaster, and his symbionts, Ramhorn, Steeljaw, Eject and Rewind.”  
  
“’Rewind,’ huh?” Lennox said as his contact lenses updated, giving him the name tags as Prime made them accessible.  _Blaster is whose kid?_  he texted Sarah hastily via implant. It had taken Sarah a long time to be convinced about the net implants, but once she realized she could communicate with her family all the time, and no one could claim they’d forgotten to charge their phone, she’d embraced the technology wholeheartedly.   
  
 _Bumblebee and Jazz are his parents,_  Sarah replied. She didn’t see any reason to fool about with the “progenitor” and “progeny” nonsense.  _Crosshairs and Roulette are new, too – over there watching TV. Crosshairs’ parents are Ultra Magnus and Nightbeat. Roulette’s parents are Ultra Magnus and Chromia._  
  
 _Magnus was busy while he was here._  Sounded like the Autobots had a pair of new snipers, though. Nice. “Does anyone use tapes anymore? Kind of retro.” Lennox smiled, indicating it wasn’t meant as a criticism. Of course people still used “rewind” and “eject” in reference to video and audio on any medium.   
  
“History is so fascinating!” Rewind enthused, stepping away from Blaster to shake Lennox’s and Sarah’s hands. “But there are so many books that haven’t been scanned to the net yet. It’s frustrating! I guess the really old ones are fragile; it’s difficult to convince the library directors to put them through a full scan. Although I bet Perceptor could read them without opening them, and then he could—”  
  
“Rewind,” Blaster said, smiling.  
  
“Sorry,” Rewind said, snuggling into Eject.   
  
“Anna has informed us that you are to become grandparents soon,” Prime said. “Congratulations!” He gestured for Sarah and Lennox to accompany him back to the war room. Once there, Lennox led Sarah up the inclined ladder to the top of the holotable.   
  
“Thank you,” Sarah said. “We’re so excited!” She beamed up at Prime, laughing as Steeljaw turned three times and settled down on Prime’s shoulder. She wouldn’t have pegged Optimus as a cat person, but Steeljaw was fabulous. His intricate armor was plated in what Sarah suspected was real gold. She wondered if there was a functional reason or if Steeljaw was – like a cat – more than a bit vain.  
  
“Yeah,” said Lennox, running a hand through hair that was becoming more salt than pepper every year. “It’s kind of weird, though, thinking of ourselves as old enough to be grandparents. When did that happen?” He shook his head and Sarah patted his shoulder. Prime himself had five grandchildren already: Freeway, Hot Rod, Breakaway, Tessera, and Crosshairs. Jazz, and Prowl of all people, had two each as well. Sarah realized she could track the parents and children all right, but the lack of monogamous pairs was going to make further generations very complicated.   
  
Jazz skated in, followed by Prowl, as the more junior members of the human embassy staff who’d been in the room vacated.   
  
“You needn’t,” Prime began, but the last one to leave smiled and keyed the door closed behind her.   
  
“Can I borrow your staff?” Lennox asked plaintively. Sarah had used to ask if she should leave as well, but she’d been part of the Autobot family since well before the veil of secrecy had been lifted. The UN and US governments might not agree, but Prime had the final say on what was officially Cybertronian territory.  
  
Jazz leapt up to sit on the holotable so neatly the humans barely felt the bounce. “The Arecibo guys are up and running,” he said. The old radio dish had been considerably upgraded in recent years, and had proved an ideal receiver for far more than radio waves. “And now we know what’s taking the Cons so long to get their afts out here.” He looked at Lennox. “They stopped by the Fea N’Gyalla system to beef up on metals. Skyfire reckons they’re filling their ranks with Shocky’s latest generation of drones.” Lennox felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.   
  
Prime gazed at the holotable and its display activated; stars whirling into their places in the galactic dance. “The Fea didn’t take kindly to this?”  
  
“Heh. Bludgeon at least got his tail singed and both battalions have left the area. ‘Bolt isn’t sure where they warped to, but the Aerials have pulled in and are keeping optics on the local volume.”   
  
“Very well. General?”  
  
“We’re geared up,” Lennox said. Two fully manned Decepticon warships. If they got the drop on Earth it could be over very quickly. He and Prowl cued their joint strategy into the holotable and a detailed critique and revision began.  
  
Sarah watched Steeljaw, paying half attention to the planning going on around her. Optimus and his people had been quietly reproducing, filling out  _their_ ranks with fully sapient kindled beings, while most humans had tried to pretend that the Cons had been defeated forever. Steeljaw unshuttered one optic, aware of her gaze, then shuttered it again.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Signal?”   
  
The minicon paused, looking up from his work deep in Wheeljack’s tower. Perceptor knelt beside him, sensory fins flat against his helm, the outer rim of his compound optics pale.   
  
“What’s wrong?” Signal deactivated his soldering iron and took a step away from the workbench.   
  
“You’re under no obligation, but I…” Perceptor began, then stopped, visibly calming himself. “Please. Please, if things go badly, will you guard them? Help them when they decant; teach them…teach them…”  
  
Signal took Perceptor’s hand. “We will. With every micron of cunning and power at our disposal.”  
  
Perceptor nodded. “That will be more than sufficient, then. Thank you.”  
  
 _See, Pulse?_  Orris said on the minicon private channel.  _The Autobots and the Decepticons are not the same._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Earth and Mars were too close to each other. The stopping point now would be the Saturnian system, and the Autobots would try to hold the approaching Decepticon forces on Enceladus.   
  
I can’t believe I’m doing this, Thundercracker thought. Perceptor clung to his dorsal surface, the baseline hum of his light cannon transmitting through his body into Thundercracker’s. Allspark-fragging Seekerbane.   
  
They coasted high above the ecliptic, keeping watch. The Aerialbots were trailing the two Decepticon battleships at a distance. Probably the crews – or at least the captains – of the  _Torment_  and the  _Vivisector_  knew they were there, but they were well outside weapons range. Four little jets and one delta were less interesting as targets when they’d been sent to kill a world.   
  
…  
  
Soon, Jhiaxus knew. Soon, my lovelies. The Terrorcons were kept in stasis between missions. They were easily bored, and tended to hunt, kill and eat the rest of the crew during protracted voyages. While they were quiescent he made whatever modifications and improvements he wished to their bodies and weapon systems, and even CPUs. Fabulous, living experiments! He’d rebuilt them so often there was nothing left of the mechs they’d kindled as. Only the sparks, he supposed, though things had happened to those as well. Strange, unpredictable things. Fascinating what enough pain could do.  
  
He polished their armor in long, lingering strokes, reaching between plates to caress their protoforms, rubbing himself on them to transfer charge. Positioning his chest over Hunger’s slack mouth, Jhiaxus opened, revealing his spark chamber as he did to no living, waking mech.  
  
…  
  
“There!”  
  
Thundercracker oriented to the nav feed he was getting from Perceptor, and slag wasn’t that weird. No wonder Perceptor’s range was so slagging far if he could  _see_  like that. Thundercracker chirped off a quick burst transmission to Strake and the deltas. First contact confirmed. Skyfire came back with the second from the opposite arc of volume. The Cons were trying to catch Earth in a crossfire.  
  
“Ready, Mirage?” Perceptor whispered. Mirage, clinging to Perceptor’s back and cabled tight, could hear him via their armor – with the added benefit that such direct transmission couldn’t be jammed or intercepted.   
  
“Ready.”  
  
“Scanning… Not an ideal angle, but we’ll do what we can. Target locked.” The light cannon’s hum rose to a fierce whine, Perceptor’s spark spinning hot and pale. There was no recoil, but thousands of kilometers away, the  _Torment_ ’s ventral port engine blossomed into white-hot gases and an expanding debris-cloud, sending the ship cartwheeling for a moment until the other engines could be reconfigured to compensate.   
  
Mirage triggered his cloak and he and Perceptor dove off Thundercracker to starboard, while Thundercracker snap rolled to port. Using Perceptor’s more powerful maneuvering jets and Mirage’s evasion software, they zigzagged away as return fire lit up space where they’d been. More beams followed Thundercracker, who slipped in behind Strake as the younger seeker arrived carrying Trailbreaker. Trailbreaker faceted his shields, taking the heavy beams at shallow angles, diverting rather than opposing.   
  
The  _Torment_  was closer now, braking to in-system speeds as it passed the Oort, the damaged section glowing, but the engine had been shut down before it could go supercritical. Perceptor and Mirage angled for their second, riskier shot.   
  
“Target locked,” Perceptor said, and fired the moment Mirage dropped the cloak. With a better angle he’d been able to punch holes in important bits of two of the remaining three engines. The  _Torment_  peppered their area with maser fire. Without Thundercracker’s superior velocity, they weren’t quite fast enough. Perceptor screamed as most of his right arm vaporized, acting as a sort of impromptu jet as Mirage cloaked them again. Masers stabbed at the glowing debris, destroying whatever atomic structure was left.   
  
“Should have had Ratchet give me my old arms,” Perceptor choked out, shutting down his pain systems as he reached around to seal off wires and energon lines in the stump. “Would have made this easier.”  
  
Mirage hugged him, pressing his helm into the shoulder opposite the one bearing the light cannon. “We’re 400 kliks from the rendezvous point. Here come the Aerials.”  
  
Announcing themselves with energy beams and hard ordnance, Silverbolt’s team harried the battleship, picking off drones and full mechs as they emerged from the launch bays. Perceptor reassessed his injuries and, classing them as a hindrance, powered his maneuvering jets to full and drove toward Saturn. Halfway there, Mirage dropped his cloak and Breakaway caught them, opening his canopy for Mirage. Perceptor was too big and simply clamped himself to Breakaway’s dorsal surface as he had to Thundercracker’s.  
  
“Oh no!” Breakaway cried. “Perceptor, I have to…do you want me to take you to First Aid or Ratchet? Aid is closer I think.”  
  
“Neither, I am stable, thank you. Proceed as planned.”  
  
“But…”  
  
Mirage patted Breakaway’s console. “He means it, Wayalong. This is real combat, not sparring.” People would die today – had done already. Mirage knew Breakaway would need no further reminding.   
  
…  
  
I think we got their attention, Borealis thought as she skittered around the frozen heart of a big comet. Fire from the  _Vivsector_  burned away half the comet’s mass and Borealis made another dash while Skyfire got a quick shot at the battleship’s main guns. Jhiaxus’ ship was heading directly for Earth, unlike Bludgeon, who had been effectively distracted by Perceptor’s team.   
  
Drones poured from the ventral hangar as the ship’s main guns kept the two deltas busy. That was Skyfire and Borealis’ signal. They focused on the drones – to Borealis’ relief.   
  
 _Multiple targets locked,_  Borealis said, not really caring if anyone could pick up her transmission.  _Phasers at 100 percent; photon torpedoes armed in the tubes – FIRE!_  Plasma cannons and her smaller secondary repeaters opened up on the swarming lenshead drones, speckling the dark with bright rosettes of molten alloy and sprays of rapidly congealing energon.   
  
 _What?_  Skyfire broke in.  _You don’t have pha-…oh never mind._  
  
Borealis pitched over for another pass.  _Prepare for saucer separation!_  
  
 _Borealis?_  Skyfire sent carefully.  _What are you—STARSCREAM!_  Starscream and Skywarp had slipped out of the battleship; Borealis hadn’t seen from where but she’d spotted that particular Seeker before anyone else had, as though he disturbed the graviton field in some characteristic way. She pictured him in a tutu and fought her fear down to manageable levels.   
  
Oh hell, was hoping he wouldn’t notice.  _Skyfire, wait!_  
  
Starscream ignored his perennial foe. He and Skywarp arrowed toward Thundercracker, who, after dropping Perceptor and Mirage off, had made for the southern “hemisphere” of the system to help the deltas with Jhiaxus’ ship. Snarling, Skyfire changed course to follow, emptying his missile cache. Starscream jinked and dodged; Skywarp blipped out of existence and it took seconds to locate him again.   
  
Aware of the danger, Thundercracker had spun, taking a long arc in a bid to put the  _Vivisector_  between himself and his former trine; but Skywarp appeared directly ahead and transformed.   
  
No words he could say would make any difference to Skywarp in battle. Thundercracker nevertheless transformed as well and hesitated too long in firing. Evading Skyfire with some difficulty, Starscream took advantage of the distraction and shot Thundercracker at close range.   
  
Skywarp dove forward, intent on capturing Thundercracker’s drifting body. Four small jets swarmed him from out of nowhere, blasting him with weird EM pulses that didn’t seem to do any harm at first – until he realized there were solid, projectile components that were worming their way under his armor, the sting of contact rapidly escalating to a corrosive wash of agony. When he fired back, the tiny jets  _disappeared_ , only to pop back into existence and launch another barrage.   
  
 _NO!_  he screamed.  _Mine! My power! No-one else’s!_  Rage overcoming pain, he tried to catch them. He’d rip them apart! He teleported, again and again, using recently upgraded predictive software. He should have known where they were going to be before they did, but they wisped and flickered and were never quite where they were supposed to be, and the pain crawled along his sensory net, finally slowing him. He ported to the edge of his range just to free himself from the hateful little flock and saw Starscream engaged hand to hand with that enormous fragger Skyfire.   
  
Starscream was going to be really fragged off, but Skywarp was hurt – the weird EM flechettes were still working their way down to and into his protoform. He teleported in, grabbed Starscream right out of Skyfire’s fist and ported them away.   
  
 _We’ve got TC,_  the Furies replied to Strake’s worried enquiries.  _He’s…non-responsive. We’re taking him down to Ratchet._  
  
…  
  
 _Star Wars_  tactics aside, Breakaway could now see why it generally wasn’t a good idea to pit individuals against a battleship. Skyfire and Borealis were only narrowly evading the beams and missiles from the  _Vivisector_ , amid the clouds of debris from the destroyed drones. No. They were being hit, all right. Good thing delta armor was incredibly tough. Oh no, there went Borealis, part of her hull glowing dull red, engines offline. She had a lot of inertia, was moving fast, but the battle had drifted almost casually into Saturn’s neighborhood and her body had been caught in the gas giant’s gravity well.  
  
Breakaway opened his cockpit and slowed. Mirage climbed out and wrapped himself around Perceptor again and the two kicked free, cloaked. Breakaway dodged lasers from the battleship, pulling a very high-G turn to get out of range and go after Borealis.   
  
Perceptor engaged his maneuvering jets, making full use of the velocity gained from Breakaway’s approach. Of course this meant they would hit the _Vivisector_ ’s hull a bit fast if he wasn’t careful. Skyfire still whirled and wheeled, keeping the ship’s guns occupied, but that wouldn’t last long. It didn’t need to. The next diversion was nearly there, and Perceptor and Mirage would be in place by the time it appeared.  
  
Braking hard, Perceptor landed with a  _clunk_  that sounded all too loud through his armor. Mirage unwound himself and found handholds at a safe distance. Adjusting his light cannon to mimic an ordinary hull-cutter, Perceptor got to work on their means of ingress.   
  
…  
  
Explosions rocked the aft end of the  _Vivisector_ , damaging the engines – and taking out one of the drone compartments when a bulkhead failed.   
  
Jhiaxus laughed. “It’s the  _Ark_.” Optimus Prime was clearly getting desperate. Could this be the last battle of the war? Bludgeon had apparently taken care of the last of the Light Brigade. Now the Autobots had haphazardly welded a handful of short-range weapons to their old, minimally-armed exploratory craft and expected it to hold against a fully outfitted battleship? Madness.   
  
“Main batteries, fire on my command,” Jhiaxus said. He could have plugged in himself, but he liked watching others do his bidding. The  _Ark_  drew closer, hammering at their shields, probing for weakness. Jhiaxus anticipated the  _Ark_  would flee as soon as it was fired upon. The Earth Autobots only had one or two other small interstellar-capable craft according to Soundwave. They were unlikely to risk the largest of such scarce resources. Let’s see how desperate they really are, Jhiaxus thought. “Fire!”   
  
A rolling, sputtering series of booms sounded down the battleship’s corridors.   
  
“Weapons systems malfunctioning, sir!” the gunner cried, yanking his cable connection from his console before the cascade failures could affect him. The _Ark_  continued firing. The shields held, but the  _Vivisector_  shuddered under the impact of missiles.  
  
Skyfire hadn’t ever gotten that good a shot in. “Saboteur!” Jhiaxus snarled. “Release the rest of the drones and send Macerator and Dropkick to find our guest.”  
  
“There’s someone on the hull,” reported another officer. “Uh. There  _was_  someone. Gone now. I’m not getting anything on scanners…what the frag?”  
  
“Turbofox,” Jhiaxus muttered. Soundwave had listed one among Prime’s group. No matter. The ‘fox would be caught, like the rest, and then Jhiaxus could tease out the cloaking net’s secrets at leisure.   
  
…  
  
 _Fall back to Enceladus,_  Prowl – piloting the  _Ark_  – instructed over Jazz’s multiphasic encrypted channel. It was an orderly retreat, of the kind the Decepticons had seen many times. He kept up a steady stream of fire at the  _Vivisector_  as he drew away, dodging behind larger ice chunks as he passed Saturn’s rings. The  _Vivisector_  followed, as Prowl thought it might.   
  
…  
  
“They’re heading for that moon, sir.”  
  
“Good,” said Bludgeon. “Establish us in orbit, and release the Predacons.” The Preds and the Terrorcons – for Bludgeon could see the  _Vivisector_  was following the Autobots’ withdrawal as well – would finish off the pathetic survivors down there on that icy moon while the ships’ crews completed repairs. The mudball Galvatron had sent them to incinerate would then be defenseless.   
  
…  
  
Unlike every other gestalt, the Terrorcons did not like to unite as their combined form, Abominus. Not only because they hated each other almost as much as they hated everyone else. It was because of Blot. Blot reeked. No matter how many times Jhiaxus had repaired his connections, Blot seeped fluids. Usually not energon, but every other type of hydraulics and coolant and lubricant oozed from the loose plates of his armor and sloppy protoform. He therefore also collected whatever kind of dust was around. If they stepped out onto an organic, stony planet Blot was sure to be covered in mud and pulped vegetation and the life fluids of the beings he’d killed by the end of the mission. Maybe Blot just liked being slippery. It was revolting. Whenever they combined, it took orns to wash the stink off the rest of them.   
  
They were exceptionally good at killing Autobots as individuals, though, so it didn’t matter much. The clumps of Autobots scattered across a section of the moon’s southern pole were easy targets; their armor dark against the icy surface.   
  
The coarse-grained ice crystals dusting Enceladus’ surface had been kicked up into a glittering haze. Jury was one of the most heavily armored of the remaining tanks of the Graveyard Legion. She and four other Legionnaires were just about keeping Cutthroat occupied. Cutthroat didn’t care how much energy he was wasting. He wanted to get his claws inside these mechs and start tearing things out.   
  
No one wanted to engage Blot. People kept shooting at him with concussion grenades to knock him back and then running away. Blot was getting upset.  
  
Railspike, Rapid Run and Midnight Express were bashing away at Hunger and Sinnertwin – three mechs against four heads. Almost a fair fight. This left Rippersnapper to Bumblebee; and Rippersnapper felt the slight keenly.   
  
 _You stinking little malfunction!_  Rippersnapper bellowed.  _You reek of organics! Filthy meatlover!_  Rippersnapper’s alt mode was short-limbed and slow, but tough, and once set on a course never willingly stopped.   
  
Bumblebee kept moving. The sun was too distant to give him much of a boost, and letting Rippersnapper get close enough to bite was a bad idea. He ducked and dodged, leaping over missiles, evading blasts from Rippersnapper’s ionization pistol. Bee aimed his own missiles and solar accelerator gun for the spark. Prime might be disappointed, but Bee was certain the Terrorcons would never surrender, never accept a peaceful solution. They had been created for mayhem, and tortured over millennia into beings mad beyond retrieval. Kill them all; let the Allspark sort them out.  
  
…  
  
“Take out the head,” Hot Rod said, though Enceladus’ polar atmosphere was too thin to carry his words far, “and the rest will follow!” Groups of Autobots charged Predaking, then fled before he could get a full lock on them. Hot Rod didn’t know if the gestalt had noticed that while the number of Autobots attacking him at any given time stayed the same, the individuals were different. Prowl wanted them to wear the Cons down with hit and run tactics; they dared not attempt a frontal assault. But it was taking so  _long_ …   
  
Sneaking around behind, Hot Rod waited until Prime’s team retreated and Raze’s team began their sally, then leapt, landing on the back of Predaking’s left leg. He wondered which of the Preds this was, and if whoever it was could feel him as he climbed. Something pointy and dangerous-looking rose from a small hatch near Hot Rod’s right hand. There weren’t guns on this side were…? There were. Hot Rod dodged, scrambling upward, but more weapons from beneath the gestalt’s armor were poking ugly muzzles round at him.  
  
 _Ironhide!_  A swift imperative from Prowl.  
  
 _On it. Borealis!_  
  
 _One Cannonball Special coming up!_  Borealis jetted, caught him, kept her arm extended and let his momentum swing them around, then fired her engines again as she threw. Directly at the gestalt’s head.  
  
For a moment, Ironhide felt as though he’d been turned inside out. His gyros settled nanoseconds before Predaking’s hand rose to swat him away. Ironhide fired both cannons, pouring as much extra power into each round as he dared – more than was prudent. The hand was a flaming skeleton of melting rods and fractured servos by the time he reached it, so he tucked his head, rolled his shoulders up and dove straight through it – with enough inertia left over to sail halfway along Predaking’s arm.   
  
Hot Rod had made it to the gestalt’s shoulders, so Ironhide added his fire to the young mech’s, and held on as Predaking staggered.   
  
And fell apart. Strake must have arrived with Perceptor and Mirage, and Perceptor had found the “sweet spot” he’d been talking about. It only worked if the gestalt was already low on power, but a direct hit in just the right place would force separation. Ironhide fell and landed fighting, keeping Razorclaw off Hot Rod. Someone big landed nearby and snatched Tantrum off the ground. Ironhide caught a glimpse of Borealis throwing the Predacon spaceward – toward the  _Torment_ , Ironhide thought. Preds as missiles. Novel concept. Next thing he knew, between parrying blows from Razorclaw, Defensor had formed and was doing the same thing; grabbing Decepticons and pitching them at the battleship. They were just making the Cons mad, but that was part of the point.  
  
Ironhide almost laughed as Tessera went to pieces and Headstrong stood rooted, staring at the twelve little mechlets, unable to decide which one to kill first before Borealis grabbed him too and pitched him out of orbit. Sideswipe, Sunstreaker and Atrandom – who had formed a kind of trine of their own and liked to call themselves “DAFT” (Decepticon Annoyance Fight Team) – tackled Rampage, smashing him to the ground before he could get a solid hit on Borealis or the skittering Tesserae. Divebomb began a strafing run, but Borealis made a swipe at him with one of her scythe-blades – he dodged that easily, but it sent him directly into her other hand and he was hurled unceremoniously at the nearest battleship.  
  
…  
  
The fight had devolved to mostly individuals, the Autobots scattering before the might of their enemies, only to regroup and attack again, whittling away at the greater forces. Prowl had flown the  _Ark_  after the  _Torment_  managing to inflict a bit more damage before being fended off with the battleship’s superior guns. Rutile had Stalker on his trail, jamming his comms for help. Used to the rugged terrain and occasional ice fields of Mars, Rutile was keeping ahead well enough, but he was severely outmatched in firepower.   
  
Slewing down a rough incline, he found himself in a valley. He knew where he was now, and sped on – along the floor of the Damascus Sulcus, one of the “Tiger Stripes” that cut across Enceladus’ southern pole. The Damascus was one of the most cryovolcanically active fissures. Stalker followed, but stayed up on the ridge, firing at Rutile more to make him jump than to kill. Rutile swerved around a low cliff and transformed, feeling for activity beneath his feet.   
  
He ran, pausing once to shoot at Stalker to make sure the Con was following. He was.  
  
Pain slashed across Rutile’s back, melting armor down to the protoform. Rutile fell, stunned by the shock of it, but struggled to his feet again, whimpering, driven by new desperation. He heard laughter behind him. Stalker had transformed as well.   
  
Faster, Rutile told himself. Faster! The timing had to be just right. Molten alloy from his back had dripped onto his legs, and now both spots had frozen; not enough to hamper his movements, but the cold was a different kind of pain, added to the other. He passed the spot he wanted, kept sprinting. His own body made so much noise he couldn’t hear if Stalker had closed the gap or fallen behind. He rotated his head to risk a glance for a stride or two.  
  
 _You’re cute,_  Stalker transmitted over an uncoded channel. He ran at precisely the same speed Rutile was, enjoying the chase. Knowing the outcome would be inevitable. And fun. A faint rumble felt more than heard was all the warning he got.  
  
Stalker was hurled a hundred kilometers from the surface, as a cryovolcanic vent cut loose with tons of highly pressurized saline water, ice crystals and traces of organic compounds. The spray began to freeze around him, stealing his heat much faster than ordinary vacuum. Stalker struggled into cometary mode – he didn’t want to end up as a block of ice like Megatron.  
  
With Stalker’s jamming field lifted, Rutile finally got through to Jazz, who sent Breakaway out to pick him up. Rutile didn’t want to be out there when Stalker got turned around and came back.  
  
…  
  
Bluestreak shoved Roulette and yanked Crosshairs down behind the boulder they’d been bracing their rifles on.  _Don’t get sniper-lock!_  Blue told them, as plasma burned off the top half of the rock.  _Everyone else has autonomic target locking, too. You have to watch for return fire._    
  
Roulette nodded and made a dash for another boulder. Blue patted Crosshairs’ shoulder – the young mech looked both embarrassed and terrified – and indicated they should follow Roulette. If they’d been experienced mechs, Blue would have split them up as well, to increase their effectiveness, but he wasn’t yet ready to let them out of physical grabbing range.  
  
…  
  
Elsewhere. The Terrorcons had overcome their preference not to take their combined form in order to face Superion and Rail Racer; Rapid Run, Slingshot and Air Raid’s complaints about the smell rather closely echoing Sinnertwin and Cutthroat’s.   
  
A frenzied, animalistic berserker against two canny, skilled fighters. If they’d been within a planetary atmosphere the din would have been staggering. Rail Racer’s shield shattered, sending the ground forces nearby scattering for cover against hot shrapnel. Superion preferred not to close to melee range with Abominus. It was dangerous as well as disgusting. Abominus particularly wanted to get its hands on Superion. Fancy jets with their pristine wings. When the Terrorcons could think coherently at all they wanted a smoking ruin of undifferentiated slag to be all that was left of Superion.   
  
When Abominus’ rifle blew a hole in Superion’s right arm, Superion did not immediately lose gestalt; too old and experienced to fall, even as the light from Fireflight’s spark wavered against the dark, Saturn-dominated sky. Only when Rail Racer pummeled Abominus with a precisely-aimed salvo from his own rifle, supported by fire from Bluestreak and his apprentices, was Superion able to withdraw down a shallow sulcus away from the heaviest fighting.  
  
 _FLIGHT!_  Slingshot and Air Raid screamed as they separated. Silverbolt had to unfix Fireflight manually, shuddering out of his part of the combined form and cradling their wounded brother.   
  
 _Chamber breach,_  Skydive said, only calm and stable on the surface.  _Too many lines are cut, Bolt, put him down. Where’s Ratch—?_  Slingshot had already transformed and was flying for the CMO.   
  
Not Flight, Silverbolt whispered to himself. Please not Flight.  
  
Prime’s team was nearby. They formed a cordon between the downed jets and the ongoing battle, Prime leaping down the sulcus to assess their condition. The Autobots couldn’t afford to lose one of them, let alone the entire gestalt.   
  
Even before he reached their side, Prime felt the power stirring in his chest. No! he thought. It’s too dangerous! He struggled to contain it, to control himself, but by the time he fell to his knees at Fireflight’s side, his chest had parted, blue lightning arcing from him to Fireflight’s torn body.   
  
Plunged into the interstices of matter and energy, Optimus felt or heard the dissonance of a damaged spark, dying, on the edge of flying apart, spinning into nothingness. He couldn’t allow that to happen. A roaring wave of energy flung itself across every dimension between them. Optimus felt pain, surprise, and, even dying, Fireflight’s curiosity, drawing the Allspark’s power like the force binding atoms together. Ragged, twisted metal flowed, reforming. The part of Fireflight’s spark that had been nearly sheared off was tugged further apart, coaxed. Optimus tried to stop, tried to fling himself away but he couldn’t find his body. The merge protocols had somehow kicked in.  
  
 _Not my spark…_  Fireflight’s self; faint, wavering, tied as it was to four others.   
  
A rippling blue-white limb from Optimus’ spark wound outward, engulfing the green-gold sliver of Fireflight’s, breaking its connections strand by strand. If this continued, Fireflight would be left with half a spark, at best crippled with a frame far too large. At worst, the merge would go wrong. Go nova.  
  
 _Optimus. Stop. Please. Not my spark…_  
  
 **Fireflight… Ah, no… No!**  Optimus fought to remember the pathways to the physical world, guided by the peripheral vision of the other four sparks nearby. Fireflight needed them. Optimus needed them.  
  
 **Help…me…**    
  
Slingshot grabbed Prime hard and drew back a fist.  
  
 _Don’t make yourself a threat to the Allspark!_  Skydive shouted across the gestalt channel. Slingshot’s optics widened and he uncurled his fist, settling instead for shaking Prime violently and dragging him away from Fireflight. The arc of power between them attenuated, lashing angrily, then snapped. Slingshot fell back, Prime across his legs; but the massive chest had closed.  
  
“Optimus!” Fireflight struggled in Silverbolt’s arms, clawing at the icy snow around them. The terrible breach had disappeared.  
  
 _No,_  his brothers told him, softly, gently. They gathered themselves against Silverbolt, keeping Fireflight with them, but casting wary optics at Prime’s scorched, smoking chest.  _Keep away. Dangerous._  
  
…  
  
At last! Worthy prey. Razorclaw had seen Starscream’s briefing on what the Autobots had termed the Graveyard Legion.   
  
 _Hey, Razorclaw,_  Raze shouted across an old, unencrypted channel.  _When’s the last time someone put you in CR?_  Razorclaw turned to face him and got a blade in the optic. Divebomb gave an enraged cry and swooped toward them, but others of the Legion intercepted him. Razorclaw fired into Raze’s chest and the Legionnaire fell away, spark flickering, dark, but Ironhide was up again and cutting loose with both cannons and missiles. The  _Ark_  flew right at him, too, saturating the air with plasma bursts, forcing him back from Raze’s body before he could claim a trophy.   
  
Razorclaw pulled the broken blade from his head – he had a secondary CPU in his torso and could shift his consciousness there if needed – but the mounting damage was setting off serious alerts in his systems. Much as it galled him, he wasn’t stupid. He called the retreat. Maybe the Autobots had wiped space with the drones, but most of the spilled energon on the surface of this moon was theirs.   
  
…  
  
 _Retreat,_  came the broadcast from Prowl. The first retreat had been a ruse. This one was not.  _To the embassy. They have to make repairs and so do we. I’m alerting NEST and the EDF._  NEST was in fact being folded into the new Earth Defense Force, but the merge had had a few political hiccups and wasn’t quite complete.  _I estimate 77.35% of the drones were destroyed,_  he tight-beamed to Prime and Jazz. Prime would already know mortality stats on ensparked mechs – and for that reason Prime had placed Jazz and Prowl in overall command, himself only leading one of the ground hit-and-run teams, where it wouldn’t matter as much if the losses overwhelmed him.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Earth.  
  
Shouting, Strake dragged himself and Prowl into the med-bay, trailing metal from his wounds striking sparks from the floor, energon spattering from uncapped lines. Even as he lunged toward Thundercracker’s motionless form on a repair table, Strake recoiled from his own behavior. He hadn’t been like this before. It must be the programming changes since his defection; leaving him vulnerable to emotional distress. Fragging Autobots!   
  
Hot Spot and Groove intercepted, speaking, as Prowl was, in soothing tones and stroking the agitated Seeker’s wings and hands.   
  
“He’s alive,” Hot Spot said. “His spark is stable; but he was hit point-blank by Starscream’s null ray. Ratchet says Screamer must have modified it recently, because TC’s wiring is physically damaged. He’s pretty fried, Strake, but we’ve pumped him full of new energon and his self-repair systems are working properly.”  
  
“He’s getting the care he needs,” Prowl added, reaching up to turn Strake’s face to look him in the optics. “Easy, now. You’re hurt, too. Flailing around won’t help TC.”  
  
Strake’s wings flared then gradually settled. “Sorry.”  
  
Hot Spot hugged him. Groove did too, but it was more a knee-hug. “We understand," they said.   
  
…  
  
 _Prime?_  Ratchet tight-beamed.  _I think TC is closer to Kup’s age than mine and Ironhide’s._  Chronological age in Cybertronian medical records tended to be more a footnote than a vital statistic. Of use mostly in narrowing down styles of basic framing, certain unusual auxiliary system types and core programming series. Thundercracker’s records – which Ratchet had from his mentor, Yoketron, who had been the CMO to Megatron’s troops before the war – explicitly gave his kindling date at 3.7 vorns before Ratchet’s.   
  
Ratchet was good at reading sparks, and he’d gotten better from closely monitoring Prime’s for the past two and a half decades. The records had been forged.  
  
 **I know,**  Optimus said.  
  
 _But why?_  
  
 **That I don’t know.**  
  
…  
  
“Oh, Wheeljack,” Ratchet groaned, pressing his forehelm to what was left of Wheeljack’s. “How do you do it? Every single time… Spark, CPU and memory core all intact while your body’s slagged beyond recognition.” Wheeljack couldn’t reply – even his subspace transmitter was damaged – but Ratchet could imagine what he’d say.  _It’s a gift!_  “Despite appearances, you’re actually fairly stable, so I’m going to hook you up to basic support until we get a free CR chamber. Be thinking about what frame type you want this time.”   
  
Ratchet meant to do a rebuild the old-fashioned way. He’d plunk Wheeljack’s remnants in a tank with a big blob of baseline protomass and let Wheeljack decide what to do with it. Should be interesting.  
  
…  
  
 _F-foolish…_    
  
Hot Rod grinned.  _Nah. I knew you’d save me._  He snuggled closer.  _Perceptor? Perceptor, when you have your arms back…can we… I want to be friends with you._  
  
 _We…are friends, Roddypole. What are you…on about?_  Perceptor’s voice was so faint Hot Rod had to up the gain on his audials to hear him.   
  
“Roddypole? You haven’t…well, nobody’s called me that since my legs grew in.” He tipped his head to one side, angling for a better look at Perceptor’s somewhat singed face. “Are you okay?”  
  
“The chamber is—,” Ratchet began, turning from the control panel to peer at the corner where Perceptor had collapsed. “Hot Rod. Since you’re loitering you might as well help me get him in.”  
  
…  
  
Under normal circumstances, picking up someone smaller than yourself was considered extremely rude. Autobots almost never did so, and then only with permission and/or if there were extenuating circumstances. Ratchet had, over the millennia, observed that Decepticons did not seem to have any such qualms about it. He had grown to wonder if it hadn’t become something like a cultural difference.   
  
Strake hadn’t put Prowl down for two days. Was, in fact, carrying the tactician around like some kind of security object. A Teddy Prowl. Prowly Bear.   
  
Stop it, Ratchet told his CPU. Stop it, stop it, stop it.   
  
“When’s the last time you had a full recharge?” Mikaela asked, with uncanny perspicacity.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Prowl,” Optimus said, tapping the crest of Prowl’s helm. “Recharge.”  
  
“Hey, Optimus,” said Lennox wearily from the screen. He and Prowl had been discussing the recent conflict in a sort of informal debriefing. Now that Prowl had finally been freed from his charge’s grasp by the Seeker’s own need for recharge.  
  
“Evening, Will. I’m afraid Ratchet has ordered your conference cut short.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. I need some z’s too.” He raised his eyebrows at Prowl. “In the morning?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The moment the connection was closed, Optimus stooped to kiss Prowl, curling hands around Prowl’s body, fields blowing and meshing like impassioned wings. Optimus broke the kiss with visible reluctance, and Prowl swayed on his feet for a second before eagerly following Prime to the “bunkhouse”. As the embassy’s Cybertronian population had grown, they had needed more recharge tables than would fit in the bay within med-lab, so one of the larger chambers with no formal use had been outfitted with stacked ranks of berths.   
  
“You got scorch marks on my ship,” Optimus said, impelling Prowl down onto the nearest empty berth, mouthing the widening gap in Prowl’s chest armor. Prowl made a less than coherent but apologetic sound and Optimus pressed on before the tactician could get sidetracked. “I’m teasing. That was some impressive piloting.” Given the sheer amount of energy and ballistics going on above the ground battle it was astonishing the  _Ark_  had only sustained light damage. Somewhere deep in Prowl’s core programming hid the instincts of a flier.  
  
Prowl opened himself fully, pulling Optimus down, closer,  _in_. Optimus felt him setting his systems to remain conscious as overload tumbled over them.  
  
“Oh no you don’t,” Optimus chuckled, directing the surge to cycle through his own spark once more in an inexorable, unstoppable tide. “Naptime.”  
  
…  
  
When Prowl came online, his chronometer informed him he’d been in recharge for twenty-four hours. Dismayed, he leapt into the cloud mind, seeking updates from Red and Tel. His body slow by comparison, he was beginning to sit up when Jazz appeared by his side, hopping up on the berth.  
  
Wordlessly, he handed Prowl a cylinder of energon. Everyone was depleted, everyone had empty spaces where solid rounds had been, and low fuel levels due to energy discharge. “I’m sorry about Raze,” Jazz said. He shifted closer. “You don’t have to tell me; I’m just curious. Won’t tell anyone if you say so, think he would mind, but… I always got the feeling you knew who Raze was.”  
  
Prowl nodded, sipping. “It wasn’t difficult to figure out. I did not execute many people. His name was Impactor.”  
  
Jazz’s optics widened. “The Impactor who used to lead the Wreckers before Springer got the job?”  
  
“Yes. He was decommissioned for killing Decepticon prisoners and remanded to Sentinel’s battalion. He fit right in, there.”  
  
Like you didn’t, Jazz thought but didn’t say.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Ironhide,” Hot Rod murmured. He grabbed at Ironhide’s armor, pulling himself closer to the older mech’s chest.   
  
“Okay? Want me to get Seaspray?”  
  
“…No. I’m okay.” But Ironhide stayed with him until Hot Rod fell into full recharge. Sometimes Hot Rod seemed to get stuck half way into shutting down, and he would twitch and moan incoherently, sometimes speaking in clear words that never made sense. Ratchet and Perceptor had checked and rechecked and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong, nor did Hot Rod appear to suffer any ill effects. It gave Ironhide the surges, but it wasn’t the kid’s fault.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Silverbolt found him down in the canyons, chest wide open, yanking out skeins of himself hand over hand, which fell in looping coils to the stony ground. Blue lightning crackled up his arms, merging with the glow inside. “Prime?” Silverbolt had not been entirely successful at keeping horror out of his subharmonics.   
  
“For…Metroplex,” Optimus groaned, pain making his optics flicker. “Haven’t been…fitting…into my vehicle mode lately.” His expression was more rictus than smile and he staggered back from the coils of protomass unsteadily. Silverbolt knelt and caught him before his knees hit. Optimus went limp for a moment, and Silverbolt gathered him against his chest, thinking Prime had at last fallen into recharge. The other Aerials landed, circling like hawks.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Prime whispered, placing a hand as near to Silverbolt’s central seam as he could reach. “I’m so sorry.” Fireflight gave a low cry and leapt into Silverbolt’s lap, hugging Prime as tight as he could around Silverbolt’s hands. He couldn’t tell whether the cables emerged first from himself or his largest brother, but soon gestalt and Prime were enmeshed, bodies and wires, keenly aware of their sparks spinning, humming, yearning. They would not be denied.  
  
 _I know you won’t hurt me,_  Fireflight purred at the same time Slingshot said,  _Prove it._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 – December  
  
“You’re just in time,” Ratchet called from the med-bay as Beachcomber and Miles drove into the hangar. “I’m about to bring him online now.”  
  
The small mech and smaller human ran to the med-bay and up to Mikaela’s gantry. Perceptor lay on a repair table, offline. Four arms now arose from doubled shoulders; the dorsal pair big and sturdy, powerful enough to lift many times Perceptor’s own mass; the ventral pair slender, ending in delicate, branching-fingered hands.   
  
“Ohh,” Miles breathed. “There you are. That’s you.” The proportions of Perceptor’s torso now looked  _right_. Though Miles couldn’t have said there had been anything wrong with them before.  
  
There was nothing quite like the sound of a Cybertronian powering up out of unconsciousness. It wasn't like a car starting, or a jet preparing for takeoff, or even quite like flicking a computer on; though there was a sort of echo of all three. Perceptor sat up and stared around the bay, at all the repair tables still in use; at the CR chambers filled with broken if living bodies. “I’m beginning to share Prime’s impatience with this war,” he said.  
  
“You just don’t like having your work interrupted,” Beachcomber said, laughing.   
  
“Especially by getting shot at, you’re right.” Perceptor brought his arms forward, turning his hands, the fins on his head waving purposefully as he scanned. “Standard functionality test?”  
  
“At your leisure,” Ratchet said, nodding.   
  
Perceptor extended all four arms, flexing, rotating, moving every large or tiny part that could be moved, through every direction and full range. Tools snapped out of caches, activated briefly, then tucked themselves away again. Miles felt Beachcomber trembling beside him.  
  
“Exemplary!” Perceptor decreed. “As usual, my dear Ratchet. Thank you.”   
  
"Mmm. My pleasure."  
  
Unable to contain himself longer, Beachcomber vaulted the gantry rail, landing with surprising lightness and grace on the table between Perceptor’s legs. The geologist lunged forward and hugged Perceptor hard enough to make their armor creak. Chuckling, Perceptor wrapped four hands around Beachcomber’s body; sliding gently, gripping firmly, reveling in the sensations of feeling and being felt.  
  
Beachcomber’s armor fell to the table like blue and white petals, revealing the deeper, iridescent azure of his protoform. The air rising from them grew very warm as Beachcomber swayed and arched in Perceptor’s hands, making small humming, moaning sounds, stroking Perceptor’s hands and wrists and forearms. Miles didn’t catch whatever signal might have been given, but Ratchet suddenly joined them on the table, leaning in to nibble on Beachcomber’s shoulder and the gracile fingers that caressed it.  
  
Miles walked slowly down the gantry stairs, eyes on the bots, his hands feeling hot and sticky on the railing.  
  
 _You don’t have to go,_  came a murmur from Beachcomber.   
  
 _Huh,_  Miles replied, heading for the door, but watching, watching.  _You mean this is just gonna be a hand-job, I guess? No pyrotechnics? Don’t worry about it. Have fun._  He palmed open the bay door, slipped out, let it close behind him, with Beachcomber’s soft laugh following in mind and heart.


	72. Crash and Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein TC recovers; Beta does her nova impersonation and Shockwave is not pleased; the new gestalt decants; Hound and Windcharger have a snuggle; Optimus has a bad day; the Predacons hunt the Constructicons; Beachcomber and Perceptor's school of fish new sparks decants; Dani turns 16; and Wheeljack changes gender. Again.

2033 - September  
  
“Let us unhook him from the table before you tackle him,” Hot Spot said, laughing. He and Blades were at Strake’s sides; not directly blocking the Seeker from getting to Thundercracker, but holding him in check temporarily. First Aid got everything on his side of the repair table disconnected, then joined his brothers in petting Strake’s wings. First Aid’s visor glimmered up into Strake’s blue optics with fondness and amusement and just a little sadness.   
  
Ratchet finished his side and flattened himself against the wall. “All right, go on.” Thank Primus they’d gotten the CPU and primary wiring tests out of the way and brought TC online before Strake was even let in. With all the billing and cooing going on, Ratchet doubted they noticed as he left them to check on the progress on Perceptor’s new arms.   
  
 _Why am I doing this?_  Strake keened via tight-beam to Thundercracker.  _I don’t like it! I’m all off-alignment since you got shot; gyros malfing, something’s funny in my CPU, TC. I’ve never fritzed that badly before!_  
  
 _What? Yes you have._  Thundercracker raked his hands hard across Strake’s wings, distracting them both for a moment to let Strake’s feverish thoughts settle.  _It’s not the Autobots,_  TC continued, once Strake’s optics focused again.  _Untrined alphas are like this, kid. High-strung, kinda sketchy. That’s why we trine in the first place. In threes we balance, we ease each other. In the short-range exploration/scouting functions we were originally built for, there was safety in numbers, safety in a kind of interdependence._  He slid off the table, bringing Strake with him. They needed sky.   
  
The Protectobots grinned at each other, but made sure the path to the hangar door was clear, and the two Seekers transformed in mid-stride, engines howling, echoing against the domed ceiling as they flew out into the desert morning.   
  
 _We also need to be changeable, reactive, to keep up with life on the wing._  Thundercracker brushed Strake wingtip to wingtip, drawing him up where the air was thin and the sky deep sapphire. At the edge of where Prowl could see them from where he stood on the mesa top. They were technically pushing the envelope of their parole. What would the Autobots do if they kept going? Send the Aerials after them? Skyfire and Borealis were still in CR. Following swift on the tail of that thought was what the Decepticons would do to them if they were caught off-planet.   
  
Thundercracker let the flow of rage lend power to his engines. Starscream had shot him!  _Him!_  That static-glitched, CPU-less upstart! With an effort, he calmed himself before Strake tried something foolish to catch up. Thundercracker wove a complex pattern around the youngster, spiraling into it again to show Strake how to join in the dance.   
  
(In a Pentagon basement, Lennox watched them via satellite, wondering rather cynically what they were up to, but struck by the beauty of it.)  
  
 _So we have to find another alpha who’s willing to defect?_  Strake said.  _Maybe from a neutral colony? We could ask Drift where his was._  
  
 _I doubt he’d tell us._  TC rolled, Strake with him, pressing their ventral sides together.  _Maybe someday we can go looking. Maybe someday the war will be over and we won’t have to. Right now there’s nothing we can do about it._  
  
 _Right now it’s you and me, huh?_    
  
 _You, me and our tether, kid._    
  
Strake waggled his rudders slightly.  _Maybe we could get Prowl to—_  
  
 _No, kid._  In a way, that was an alarming thought cascade to follow.  _He’s not really free to make that decision, and… it doesn’t land right to ask him to completely change frame for us._  Maybe in 995 local years. They’d see how things were then.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Chaar volume in two breems,_ one of the Nornir said. Beta could almost feel them slowing down as they approached the outer tenuous edges of the system’s collective gravity well, a tenth of a light-year outside the remnant Oort. She was surprised they'd gotten this far unchallenged, but she wasn't about to say so yet. They hadn't landed after all. Too much could still go wrong.   
  
 _No trackers so far._  Might have been Verthandi. Or Skuld. Beta couldn't tell them apart when they were hooked up like this. Firestar had ultimately reckoned they were more gestalt-y than not. The Nornir themselves didn’t seem to think it was important.   
  
Ultra Magnus and Kup and the Wreckers were keeping the last pair of capital ships busy, keeping them distracted, though they didn't know that was what they were doing. Good job, too, Beta thought. The Nornir’s stealth capabilities had gotten them past the first two – and most diffuse – shells of sentry satellites. Penetrating the Chaar system past the outermost gas giant was going to be trickier, although farther in the actual Con forces would be limited. They knew most of the ensparked troops were with Turmoil and Cyclonus. Shockwave had a cadre of engineers and scientists under his command, but most of the actual work of whatever he was doing was automated; and hidden behind the strange-matter shell of the manufactory station in geosynchronous orbit around Chaar.   
  
All the Nornir had to do was get her moon-close, drop her off and get the slag out. Beta would handle the rest.   
  
…  
  
“Be careful what you ask for,” Turmoil had told him. “You might get more.” Mez’s bid to get himself transferred to Shockwave’s command apparently hadn’t been as subtle as he’d hoped. Mez had firmly emplaced patience subroutines to ensure next time would be better. Only Turmoil had commented, though. The rest of the  _Flay_ ’s crew had stopped speaking to him altogether and watched him with mingled expressions of swiftly-hidden pity and mild horror.   
  
Now Mez took orders from Macabre, who took orders from Skyquake, who took orders from Shockwave. Not bad. He hadn’t even had to leave that many bodies behind him.  
  
Without the extensive scientific or engineering experience Skyquake himself had, Macabre’s squad was generally assigned perimeter watch. Not everyone trusted the spy sats and drones; and with Ultra Magnus’ battalion in the area, added to the fact that the Wreckers’ location had been temporarily lost – never a good thing – people were getting jumpy. Wearing their guns transformed constantly, snarling at each other. If they couldn’t fight Autobots they’d take each other on. Or they would, if the higher-ups weren’t such afts about discipline.   
  
Mez guided a small conveyance platform around the immense manufactory at a radius of five kliks. He was a solid, smart pilot; no Seeker-wannabe grandstanding, no goofing off when he was bored. He kept optics on station.   
  
It was only by chance that he caught the flicker of movement against the low-albedo backdrop of the sunward crescent of Chaar. He steered the platform in a shallow arc to get closer without appearing to be on an intercept vector. Snare and Treadshot – his fellow grunts on patrol duty – shifted their mass with the change in direction.  _Saw something,_  Mez explained before they got testy. The two immediately charged up weapons, hoping for something, anything to shoot at. Even better would be something to kill.   
  
 _Where is it?_  Snare asked, leaning closer over Mez’s shoulder than Mez liked. Mez pointed. Decepticons – aside from the Seeker trines – generally didn’t share anything so potentially intimate as target locks. Treadshot widened his stance and extended his sniper rifle and sights.   
  
 _Huh. Someone in cometary,_  he said.   
  
Mez doused the platform’s lights, adjusted their trajectory, then cut the impellers and let them glide. An active scan would pick them up, but the intruder wasn’t pinging; running silent.   
  
Closer, closer. The intruder was heading for the asteroid command center a hundred kliks from the manufactory, where Shockwave oversaw both his special project and most of the mining and other works on the planet. Treadshot settled himself and his rifle into their gyros.   
  
 _Capture first,_  Mez said.   
  
 _Yep,_  Treadshot acknowledged. He fired.   
  
The hardened, depleted-unbihexium round plowed a furrow across the dorsal surface of the intruder. She transformed, shooting back even before her helm emerged – Mez and Treadshot staggered under the barrage and the platform lurched as one of the impellers was hit. Snare ducked behind Mez, using the larger mech as a shield, and took aim with his disruptor-net launcher.   
  
Violet lightning crawled and coursed over the intruder. Her limbs jerked and splayed under the sparking net. Reeling in the net’s guide-wire, Snare pulled her aboard the platform.   
  
 _An Autobot!_  Treadshot laughed.  _I can’t believe it! How stupid can they get?_  
  
 _They must be down to the bottom of the tank,_  Mez said.  
  
 _Might only be scraplet scrapings,_  Treadshot said,  _but we can have some fun…_  Snare and Treadshot reached for her.   
  
 _Wait,_  Mez said.  _I’m informing the captain. Macabre, we have an Autobot prisoner,_  he sent, transmitting an image as well.   
  
Shockwave cut in.  _Bring her to me._  
  
Mez feigned surprise.  _Yes, sir._  
  
 _Easy, old-timer, we don’t wanna hurt you,_  Treadbolt said, hauling the Autobot to her pedes and yanking off Snare’s net. Shockwave would do the hurting. Later.   
  
 _Oh yeah?_  Beta said, grinning.  _Well, I…_  KLANNG!  _…want…_  KRRRMP!  _…to hurt…_  CRUNCH!  _…you!_  
  
They subdued her with some difficulty, Snare finally slapping a pair of stasis cuffs on her, enabling them to search her limp form in peace. They scanned her for weapons and emptied her caches. They didn’t know that Elita and Firestar had anticipated the use of such cuffs. Beta’s arms had been modified to dampen the effect at the shoulders. She merely had to counterfeit stasis until the cuffs were removed. Or the moment was right.   
  
Mez did his own re-scan.  _Huh,_  he said.  _Big spark chamber._  
  
 _Yeah, the old models were inefficient like that._  
  
 _I know, but…that’s a really big spark chamber. I’ve… I’ve seen that before._  Turmoil’s ship databanks did in fact include an encounter with a member of Sentinel’s battalion that had ended explosively. The resultant crater on Sarsis IX had been attributed to a more conventional nuke, but Mez knew better. _Shockwave! She’s been outfitted with a self-destruct device!_  Unconsciously, he took a step back. The other two, having caught Mez’s broadcast transmission, did so as well – as though anywhere on the platform was going to be safe if she triggered the mechanism.  
  
 _Get away from the manufactory!_  Shockwave shouted.  
  
Watching them, Beta knew the game was up. Slag that youngster. Maybe she couldn’t get Shocky, but there was another high-value target to hand.   
  
She kicked off the platform, curling into cometary mode, and aimed herself at the manufactory. The bombardment from the autoturrets hardly slowed her. She noted damage accrued vaguely; it was unimportant. Bodily locked on course, her vision seemed to expand. She could see every star, every galaxy beyond. They were so beautiful. Noise intruded briefly on her comm systems. Shockwave trying to convince her to come to him, why waste her life bouncing harmlessly off the strange-matter shell when she was so obviously there to kill him? Smug pit-spawn. Thought she didn’t know anything about strange-matter plates. They were for preventing scans from penetrating, and had some energetic weapon reflectivity. But all she needed was a little gap, enough to get inside, and then the shell would  _amplify_  her nova.   
  
She was a falling star.  
  
…  
  
They were halfway to the next nearest system, sensors focused behind, when they saw the flash.   
  
 _Prime will know,_  said Verthandi, a little sadly.  
  
 _Only if she stays coherent,_  Urthr pointed out.  _Not everyone does._  
  
 _This is Beta,_  said Skuld.  
  
 _True_  Urthr conceded.  
  
…  
  
“Miserable glitches!” Shockwave seethed. “She couldn’t have gotten this far alone.” Half the manufactory – and the massive project inside it – was an expanding sphere of plasma. The other half melted slag. Shockwave had barely escaped himself, transforming and flying to the far side of the command asteroid, hiding in its shadow.   
  
“The reserve Sweeps have already been dispatched, sir,” Dreadwing said.   
  
…  
  
Galvatron transformed and launched from the planet. He had come online from the kindling-induced stasis to find the ambient radiation load much higher than usual, and the comm channels frantic. Soundwave had briefed him regarding the Autobot intruder, her designation, apparent modifications and the resulting explosion.   
  
Cruising the blast radius, Galvatron savored the pain of his outer armor melting, underlying structures withering in the rain of high-velocity neutrons, electrons, alpha particles and gamma rays. The fallout was decaying rapidly, though, with no atmosphere to carry it. Shockwave’s project was set back considerably, but Galvatron could still detect enough raw material to be useful. They would begin again. This close to the end he could be very patient indeed.  
  
What was this? He turned his nose outward, toward a small, tumbling chunk of charred metal. Hm. A conveyance platform and two…no, three …not corpses; they were alive. Barely. The pilot must have used the platform as a shield when he realized they couldn’t reach safe distance. These must be the mechs who had briefly captured the intruder. And who had then allowed her to escape.   
  
Galvatron collected their drifting forms and returned to Chaar. He would have Soundwave speak with them once they had been repaired.   
  
…  
  
There was no transition. Or none she could remember as she unfolded within, aware but changed. The others… not others, properly, simply the parts of a whole… around and through her; so many, and she had known they would be there, some waiting for her, welcoming her. Even an echo of Jazz, a whisper of his voice, a CPU ghost. Jazz and the three hundred of the Graveyard Legion whose sparks were yet rehoused in bodies.   
  
Being dead was like spark-to-spark interface with everyone at once, all the time. Why would anyone ever choose to go back?  
  
 **Beta?**  Attached to her name was a feeling of curiosity directed at herself as a distinct self, and knotted with that a more specific query regarding the mode of her death.  
  
 _You always were a nosey-bolts, Optimus,_  she said, basking in his laughter as it flowed through her entirety, neither felt nor properly heard, yet unquestionably perceived. There was no proper sense of direction, and yet she knew there was a moiety that was Optimus and another that was Galvatron and she and everyone within existed in both.  _Lita will want to know: I missed old Shocks, but I put a nice big dent in his little project!_  
  
 **It was Chromia who took the shard from Prowl’s old spark chamber?**  
  
 _Yeah, but you knew that already. Don’t be angry with Lita. We all want this war over._  
  
 **And I’m not doing enough toward that end.**  
  
Beta felt his self-recrimination as something akin to pain.  _No! That’s… Slag, Prime, we each wanna do our part._  She pulsed determination and comfort, extending the spark-interface idea. Jazz had found himself disassociated from his emotions while within, but Beta wondered why. She had full access to hers, though certainly without the influence of a body things felt weird.  _Hey, I can feel Galvie in here too, ya know?_  
  
 **Yes.**  
  
 _He’s…whoa!_  Considering the option seemed to have wafted her toward – whatever that meant – Galvatron’s moiety. The feeling of him roiled with fury and pain, like flying through a lightning storm on the edge of a black hole, with scraplets chewing up inside and Sweeps shooting like they had unlimited ammo.  _That’s not healthy._  Beta’s pattern shrank away reflexively, but remembered the path.   
  
 **No,**  said Prime.  **Be careful. He’s doing things with the Allspark’s power. I don’t know if you can be harmed, but I’d rather not find out.**  
  
 _Even if I could hitch a ride on his spark and look out through his optics?_  The spark link between the ruling twins was still there, now that Beta thought about it she could feel it. Hear it, in a way. An endless chord, suppressed, choked into the merest thread, but there.   
  
 **Even so.**  
  
…  
  
Optimus stood on the mesa top, sending messages to Ultra Magnus and Kup. He wasn’t certain yet what to say to Elita, other than “I’m sorry.”   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Finally!” Strafe laughed as they stepped down from the growth chambers. “Primus! We’d have been out in time to help on Enceladus, but we had to wait for Afterburner to finish cooking.” Afterburner kicked at him, but Nosecone and Scattershot wrapped their big arms around everyone, holding tight to keep them from jostling each other too roughly. Lightspeed leaned into the cuddle for a moment, but couldn’t keep still, practically vibrating in place until his larger brothers let him go and Lightspeed could leap for his progenitor, Blurr.   
  
“Hi hi hi!” Blurr chirped happily, hugging him. “Wings! Are those wings? Those are wings!” Air support was good.   
  
“Yes!” Lightspeed said. “I can’t wait to use them!” Like the Protectobots, he and his brothers had already chosen alt modes. Unlike their fellow gestalt, however, said vehicles were Cybertronian in design rather than simulacra of Earth manufacture.   
  
“Subtype zeta,” Ratchet confirmed. Like Skydive and Fireflight. Strafe was an epsilon, like Slingshot and Air Raid. Scattershot was an omicron; smaller than a delta but still quite large.   
  
Prime – already deep in a hug and serious conversation with Scattershot, whose other progenitor, Ultra Magnus, wasn’t there - reached over to rub Lightspeed’s back. Blurr scootched them closer and Prime wrapped an arm around them both.   
  
“I’m sorry Drift couldn’t be here,” Prowl said, taking Afterburner’s hand. “He would have been as proud as I am to greet you.” Afterburner and Strafe were drawn to Prowl as if magnetized. Prowl turned to Strafe. “Wheeljack—”  
  
“Is in CR,” Strafe said, grinning. “We know. His radio’s fixed at least; we’ve been talking with him.”   
  
“Hopefully you won’t take after his propensity for getting himself blown up,” Mirage said, optics bright as he joined them from amid the crowd of other Autobots at the opened door to the med-bay. He’d long been prepared to stand in for Drift with Afterburner, but didn’t mind adding Strafe to his welcoming song.  
  
Nosecone knelt between Bluestreak and Hound, swaying with them to Mirage’s singing, quietly glad both his progenitors were present and in good repair.  
  
Up on Ratchet’s shoulders, Mikaela and Dani were the first humans ever to witness a Cybertronian “birth”. Dani told herself she was cool, she wasn’t going to get all mushy. This was just robots building more robots. The kind of thing some people were afraid of online. There were zillions of “how to survive the robot apocalypse” sites – their popularity had exploded after video feeds from Enceladus had made it to public broadcasts.   
  
Then Tracks joined in Mirage’s singing, and the rest of the attendant Autobots (except Prime and Prowl) followed suit. Dani rubbed at her eyes and didn’t mind so much when her mom reached behind Ratchet’s head to squeeze her hand.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2033 – November  
  
Low autumnal sunlight slanted into the hollow beneath a wide overhang. The two mechs nestled there warbled in contentment as the warmth expanded their bodies. Windcharger rested on Hound’s chest, tracing the lines of Hound’s sturdy but clever fingers. Their engines thrummed not quite inaudibly.  
  
From the outside the overhang appeared to be an ordinary bulge of slightly harder sandstone, indistinguishable from the rest of the canyon walls. Hound could keep a holo steady even when immersed in pleasant activity. Those who had survived the war thus far had not done so through carelessness.   
  
Hound, though, had been going stir crazy, cooped up in the embassy after they’d learned that the Predacons had evaded both human and Autobot sensor nets and landed on Earth. It wasn’t safe to go out alone. It wasn’t safe to go out in pairs, either, but if you wanted someone to help you with something risky, on short notice or no notice at all, Windcharger was your mech. And he was less likely than Cliffjumper to start a brawl.  
  
(Like Cliffjumper, Seaspray and Warpath, Windcharger was forging  _ke_ ; though his aggressive tendencies were more on par with Seaspray’s than Jumper and Path’s. If someone else started a fight, Seaspray was happy to join in – and finish it, too, being the best tactician on Perceptor’s team. Forgings, like pirate Codes, were more guidelines than actual rules.)  
  
People were built to the size they needed for whatever their function was. Windcharger, like any Cybertronian, accepted this as a given. But down deep, below his last firewalls, he liked being with big mechs. He liked hands that could wrap his entire torso; mouths that could encompass his chest; the vibration of huge engines and the sheer, heady power of a big mech’s fields. He liked the feeling of his small, compact spark bathed in the corona of a giant. Ironhide and Ratchet were good. Prime was fantastic. Skyfire was utter bliss. Windcharger wished he’d been with one of the Omegas before they’d been wiped out.   
  
Hound was nice and solid, though. And a good kisser. Considerate and unfailingly kind. Windcharger’s secret preferences aside, those were not trifling things. He laced his fingers with Hound's and wriggled up a little to kiss him online.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“He’s…he’s learned to make twins,” Optimus groaned. He had barely made it to the hangar before collapsing, and now he sat, one hand clawlike, digging at his chest, the other arm limp at his side. Ironhide stood behind him, hands on his shoulders, the old warrior’s forehelm pressed against the center of Prime’s back; a wall for Prime to lean on. Ratchet, Smokescreen and Jazz were cabled to Prime, holding him, Jazz humming softly.  
  
Sam held on to the hand Bee wrapped around him.  _Galvatron right?_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _He’s doing it on purpose? He knows Prime can feel it._  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _He’s_  torturing  _him._  Sam felt cold and ill as the thought settled, full-weighted, at the bottom of his brain. He was standing here, safe and sound, watching one of the kindest people he knew being tortured. And there was nothing any of them could do about it.   
  
 _Yes._  Bee sounded as though he was weeping.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2034 – January  
  
When a good hunt was on, even Rampage could be patient. They would never have found the door if the Constructicons didn’t sometimes emerge to take in the surface of their little mountain domain. Maybe they were accessing the flesh creatures’ world data nets, too. Who cared? Scavenger turned and stepped back inside, beginning to close the door.   
  
Divebomb struck first, hitting Scavenger with particle beams, giving the rest time to charge upslope. Screaming, Scavenger fell beneath their claws. They dragged him inside, wary of traps.   
  
 _The rest of them know we’re here, too,_  Razorclaw reminded them. Divebomb scattered a handful of dust-drones as they stalked down the entry corridor.   
  
No traps, no alarms. Razorclaw didn’t like it. They emerged into what looked like a central cavern, with several vast tunnels leading off like spokes from a wheel. A mercury fountain gurgled smooth and heavy in the center, suspended chemical lights throwing bright reflections onto the ceiling and walls from the liquid metal.   
  
Down the tunnels, shapes moved, betrayed by IR and sonar. The Predacons grinned.   
  
With a wild yell, Longhaul threw a small grenade and fired off a couple of missiles, dashing away down his tunnel again as Tantrum lunged at him. Headstrong bodyslammed Tantrum and held him down.  
  
 _He’s trying to pull, idiot,_  Headstrong snarled.  _Don’t fall for it._  
  
“Come on out,” Razorclaw invited. “We have your brother.” He shook Scavenger’s inert chassis.   
  
Mixmaster emitted a narrow, powerful spray of some kind of corrosive, hitting Razorclaw’s arm. With a curse the Predacon leader dropped Scavenger. _That’s it. Out!_  Divebomb’s micro-drones would scan the caves for them. Even if the Constructicons destroyed most of them, some would get through and be able to transmit their data.  _We’ll come back to clean up later._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2035 – August  
  
No one got by Beachcomber and Perceptor – and Hoist – without a snuggle and welcoming glyphs, but the first thing the noisy, teeming cluster of new mechs did after they decanted was to stride down the corridors like a leaping pod of multi-hued dolphins to the radioactive storage area in the old engine room. There they downloaded copies of massive sections of the archive from the memory shards Perceptor had carried out of Uraya.   
  
“There,” said Pearldiver and Nautilus, the twins. “Decentralization of information, please and thank you!”  
  
“No more secrets,” said Azimuth. Perceptor noted all their names had been uploaded to cloud mind and the AIs, but not chosen alt modes or specialties. Maybe they hadn’t chosen, maybe they had generalized.   
  
“We’ll help with the space bridge emitters,” Blueshift said. “That way it won’t matter if the Constructicons join us or not.”  
  
“We should set up the workshop here, though,” said Ferrule.   
  
“Multiply the possible targets,” Polaris agreed.  
  
“Tunnel down west of the main vent,” Feldspar said. “Good hard rock and we can tap geothermal without weakening those fissures in the northeast flank.”   
  
“They are so your kids,” Hoist said, patting Perceptor’s shoulder then fleeing before the oncoming tide.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2035 – October 17th  
  
“Hey, what’s wrong? I thought you’ve been looking forward to being sixteen since forever?” Hot Rod sat down next to Dani on the edge of the mesa and dangled his legs over the side, kicking his feet idly in an unconscious mimicry of Dani’s pose.   
  
“Nothing,” Dani said. “Not that anyway. It’s been a great day, Roddy, honestly.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“He didn’t come back in time.”  
  
“Uhh… oh. Countermeasure?”  
  
“Yeah. I know he’s in deep cover, but we haven’t heard from him – that I know of – since Beta blew Shockwave’s shipworks or whatever sky high.”  
  
“Prime would have said if he’d been caught in that,” Hot Rod pointed out.  
  
“I know. And I know sometimes people can’t keep their promises even if they want to. I’m not a kid.”  
  
“Ah,” said Hot Rod, who was technically three. A moment later he leapt to his feet, staring upward.   
  
Dani jumped up, too, heart pounding. Even her digi-zoom lenses weren’t picking up what Hot Rod was seeing yet. “Who is it?” she whispered.   
  
“Fireflight!” cried Bumblebee, who had climbed up behind them. Soon, the Aerialbot’s engines became audible, though his natural camouflage rendered him nigh invisible in the waning evening light.   
  
“Hi, Bee!” Fireflight transformed in midair but landed light with a boost from maneuvering jets, running across the mesa top to hug the two mechs who greeted him. “Hi, Pollyrod!”  
  
“Urgh. Are you guys ever going to let me live that down?”  
  
“Not really, no,” said Bee. Dani laughed, and kissed Fireflight as he stooped to hug her as well.   
  
“Happy Birthday, Dani,” Fireflight said, retrieving something tiny from an arm cache and handing it to her. It was a flat, rectangular box, warm from Flight’s re-entry, covered in some kind of fabric, Dani thought, though it wasn’t silk or cotton.   
  
Of course it isn’t, you ninny, she told herself. This isn’t from Earth at all! Fireflight had brought her a present from outer space. Breathe, breathe… She opened the box. Nestled on a pad of more loose, chinchilla-soft cloth was a small gold, elliptical …pendant? Bead? It seemed to be engraved in swirling, interlocking patterns.   
  
“Oh my,” murmured Bee.  
  
“It’s from Countermeasure. We didn’t ask where he got it, but we’ve been holding on to it for a while. To put that on,” Fireflight explained, “just place it against the center of where you want it.”  
  
Dani blinked the blurriness out of her eyes. The little cabochon was heavy for its size. She set it over the top of her breastbone, at the base of her throat. With a gasp she let go as lacy, looping tendrils unfurled and sleeked themselves across her skin, settling into an intricate filigree across her collarbones and up the sides of her neck. The metal quickly cooled to her skin temperature, and was so light she patted at it with her fingers to make sure it was really there. A smooth, raised bump in the center seemed to be a gemstone of some kind, though Dani couldn’t tell what it was or even detect the color in the dark. The IR range of her lenses only gave her pictures in green and grey.   
  
“Oh!” She didn’t need the lenses after all. The gem had begun to glow. Optic blue.   
  
“It’s beautiful,” Hot Rod said, as wonder-filled as Dani.  
  
“And beautiful on you,” agreed Bee. “If I’m not mistaken, that gem is now keyed to your biosignature. Only you can put it on and take it off.”  
  
“Yep,” Fireflight said. “Whaaaooo, it’s a nice night! Would you like to go flying, Dani?”  
  
Remembering just in time not to mention that she’d already been to the moon today with Borealis, Dani laughed and bounced on her toes. “I would love to go flying!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2035 - October  
  
“ _Zhe_  again, hmm?” said Ratchet, peering into the CR chamber/growth tank where Wheeljack was completing the last of his repairs. “Do you keep to a sequence or do you choose randomly every time?”  
  
Wheeljack’s voice was muffled by the thick colloid and insulative plex, but understandable. “Aw, I dunno. Been a long time since I was this type. I got my eye on a particular alt mode, if you must know.”  
  
“Oh Primus. Too big for F1. Stock? No… Rally! Ancients preserve us.”  
  
Wheeljack compressed somewhat. “You don’t like the idea?”  
  
“Well, Hound, Trailbreaker, Windcharger, Atrandom and Smokescreen will be delighted and impressed. Mirage, Tracks and the Lambo Twins will make a show of shuddering delicately, which the Twins will follow up with simulated gagging sounds.”  
  
“Ratchet…”  
  
Ratchet pressed his hands against the tank’s plex and grinned. “Rally suits you, Jack; of course I like it.”  
  
…  
  
“Hurry up, Ratchet,” Perceptor sniffed. “He’s been in there loafing for quite long enough.”  
  
“Don’t get your fenders in a bunch,” Ratchet said, keying the last sequence to raise the plex tube as the colloid drained and the diagnostic cables dropped away from Wheeljack’s new, considerably smaller protoform.   
  
Unable to maintain his feigned pique, Perceptor reached up a single strong-hand to help him down.   
  
“Ooh, clumsy me,” Wheeljack cooed, pretending to stumble so Perceptor would have to catch him. Laughter rippled through the crowd. Helping Perceptor “test” his new arms had become a popular hobby. Perceptor tightened his hold until Wheeljack squeaked, then relinquished him so everyone else could hug Jack too. The Autobots and no few humans had missed having their cheerful mad scientist at large.  
  
“Get this party started!” Blaster and Oratorio caroled, and led them out into the hangar.   
  
…  
  
The outside thermometer read 104 degrees Fahrenheit. 40 degrees Celsius. Despite everything, the United States had stubbornly failed to switch to metric with the rest of the planet. Part of the problem was, everyone with an implant could do the conversions in their heads anyway. As far as manufacturing and retooling products went it hardly mattered.   
  
Either way, it was unseasonably hot, but the shiny new rally car that rolled out onto the embassy driveway was enjoying it. Mikaela thought it was too hot for any strenuous activity, but checking out Wheeljack’s new body was worth it.   
  
She walked slowly around him twice. “So you’re a Lancia that actually runs for more than five miles at a time, huh?” she said finally. “That’s …imaginative.”  
  
“Heeey,” Wheeljack protested.   
  
“And please tell me you’re only that color in order to yank Ratchet’s chain, and you’re going to reset your chromatophores just as soon as he stops yelling.”  
  
“……You got me there.” Wheeljack spun his tires, slewing sideways around her. “I was thinking, since the Italian team’s done so well this year…”  
  
“White with green and orange. Subtle.”  
  
“80 percent of our guys are red, blue or silver. You don’t really expect me to have a boring paintjob, do you? Besides, if it’s subtle you want, why do you hang out with Bumblebee?”  
  
She kicked a tire. “Hey! Watch your mouth.” Leaning over, she traced the graceful and striking curve of the windshield. “All right, Alitalia it is. Damn sexy from every angle, and don’t let Sunstreaker tell you anything different.”  
  
Wheeljack chuckled. “Thanks, Mikaela.”


	73. Will You Still Feed Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Wreckers do demolitions; Mez's bacon is saved, sort of; certain Autobots have an important chat with their human friends, to which the humans react in different ways.

2034 – January  
  
Springer made tiny, flickering motions with his fingers and Roadbuster nodded, taking half the squad down a tunnel to the left. They didn’t dare tight-beam here, beneath the umbra of Soundwave’s senses. Even so, with Chaar seething like a kicked scraplet nest, the opportunity was too great to miss.   
  
The planet Chaar was part of a young system, the planet itself barely past the Hadean stage. Fantastic for raw materials and volcanothermal energy generation – if you didn’t mind the rock vapor atmosphere, radiation from exposed, newly-accreted elements and heavy bombardment from inner-system asteroids. The Cons had shields over the more sensitive installations, and a web of hunter-destroyer satellites to keep large meteors at bay. The Wreckers were in the process of happily rigging quite a lot of that safety equipment to blow.   
  
…  
  
“I wouldn’t bother with that one if I were you,” Knockout said, waving a dismissive hand. “Gamma ray fry to both memory core and CPU to a depth of six micrometers. Even if he regains full function eventually, he won’t remember anything of the last half-vorn.”  
  
Soundwave commanded the CR tank to uncover a port and jacked in.  
  
“Suit yourself,” Knockout huffed. Galvatron stalked the visible-spectrum shadows of the med-lab/interrogation chamber/salvage depot, the dim light via some peculiar optical interaction giving his armor a strange, sickly violet cast. He was making Knockout nervous.   
  
Alerted to Soundwave’s presence and activity by the medic, Shockwave entered, pausing at the doorway to assess the situation. “How close are their repairs to completion?”  
  
“Oh, they’ll be out in an orn or two,” Knockout said.   
  
“Very well.” Shockwave approached the CR tank on the opposite end from Soundwave and initiated his own cable link. Designation Mez – gender  _zhe_  et cetera et cetera – conflict and interdiction of Iceneedle, boring – marooning, cannibalization; yes yes whatever – Beta; already knew that – spark chamber mod; ah, I see, there it is, the  _Flay_  datalogs – does Turmoil know this mech downloaded them? – mech is intuitive, observant, ambitious; next – fervor centered upon Decepticon cause, loyalty to Galvatron personally, lust-motivated; boring – Hmm, firewalls, odd, cobbled-together, chaotic; during marooning must have had little better to do than rewrite self; typical; nevertheless, prudent to break them, see what lies beneath…   
  
Turmoil charged in, optics blazing. “Kup’s gotten that rust-infested scow, the  _Trion_  repaired, and the Wreckers are on-planet somewhere. I want all available ensparked troops, Shockwave, no more drones, slag you!”   
  
“The newest series—” Shockwave began calmly.  
  
“Is too fragging stupid to be more than a hindrance,” Turmoil growled. “I want mechs. Including these.”  
  
“The request is logical,” Soundwave said, disengaging his interrogation. “Autobot tactics of recent occurrence have become unusual, dynamic, unpredictable.”  
  
Shockwave had already calculated this, and the cause. A change in roster had occurred; from Sentinel’s battalion, whose tactics had subsequently become routine and conventional, to the apostate Prime’s group, and there had been recent communication between the latter and the battalions led by Ultra Magnus and Kup, and the heavy spec ops team called the Wreckers. “Very well. Knockout, release them.”  _Attention, Decepticons: all personnel in assemblages 120 through 206 are to report to Turmoil on landing platform 7-helium for immediate deployment._    
  
As the CR chambers emptied of colloid and opened, Turmoil grabbed Mez and shoved him ahead, trailing Snare, who was half-carried by Treadshot. “You’ve been promoted again, Mez. To the front line. Move!” Shockwave and Soundwave followed them out.   
  
Galvatron emerged from the shadows and stroked fingers around Knockout’s waist, nuzzling the keen edge of his mandibular spar against the cables of Knockout’s neck. “Did you not notice something peculiar about that mech?”  
  
“My Lord? Which one?”  
  
“The one Turmoil was in such a hurry to reacquire.”  
  
“What? The walking scrap-pile? Characteristic for last survivors of shipwreck, really.”  
  
“Hmmm.” Galvatron wondered. What was Turmoil up to?  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>   
  
2035 - October  
  
 _Bee, stop fretting and just tell them,_  Borealis tight-beamed from just outside the Oort. Only a slight flexing of her consciousness was needed to include Prime in their channel.  _You’re running out of time. Years are passing; they might already be too old to accept the idea gracefully. You’re going to have to decide sooner than you realize._    
  
Cybertronians could think over huge datasets in microseconds, could process scores of tasks concurrently and rapidly; but there were some things their eons-long perspective ill-suited them to handle. And Bumblebee was not one of the few among them who had had such a close relationship to an ephemeral species before.   
  
The time never seemed right. Bumblebee hated to interrupt their rare vacations together with morbid questions that were sure to be upsetting to his human family. How long did they have? Two decades? Four? He worried, watching each hour fleet by on his chronometer, irretrievable. They were having so much fun relaxing on the beach or playing with Dani and Nate, building sandcastles. Leaving footprints in the wet sand. They lived with such intensity. Even asleep their minds moved in dreams. He recorded everything, hated to recharge. If Seaspray replayed his memories of Alana, or Jazz of Tallaria, neither ever spoke of it. Loving ephemerals was risky, he knew that. He didn’t care.  
  
He thought of Tracks, Hound, the unlikely Powerglide. They were in trouble too. And Prime. Prime had been built to love an entire world. He had lost one, gained another, more populous than Cybertron had ever been. There might be a kind of comfort for Prime in each Cybertronian death, Bee thought. He knew where they were, could with effort speak with their patterns, would, in a sense, never be parted from them again. But what of all the human deaths he could not feel? He didn't know where their patterns went. They were as lost to him as they were to each other. Oh, Prime, he thought. What are we going to do?   
  
We should have told them years ago. We should have told them when it was done. We were too unsure. They would have had time to understand, to decide. What if it's too late now?  
  
 _Ixchel was older…_  Bee said. He and his extended family were outside on a grassy hill in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enjoying an Indian summer on soft blankets with the sun warm on their skin and the scent of grass sweet on the air. He didn’t want to ruin their enjoyment, spoil the mood with a subject they probably should have dealt with decades ago.   
  
 _Ixchel was,_  Borealis replied,  _pardon me, primed for the idea. She and Ratchet had been discussing a lot of different possibilities, some they felt were more fanciful than others. Ixchel read science fiction, y’know, like a lot of other scientists._  
  
 **Bumblebee, Borealis is correct. You must, however, handle this in the way you deem most potentially successful. The least traumatic, if it comes to that.**  
  
 _Do you want me to come down and help?_  Borealis asked.  _I am kind of involved…_  
  
 _All right,_  said Bee, tight-beaming to Beachcomber, Hound and Tracks what he intended, so that they at least would not be blindsided. Mirage and Ironhide would later have to endure the same uncertainty with their particular humans. And Lennox and Epps were even older. Bee didn’t envy them.   
  
 _On my way,_  Borealis said.  _Go ahead and start the party without me. ETA ninety minutes._  
  
 _Oh fine._  Bee stood carefully, setting Nate, who’d climbed to his shoulders, down gently on the grass. Even at five, Nate had the climbing skills of any arboreal primate. Bee walked down the hill a short way, door-wings low. He already had most of the adults’ attention; this wasn’t like him. When he came back to where he’d been sitting and resumed that posture, Mikaela and Sam fixed him with alarmingly similar stares.  
  
“Well? What happened?” Mikaela asked.   
  
“I…have to ask you something,” Bee said. “But I have to explain something first. And apologize for not doing this a long time ago.”  
  
“Oh great,” Sam said, pretending to rub a headache out of his temples, but grinning a little bit, too. Sometimes the bots made a big deal out of nothing. The robots had adapted so thoroughly it almost wasn’t like having aliens over to visit any more, so it was fun when that veneer was set aside, revealing the true gulfs between their species. And Bee was just too cute.  
  
Bumblebee clasped his hands in his lap. Optics worried but bright, he told them the tale of a human whose genetic heritage had confined her body to a wheelchair and to a progressively immobile frame; who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, falling offhand prey to the Decepticons as so many humans had. He told them what Prime and Ratchet had done and why. And by the time he finished, Borealis was on approach, to the aggravation of a new air controller at Logan International, who got an earful on a different frequency from the officer in charge of the tower at Hanscom.   
  
She transformed and landed neatly on her feet at the foot of the hill, crouching down to put her head at a level with the seated humans. They stared at her.   
  
What? she thought to herself. Do I have broccoli in my teeth?   
  
Mikaela stood. She was trembling. "You. You did this to your...your first child. Your first child in billions of years and you overwrote her with a human brain scan? Why would you do something like that? You basically killed the person she would have been, just to be a...a crate for some pitiful human! I can't believe Dr. Chase would have approved something like that. Did you even ask her or did you in your infinitely greater wisdom just yank the scan as she was...oh my god, you didn't. You didn't ask her."   
  
That was where they lost Sam.   
  
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Are you serious? After all those speeches about freedom and choice, and...and... There was no consent. You didn't even ASK. You just did what you wanted. Took what you wanted and left the rest to die."   
  
“That’s a little harsh,” Borealis said. She had meant to let everyone work through their reactions without undue interference from herself, but Mikaela had gone for the jugular. “It wasn’t explicit consent; Ixchel was dying, she wasn’t all that conscious for very long. Thankfully. But she and Ratchet had tossed ideas around. She wouldn’t have found it weird.  _She would have given consent_  if there had been time.” She stuck her chin out at Mikaela. “I know her better than you did, missy. Everything Ixchel Chase knew or thought or felt is up here.” She tapped her helm.   
  
"Are you going to offer this option to the other six billion of us?” Mikaela asked, not backing down. “Huh? Or were you just going to pick your favorites? Your special pets. Make neat little copies and implant them in...”   
  
“That’s the tricky part,” Borealis conceded.   
  
“Always a catch,” Sam muttered.  
  
“There are so many of you,” Bee said, “and we are not reproducing very quickly, by your standards. We simply cannot accommodate every human being now, nor into the future.”   
  
“When you guys can build your own robot bodies it won’t matter,” Borealis said.   
  
“Don’t you see?” Bee continued. “Once we knew it would work, we couldn’t withhold the idea, we couldn’t not ask. And yet we can only realistically ask a few of you. It makes sense that it would be the few who are close to us already. The few who… who it will hurt us the most to lose.” The static in his vocoder was no affectation.   
  
Sam swallowed hard. Whatever reasons they’d had with Ixchel, Sam knew it was this last that was paramount now. He recalled how he’d felt when Mojo had died, silver-muzzled and arthritic, his tiny organs failing one by one. The longevity issue was similar, if greater in scale here. Didn’t most pet owners wish with all their hearts that their beloved companions lived longer than a decade or two? Could he blame Bee for wishing  _his_  beloved companions lived longer than a single short century? Sam had had the thought before. Now suddenly there was a lot more to try to fit into his thinking. A lot more to process.   
  
“It’s just a copy,” Dani said quietly, hoping she wouldn’t get sent off to mind Nate while the grownups talked. “We still die.”  
  
“Yes,” said Borealis. “I am not Ixchel Chase. I am Borealis. I am a Cybertronian Autobot, gender  _de_ , Seeker class, subclass delta. I’ve shared the Ixchel memories with most of the other Autobots, but for me, they are also integral to who I’ve become. Mind and body are one.”  
  
Up in Oregon, walking through the damp, ferny, towering forest, listening in on a feed from Bee to Beachcomber and Perceptor, Miles was, as usual, distracted from the subject at hand.  _Uh,_  Miles tight-beamed to Beachcomber,  _if she’s “de”, like Skyfire, then why do we call her “her”?_  
  
 _Because when she was first decanted one of her basic assumptions about herself was that she was a “she”._  
  
 _Because of the…the Ixchel memories?_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _And none of you thought it was odd to call someone you look at and immediately think of as a “he” a “she” instead?_  
  
 _It’s…hang on let me ask Glyph… Yeah. It’s partly a translation thing. We’re already speaking in English or whatever other Earth language, right? So that’s already massively different from what we’d say in Cybertronian._  
  
 _So you call her “de” in Cybertronian, not “she”?_  
  
 _Some of us do. Secondly, we pretty much use whatever pronouns a person wants to be used for them. It’s not that hard, you just pop it into a subroutine and whichever length memory storage seems appropriate._  
  
 _Ah, got it. Must be great at parties, never forgetting someone’s name three seconds after you meet them._  
  
 _Right. We came up with other faux pas instead._  
  
 _I won’t ask._  
  
 _You will later. Anyway, thirdly; since pretty much anybody can get reformatted to any “gender” they want more or less whenever they feel like it, calling someone by a pronoun that may or may not be technically appropriate isn’t a big deal._  
  
 _Like Wheeljack. That’s…pretty cool, actually. Do you…did you, uh, download the Ixchel memories too, or whatever?_  
  
 _Heh. Yes, Miles. But I was, heh, an adult—_  
  
 _I dispute that allegation,_  Perceptor cut in.  
  
 _—so to speak,_  Beachcomber amended, laughing,  _when I downloaded those files. Lissi got them right after she was kindled, so they formed a basic part of her personality._  
  
 _Huh. So Kaela’s right. Whoever she would have been, if Prime hadn’t interfered, would have been a different person._    
  
 _When they uploaded Prowl’s AI core and memory into the new body they built for him, they changed the person that body might have become if it had been kindled without him. It’s…not that different to us. It’s not that strange. Only the human origin of the Ixchel memories takes some of us aback._  
  
 _And the Matrix thought it was that important._  
  
Beachcomber chuckled. It was kind of cute, he thought, the way Prime had this squabbly bunch of old people arguing and faffing about in his chest. Must get noisy sometimes, but he couldn’t ever be lonely.  _I guess so._    
  
In Cambridge, Mikaela was still standing, though she’d taken the heat of her glare off of Bee and Borealis. “How many others of the new kids have you done this to?” she asked, fists clenched beneath crossed arms.   
  
“None,” Bee said.  
  
“So you did it once, fifteen, sixteen years ago and never did it again. And you didn’t tell us about it until now, though some of us mere humans have known you were making new people for years.”   
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And you’re only telling us now because you’re afraid you’re running out of time.”  
  
“…We didn’t mean to wait this long.”  
  
“And yet you did. I don’t think you’re that forgetful. Any of you. I think you put it off because you know how morally and ethically and emotionally sketchy your cute little idea is. I think it’s telling that you only did it once.”  
  
“Heeey,” Borealis said, blinking.  
  
“No offense,” Mikaela said, nevertheless glaring, clearly keeping her composure only with great effort. “It’s not your fault, Borealis. They did this to you. You weren’t in a position to say anything or do anything about it. And I understand how from your perspective the person you are now wouldn’t want to change what happened. That doesn’t stop it from being wrong.”   
  
Mikaela, blue eyes hot as any optics, looked back to Bee, who at this gathering represented Ratchet and Prime as well. “How could you?” Tears finally spilled down her cheeks. “ _How could you?_ ” She strode down the hillside, hair a dark banner behind her. Sam knew she hated crying in front of people.   
  
After a while, Sam rose as well. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “More or less, I mean. She’s pissed off but it’s not like she’ll never speak to you guys again.” He looked up at Bee, hard pressed to categorize his own emotions at this point. The robots clearly hadn’t thought this was going to go over well. They’d been right. “We’ll come back to this, I promise, just give us time to think, okay?”  
  
“Of course,” Bee said.   
  
Sam trotted down the hill after his wife, careful to let her maintain a few minutes’ lead. He glanced back, thinking of pillars of salt and broken promises. Bumblebee shivered in Borealis' embrace, silent, wings down. Tracks, who was supposed to be on perimeter, transformed and joined the cuddle, stroking Bee's back and making faint warbling sounds on the edge of Sam's hearing. Dani was talking earnestly with someone over implant, helping Nate blow bubbles with the hoops and wands they’d brought. Borealis watched them, looking out of place, the curves and planes of her armor rutched at angry angles.   
  
Damn, Sam thought. Mikaela was pissed off, shocked. The robots were hurt. And Borealis' stance – a person accustomed to being set apart – convinced him of their tale emotionally, though he'd had no trouble accepting it intellectually. Of course Ratchet could do something like that. Should he have? Maybe not. But Sam believed Borealis when she'd said that Ixchel would have consented.   
  
…  
  
Later, back in Nevada, Sam patted the Camaro’s hood. “All right, the yelling’s over. You don’t have to hide in car mode any more.” Not that Mikaela would have held off throwing big pieces of equipment at him just because he was a hot set of wheels. She knew his armor could withstand anything like that. She was more inclined to throw things only in the heat of rage, not when anger had settled into a cold, diamondlike lump in the middle of her chest.   
  
Bee transformed. Sam climbed to his shoulder and the two ascended to the mesa top.   
  
“I understand that we’re not pets to you,” Sam said, as Bee sat cross-legged and Sam settled into his lap, the back of his head just brushing the lower part of Bee’s chest. Sam couldn’t really feel the thrum of his spark, but he knew it was there. “I think I get it, anyway. We’re a lot more like children, aren’t we. You want to help us, protect us. You like to watch us leaning new things.” Sam thought vividly of Perceptor at one of the Nobel Prize ceremonies, when a cosmologist among the great brains gathered had asked Perceptor to give them a point-blank answer regarding something about one of the fundamental constants of the universe.  
  
Perceptor had beamed at the audience with such love and eagerness in his optics and face, and Sam hadn’t realized someone could beam like that with their whole body before. “You are so close to finding out for yourselves!” Perceptor had purred, awe as clear in his voice as in his optics. “I so envy you now. On the brink of so many wonderful discoveries!” As the camera had panned, Sam had seen tears in more than a few pairs of eyes. Perceptor really meant it, and he really, really didn’t want to spoil humanity’s fun. It wasn’t about cheating, giving easy answers to questions humans thought were complex, or spilling Cybertronian secrets before the primitives were capable of comprehending and using that knowledge wisely. It was purely about not spoiling the fun. Damn. Even Perceptor understood humans that well. That was almost scary.   
  
“And you get aggravated,” Sam continued, patting Bee’s leg, “when we misbehave. But you’re smart enough to let us make our own mistakes. As long as those mistakes don’t, you know, outright kill us or anything.” Sam scooched around and hugged Bee’s torso. “You haven't approached Bobby and Will with this yet, have you."   
  
"No," said Bee, giving an excellent approximation of a relieved sigh and leaning into the hug.   
  
"You know how they'll react, don't you? Military guys? This sounds too much like a really sneaky sort of takeover. You are the Borg, we will be assimilated; resistance is futile."   
  
"But—!”   
  
"I know, Bee! I'm just saying a lot of people, humans, are going to think that's what you're doing."   
  
"Mikaela—”   
  
"Mikaela's mad because despite what Ratchet and Borealis keep saying, she feels that they killed the child Borealis would have been. She likes to pretend she's this uninvolved, disinterested mother, but oh boy is she ever involved." Sam grinned. "Yeah, and don't tell her I said that."   
  
"What do you think, Sam?"   
  
"I don't know. Ask me again in twenty years. Right now, 44 doesn't feel so bad, y'know? It's not like you're going to plop my brain into a robot body physically. It's just a robot clone, kind of. Doesn't really affect me." He tapped his chest, making the physical emphasis clear.   
  
“All right, Sam,” Bee said. “I’ll ask you again in twenty years.”  
  
“Promise?”  
  
“Promise.”  
  
…  
  
Miles was tired after his long hike, but he agreed to let Beachcomber piggy-back him to the top of Mount St. Hilary, to watch the bright, so close-seeming stars. Beachcomber spun up his spark, heating his chassis as Miles laid down on top of him. Hands clasped behind their heads, ankles crossed. Little, big.   
  
He supposed he must have fallen asleep. He opened his eyes to a golden, misty dawn, with the lower slopes of the mountain shrouded completely. Beachcomber’s shields had kept the dew off; Miles felt pleasantly warm and even more pleasantly encumbered with morning wood.   
  
He rolled over slowly, giving Beachcomber time to evade, knowing he wouldn't. He draped an arm over Beachcomber's midsection, letting his hand rest on an odd bit of abdominal plating.  _Beachcomber,_  he tight-beamed.  _l want to. The brain scan thing. It's ...okay with me if you do it._  He knew it didn't mean he personally would live forever. It meant a lot that the robots liked him enough that they wanted at least some version of him to exist for as long as they did. He pressed his hand higher on Beachcomber's side, closer to his chest.  _But I want...I'm glad there's time to fill me up with human memories. Human feeling._    
  
Beachcomber covered Miles' hand with his own. Hard metal but not cold. Warm metal fingers stroked Miles’ back and hair, the pressure no doubt calculated with exactitude but expressing calm acceptance and affection and, if the increased thrum of spark beneath his chest was any indication, a degree of matching arousal.   
  
Miles didn’t really like dirty talk or theatrical moans during sex; Beachcomber’s melodic but wordless humming thrilled across his skin and through his blood, rousing every cell. Even his hair felt alive, as though it was waving above his head in warm seawater as Beachcomber’s hands moved slowly, steadily under Miles’ clothes, measuring by every curve and plane, every freckle or imperfection the geology of human embodiment.   
  
The cold mountain air was no match for the heat rising from Beachcomber’s body. Miles felt as though his respirocytes were singing. He shifted to unfasten his shorts and found Beachcomber had already done so, a limber hand slipping between Miles’ legs. Touching, exploring, stroking with the rounded undersides of articulated fingers. Beachcomber’s visor had turned a deep peacock blue when he lifted his head to watch, to kiss, to direct that hum into all the tiny pieces of Miles that were now metal; illuminating them to Beachcomber’s senses and setting Miles’ senses alight.   
  
The old volcanic throat beneath them was no match for the core of fire rising through Miles’ body. He curled and lifted, a wave on Beachcomber’s solid shore, Beachcomber’s fingers moving faster, deep spinning spark an ascending chorus, Miles' hands slipping on armor or shield, sliding over complex joints, hips moving faster, tingle of a scan breaking, rush of the wave breaking and Miles caught a breath and held it as light exploded in his mind and the sweet burst of completion shook him.  
  
“You could’ve plugged in,” Miles panted, washed ashore but not stranded. He ran his fingertips along the irregular path of Beachcomber’s central seam. The ultimate Cybertronian intimacy they couldn’t share; not with Miles as he was. The entire surface of Miles’ skin felt electric. “What can I do?”  
  
Beachcomber gave that gentle laugh of his. “Try to set aside notions of giving and taking, dominant and submissive, active and passive. Not everyone considers those opposites, or even the summation of possible…hmm…roles. Pleasure shared, no matter how, is always increased exponentially. Don’t tell Perceptor I put it like that. He thinks I don’t have any kind of head for math.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“What…what was it like?” Maggie had waited until Borealis emerged from the recharge bay – had been lying in wait, really – before posing her question. Hound had broken the story to Maggie and Glen together. Glen thought it was awesome and had spent about an hour bouncing around their little pod apartment high in the embassy’s labyrinth, trying to decide what his future robot-self’s first alt mode would be.   
  
Borealis looked at Maggie without answering at first, and lowered a hand. Maggie stepped in and held on as Borealis strode out into the lavender evening and climbed to the mesa top. She lifted her hand level with her optics. Maggie sat down, leaning against the base of Borealis’ forefinger.  
  
“What was what like?” Borealis said finally. “Dying? Waking up something else? Adapting to being in a completely different body?”  
  
Maggie grinned. “Yes.”  
  
“Heh. Ratchet took the scan before she had actually died, so I can’t tell you anything about whether or not there’s a human afterlife or what it’s like.”   
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Yeah, sorry. You guys have to work that out yourselves.”   
  
“Knew it couldn’t be that easy.”  
  
“As for the rest, I note you have the latest full-immersion sensory implant package?”  
  
“Of course. A girl and her toys.”  
  
“Then I can show you what the rest was like if you want.” Borealis extended a cephalic cable and wound the tip down to a tiny diameter. Maggie hesitated only a moment, then pulled her hair away from the jack at the base of her skull.   
  
There were vague recollections from the tank, blurry emotions, half-heard, half-felt voices; then the giddy happiness of standing and walking, not remembering at first why such actions pleased her. How senses and feelings had been kept gently, carefully blunted, only slowly increasing to Cybertronian norms; falling into the swift fire/anguish of integration. The rapture of flight, the tumbling glow of the cloud mind, punctuated by the ecstasy of interface, spark to spark, sharing of wholenesses. And if atmospheric flight had been rapturous, the transition to space was beyond bliss, new senses yet again, reaching out across lightyears, feather-pull of gravity, flare of quasars, voracious cinders of black holes, the vast, moving map of the local universe expanding within her consciousness.   
  
Maggie was glad she’d been sitting. She disengaged her side of the link and Borealis retracted the cable.   
  
“Hound said they’d been careful,” Maggie whispered, blinking at the optics nearby, twice the size of dinner plates. “I…I believed him, but they really were. I mean they didn’t just throw a personality in there expecting it to be okay with a hugely different set of inputs.”  
  
“Of course not,” Borealis said. “Weird is okay, but they weren’t aiming for insane.”  
  
…  
  
Even in his mid-40’s Raoul Aquino was an expert in the teenage martial art of Don’tgiveashit. “Okaaay,” he said at the end of Tracks’ explanation. “Whatever. You guys gonna do what you want, yeah? Me, I got inventory to check. Those Bernoulli brothers, man, you can’t trust ‘em.”  
  
“Raoul,” Tracks huffed, “what I want is to know what  _you_  want.” Raoul smirked; that must have been a painful admission.   
  
“Fine. Lemme get this right; you stick my head in Ratchet’s Xerox machine and plug that into a robot baby-kid.”  
  
“Crudely put but essentially correct.”  
  
“Snob. And you only do this when I’m dying already.”  
  
“Not necessarily. We could make backup copies, as it were, during the course of your life. Updating would thus include the most current version of your experience.”  
  
“Great. So why should I care? I’ll be dead anyway, me, the real me. Muerte.”  
  
Tracks revved his engine in annoyance, stood up, walked away a few paces, almost hitting his helm on one of the warehouse’s structural beams. “Humans – in Western cultures – place a high value on individuality. Some of you don’t like the idea of replicating what makes you unique. Your fiction is rife with evil clones…”  
  
“You read that shit?”  
  
“Raoul…”  
  
“No, man. Tracks, I seriously don’t care. Knock yourself out. I guess it’s flattering, but I don’t see why you’d want to do that, except to, like, big brains or national treasure people like Angelina Jolie or Gareth Lanier.”  
  
“Jaron. His name is Jaron, not Gareth.”  
  
“Whatever! You want me to sign a waiver? Make a video confession?”  
  
“Raoul.”  
  
It was amazing the depths and layers of meaning Tracks could spin on one word. Bad as Grandmama. Raoul laughed. “You really got your spoiler in a twist over this, huh? Well, go buff your hood somewhere else, man. I got stuff to do.”  
  
…  
  
“That’s not good.” Lennox watched the tracking vector on the missile headed for the moon. One of the countries in the Nuclear Club had panicked. He understood why – seeing the Autobots fight these Cons so close to Earth was terrifying – but using nukes had been relegated to very,  _very_  last resort status from the beginning. The risk that the Cons might hack the missile’s navigation was far too great.   
  
On the moon, Hunger lifted his head, saw the missile, laughed. The Cons scattered, shifting to cometary if that was fastest. Skyfire  _glared_  at the missile, and from fifty kilometers out it detonated. Skyfire, Silverbolt and Borealis turned their backs, fanning their wings, spreading their bodies to shield the other Autobots whose armor was not as resistant to hard radiation.   
  
The satellite video didn’t give Lennox sound, but he saw the way the deltas' armor smoked and sizzled, bubbling in places. He saw Borealis fall forward onto her hands. She was youngest, her armor had spent only a few years out in space. He was glad he couldn’t hear her scream. Knowing who she’d been, what a part of her had been once, he wondered what pain felt like to a human in a robot body. Maybe not that different, except usually it could be turned off.   
  
Ironhide had been so brusque, and, well, grumpy about telling Lennox and Sarah what had been done it had almost been funny.   
  
“Are you asking us if we want to undergo the same process?” Sarah had asked.   
  
“…I’m supposed to, yes.”  
  
Biting back a smile, Sarah patted his leg. “You don’t seem thrilled.”   
  
Ironhide crouched lower, staring intently at Sarah’s face, probably reading her biometrics, Lennox thought. His wife was taking this much more easily than he was.   
  
“And you don’t seem upset,” Ironhide said.  
  
“Should I be?”  
  
“Apparently,” he said, in his most overt what-are-those-tiny-little-squishy-minds- _doing_ -in-there tone, “Mikaela did quite a bit of yelling.”  
  
“I see. I also see by the clenching of his jaw, that my husband is inclined to agree with her.”   
  
Lennox had had a lot of questions, mostly beginning with “why”. He supposed the others had already asked, but he’d wanted Ironhide to look him in the eye and answer.   
  
Now, in the Pentagon basement HQ of what had been NEST and was now a branch of the EDF, Lennox watched the Autobots fight and die to protect his world. Twenty-eight years might not seem long to them, maybe they did have sinister plans that took longer than that to unfold, but Lennox had worked with them, fought alongside them, lived with them, surfed their cloud mind, and upon reflection he chose to believe they wanted the best for humankind, and would allow humankind to decide for itself what that best was.  
  
…  
  
“I knew it,” Epps said. “Space aliens always come here to eat our brains.”  
  
“What? No! We only meant—” Mirage sputtered – aghast at the suggestion, but also revolted.  _Eating_  squishy brains!?! He stopped abruptly at Theresa’s quirk of a smile and Epps’ pointing finger.  
  
“Gotcha.”


	74. Inflorescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the Protectobots decide to merge, and Metroplex decants and settles into her new home.  
> Dani and Red remember things; Metroplex gets her shakedown cruise; Impactor and Beta have a chat; Prowl shares an early memory with Prime; the Constructicons show up at the embassy; and things go boom.

2036 - May  
  
 _Do you think it would work? With the five of us?  
  
We could give it a try. Do Vector's way, just maybe not bubble off a whole school like Perceptor does.   
  
Oh definitely not. Last thing we need is a bunch of Grooves lolling about.  
  
Or a dozen Hot Spots. No one would ever get any sleep.  
  
Heeeey!_  
  
…  
  
“Hi, Prime,” Groove called as they rolled and strolled into the embassy.  _We’re being salmon!_  
  
“Welcome home,” Prime murmured, leaning hard on Hot Spot as the gestalt held and surrounded him.  **We haven’t any waterfalls for you to leap, but I believe we do have several empty tanks.**  
  
 _Oh,_  Ratchet! First Aid tight-beamed.  _Prime is…!_  
  
 _I know._  Ratchet came out to join the snuggle and reassure his apprentice. Prime’s fields were a wreck.  _Galvatron will have doubled the Decepticon numbers in five or six years at this rate. We can hope he’ll stop then._  “How was Turkey?”  
  
“Beautiful, aside from the parts flattened in the earthquake.”  _That’s…not making me feel better!_  “Groove was offered some keşkek and to be polite he ate it. Took me days to get it all out of his internals.”  
  
“And meanwhile the chicken bits went bad,” Blades added over his shoulder as he stooped to hug Prowl. “We made him stay downwind.”   
  
“I still think we could rig aux tanks for things like that,” Groove said. “People want us to share food with them; it’s an important cultural aspect. And Glyph agrees with me!”  
  
“As long as you keep your denta retracted,” Smokescreen laughed as he came in with Bluestreak and Breakaway. Most Decepticons had taken to leaving their denta extended – one more thing the humans found frightening about them.   
  
 _At least we can be reasonably certain Prime can’t die from this,_  Ratchet continued to First Aid.   
  
 _Not helping!_  First Aid squeaked. He and the other Protectobots struggled to mask their reactions. They were genuinely happy to be back at the embassy, and excited about their purpose. It was best to focus on that. Aid burrowed into Bluestreak’s shoulder.  
  
 _Going to make me a grandparent again, hm?_  Blue asked gently. Of Bluestreak’s handful of progeny, only Blurr had thus far kindled. A small, bright green mech named Hummer with Wheeljack, and Lightspeed with Prime.  _I’m glad. I worry about you. Going from disaster to disaster with so little rest. I’m sure it’s not good for your sparks. Whenever you send updates about what you’re doing, Mirage gets these little flares of moral outrage. He thinks it’s barbarous for a planet to casually and consistently murder its inhabitants. He understands it’s just how things are on a tectonically active world with a dynamic atmosphere, and that humans are fragile and they evolved here so they’re kind of used to it, but it bothers him anyway._  
  
Aid laughed softly. One of these days he’d get Mirage alone in a corridor for that. Mmm.  _Blue. Last week we saved Meral Paşa, Erhan Yıldırım, Tulay Özdemir and twenty others; just in one block. We know all their names and met their families and we know what they do and a little bit about what they hope for. And we know these things about everyone we’ve helped for the past 18 years. When it gets too grim, yes, we erase the worst memories of mangled corpses. But we have this other knowledge, And that always outweighs the bad. Always. …Heheh. I am so your kid._  
  
 _And Prime’s._  Blue flicked a thought around the cloud mind and opened his chest a centimeter. Enough to let his corona wash through and mesh with First Aid’s. There was no rocking of waves, no swaying of tree branches or cradles or mothers’ hips in their evolutionary history, but the sharing of spark energies was a deep comfort they understood. Aid sighed and opened, too. The two stood quietly amid the laughing, jostling mass of their friends and brothers; not cabled, warming each other.   
  
Kicking her feet off the table, Maggie sat up from her coffee break on the mezzanine with an alarmed squawk. She probably wouldn’t have spotted it from the ground-level computer nest, but up here she could see the faint reflection of sparklight. “Um. Guys?”  
  
 _It’s okay,_  Hound broadcast on what had more or less become the human channel.  _Trailbreaker’s got a shield up._  Hound always managed to return to the embassy when the Protectobots did. They were good mechs, and he was fond of them, but he wasn’t about to miss a chance to hang out with Groove. Beachcomber would be wandering down from Alberta tomorrow and the three of them plus Trailbreaker would find themselves a nice remote ravine and kick back in the sun and throw rocks at each other and tell lies until they couldn’t transmit for laughing.   
  
“In that case,” Maggie said, leaning far out over the railing and making a small  _gimme_  motion with the fingers of one hand. “Who else is up for show and tell?”  
  
“I will if you will!” Windcharger hooted. Cliffjumper bashed his shoulder and they held each other up, guffawing.   
  
“I know,” Maggie said, rubbing her breastbone, feeling the lack not for the first time. “I can’t show you my soul.”  
  
“That does not mean that it does not exist,” Prime said, turning toward her. By ones and threes, the gathered Autobots consulted themselves and each other and revealed small glimpses of their sparks. The mezzanine grew crowded as the human embassy staff raced up the stairways to see, starlight in the oceans of their eyes.   
  
Trailbreaker added another layer of shielding as Prime opened last. The rising heat and radiation level inside the bubble carried with it a peculiarly neutral feeling somewhere between overclocked and a medical exam, weighted with the knowledge of an unprecedented step in interspecies relations.   
  
“What do the colors mean?” Maggie whispered.  
  
“We don’t know,” Ratchet said. “There has never been a trackable correlation between spectrum and forging or even reliably with personality sets. No two spectra are exactly the same, even between twins.”   
  
As one, the robots closed themselves; some laughing, others thoughtful. The humans sighed or grinned and patted themselves to get their hair to lie flat again.   
  
…  
  
“My apologies,” Ratchet said, backing away from the tank he’d been about to initialize. “You’re perfectly capable of handling every part of this yourselves.” First Aid hugged him as he passed.  
  
“We are,” Aid said, “but we appreciate your help, and we’re honored by your expertise. Just one tank, though.”  
  
“One?” Ratchet lifted an orbital ridge. Only the five Protectobots had come with him into the growth tank chamber. He’d wondered who the lucky other five were going to be, but obviously the P-bots themselves were going to pair up and then switch after the first two merges to let the fifth have a go. That meant at least three tanks. Or ten, depending on how they had decided to arrange the pairings.   
  
“One,” Aid assured him. “All of us together, for one.” They had asked Breakaway if he wanted to join them. Breakaway wasn’t sure yet so they’d left him in the prized company of the Aerials.   
  
(Poor, poor Breakaway, Blades had thought, striking a dramatic pose. Streetwise had tried to shove him off balance. Hot Spot had eventually had to interfere.)  
  
Ratchet stared at them. “…That’s…”  
  
“Nothing in the protocols ever said it had to be only two mechs, Ratchet,” Streetwise said, grinning.   
  
“Slag me,” Ratchet said. A large majority of sexually reproducing species – at meter-scale, anyway – utilized two sexes. Conservation of energy and structure. But not all. Ratchet could name five species with three sexes without accessing memory layers older than 20,000 years, and three with four sexes. Cybertronians might have seven basic genders but they had never had  _sexes_. Or, looked at another way, they had as many sexes as there were individuals.   
  
“It’ll be fiiiine,” Groove said.   
  
“I believe you.” Ratchet smiled. “Do you want me to stay, then, to make the transfer?”  
  
“Or do you want to stay so you can see how we do it?” Blades teased.   
  
“Wheeljack wants in,” Streetwise said. First Aid sent the code that unlocked the door and relocked it once Wheeljack was inside.   
  
“We won’t be using the table,” Aid said as Hot Spot knelt near the active tank.   
  
“Oh boy,” said Jack as he hopped up onto the spurned table, pulling Ratchet after him.  _Lookit ‘em,_  he tight-beamed.  _All growed up._  
  
Ratchet stared at him for a moment and squared his shoulders unnecessarily.   
  
As he made the final adjustments to the tank, Aid could feel the bonfire of Hot Spot’s attention. Beside Spot, Blades and Streetwise had Groove between them, hands and mouths roaming their shared topography. Aid spared Ratchet and Wheeljack a final glance, amused at them sitting primly on the table, feet dangling, attentive as schoolchildren at a pyrotechnics demonstration. First Aid rolled his optics and turned to his brothers.   
  
Hot Spot trembled slightly, knowing what Aid was going to do to him. Aid knew the best places and he had long fingers. Smiling, Aid slid himself into Hot Spot’s arms, cupping his face, lingering in the warmth before a kiss. Blades was silent, mouthing the segmented components of Groove’s flank, while Streetwise hummed softly, stroking Groove’s lips with a fingertip and inserting the first sets of cables into Blades and Hot Spot’s thoracic ports. First Aid held off cabling. He could feel the way the others were rising already, beginning the synch that would send them into the deeps, but Aid wanted to explore the surfaces for a while first. Hot Spot’s strong face and well-formed lips, sturdy body powerful enough to carry them all. Aid ran his hands along the edges and planes of him, slipping fingers into gaps made wider by Hot Spot’s arousal.   
  
With one arm, Hot Spot pulled the other three closer against his side. Their link was making him dizzy and First Aid’s caresses and kisses and that neat, compact body pressed to his, the long legs brushing his waist and upper thighs added layers of tumult to the sensory gale.   
  
Smiling, Aid began to play with Hot Spot’s antennae, sneaking the other hand up Blades’ back, to the juncture of his rotors. He knew how to make the normally quiet Blades shiver and gasp. Arguably, Groove made enough noise for all of them, but they liked his melodic purrs and chirps and moans. Aid leaned in to kiss Groove too, devoured as he was between Streetwise and Blades. They swayed together, armor slipping, engines running hot, kisses growing fierce, growing into bites as they held on tighter, arms making their armor creak, knees locking to keep them from falling.   
  
(Wheeljack’s hands were on Ratchet’s body. Ratchet, intent on observing, tried to still them, but only for a moment.)  
  
 _Now,_  First Aid purred. Cables snapped and slithered, binding each to every one, the extra pairs linking them now into a circle, the pentagram of earth and growing, living things, the five directions of spirit. They writhed on the edge of overload, charged and thrumming, but Aid held them and they opened their chests, pushing inward, lifting their chambers into mortal proximity, the colors of their sparks blending as the arcs and loops and flares reached out, mingling, coalescing, submerging them in the clear realm of possibilities. They saw and chose and one spark answered.  
  
Five arms of a starfish, a star in the center. The power bent and bowed around them, (Ratchet and Wheeljack clutched each other, lightning dancing, shaking them into overload), Hot Spot aiming to twist it around himself even as the heat left marks on each of their bodies; but First Aid understood it, understood Hot Spot, and deftly shrugged the striking coils through his own frame instead.  
  
Aid staggered to his feet and lifted the spark into the magnetic tube, watching as it was drawn into the tank and nestled into the coil of protomass. “Sleep tight, Spandrel,” he murmured, then fell back amid the tangle of his brothers.   
  
(Wheeljack and Ratchet were already in recharge.)  
  
…  
  
 _You guys realize,_  Streetwise said, idly stroking First Aid’s helm,  _now that_ we’ve _done this, we’ll soon be hip-deep in baby jets._  The Aerials wouldn’t allow themselves to be outdone in anything.  
  
 _Eeeeee!_  said Groove.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2037 – April  
  
"Tomorrow?"  
  
"Yeah, sweetie, tomorrow would be great! We gotta get you out of that tank while you can still fit through the corridors. Heh, you waited until Ultra Magnus was back, didn't you."  
  
"I like Ultra Magnus."  
  
"He likes you, too. Have you told him yet? Oh, there he's pinging me, so yes you have, terrific. And Beachcomber. Nice."  
  
"And Prime and the King and the village elders."  
  
"Right on. And your ride....? Oh yeah, Lissi's broadcasting, there ya go. How are your little guys doing?"  
  
Metroplex moved aside several of her main arms, which now took up much of the tank. There was very little liquid left. Clustered around her central mass, the three drones had the bodies of fully-formed mechs. One was noticeably larger than the other two and Wheeljack wondered what their final forms and alt modes would be.   
  
…  
  
“Clear a path!” Sideswipe waved his arms at scurrying mechs and humans alike. Not that Metroplex would squish anyone, but why make her first extra-tank excursion more difficult?  
  
“Woooooow,” Glen whispered, not quite hiding behind Maggie on the mezzanine as the cityformer crawled past like all the Elder Gods combined in metal, light-spangled and sinuous. And immense! This was just the protoform and she was having to disarticulate herself to fit through the corridors.   
  
In what Glen felt was a flagrant display of bravery, Ultra Magnus paced her gleaming bulk with one hand resting on a curve of alloy (limb or flank Glen couldn’t tell). Taller and bulkier than Prime, Magnus looked small and fragile next to her. She rolled as she slid through the main hangar door and a spiral arm extended for Magnus. He stepped into it and was immediately engulfed, disappearing from sight until Metroplex gained the road and the desert, sunlight bright as glass on her surface. A whirl of limbs, a leap; she drew herself up to full height and form, even with the mesa top. The hangar doorway grew crowded as humans and robots gathered to see.   
  
She was vaguely centaur-like; four legs in front and four in back, attached to a compound trunk by a complicated armillary of joints, with fringes of secondary legs and a serried ring of main arms. Her head could rotate atop a short neck. Six optics ringed her long, flanged helm like a glowing crown, though she had a single mouth, and she could rearrange her optics onto a single facet of her face above the mouth if she wanted to.   
  
Glen knew she carried three drones but he couldn’t distinguish them among the myriad plates of her exoskeleton and limbs. Hound had explained these wouldn’t be like Blaster’s symbionts; the drones had an internal power source which superficially resembled a spark, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, only as a lightning bug resembled lightning. They were small bodies Metroplex could “occupy” in order to facilitate self-repair and interactions with the mechs and humans who would live in her. She was keeping them offline for now, until after she’d gone through integration.   
  
Ultra Magnus reappeared on the heavy ridge of a shoulder. Glen hoped he’d magnetized his feet or something, because that would be a bad fall. Stretching her limbs as she strode into the desert, almost dancing, Metroplex waved at the press helicopters and fielded a barrage of email, text and VOIP messages, smoothly taking up a portion of the data traffic she would handle routinely once emplaced and occupied.   
  
 _She’s beautiful,_  Ratchet tight-beamed to Prime and Wheeljack, placing a hand on the small of Prime’s back and another on Jack’s shoulder.   
  
 _So whaddya think, Ratch?_  Jack replied.  _Care to give Vector’s method a go?_  It was fascinating to see the kinds of mechs the new people chose to become, given the combinations of traits each new spark contained. He completely understood Perceptor’s desire to create whole schools of them.   
  
Ratchet moved his hand across Wheeljack’s shoulders, giving him a brief, sideways hug.  _No, my friend,_  he said.  _Not yet._  
  
Prime smiled.  
  
…  
  
That night, Metroplex watched the stars as the planet turned beneath them. Skyfire was perched on her upper back and shoulders, cephalic cables firmly seated; sharing his gravitational and high-def gamma detection senses; the songlines that guided deep-Seekers across galaxies. She folded her eight main legs and laid her trunk to the ground, still warm from the day. Skyfire rearranged himself slightly.   
  
“When you’re ready, when you’re sure,” Skyfire murmured. She had chosen him for this because he was sturdy and smart. He would be all right if things proceeded faster than she’d planned.   
  
“Now,” she said. Teletraan and Event Horizon gave her access to their full bandwidths. Skyfire shut down her voluntary and involuntary motor relays, leaving only her vocoder functional. She would need an outlet.   
  
The stars hummed their eerie, ever-changing tunes; the worlds around the stars adding, altering harmonies; this world against her belly loudest of all.   
  
 _Rio… Rrrriooooo, sing! Sing! I’m almost… Please help me… Sing!_    
  
At the hangar entrance, Oratorio gazed at the starlit shapes a kilometer distant. The sharp-edged wings of Skyfire and the limp, darker, sleeker, beached-whale heap of Metroplex. Rio clasped his hands tightly, both honored and distressed. He had illicit recordings of Prowl singing, but he didn’t want to trigger Metroplex the way he’d gone himself. Let it be joy, then, he thought. Like Borealis had gone. Joy and beauty to overwhelm the spark.   
  
Rio sang. And Metroplex cried out, feeling emotion and thought intertwine, burning new maps across her mind.   
  
…  
  
"Ready, Plexie?"  
  
"Yes'm!"  
  
"All right, everyone, three, two, one!"   
  
Seven engines roared from standby to full VTOL lift, Skyfire and Borealis peripheried to the gestalt link so they rose in precise unison, drawing taut the seven limbs Metroplex had anchored around their hulls. Slowly, slowly. This would be Metroplex's first and last plane ride. Once her city form was completed she would upgrade to a space station mode that could lift off under her own power if necessary. It wasn't done often, because the downwards thrust could damage the planet if she rose too quickly – equal and opposite reactions – and she wouldn't want to cause any earthquakes.  
  
"And she's off!" Jazz caroled. The last trailing appendages of the vast cityformer were gathered up and coiled into the main body mass, now two, now three meters off the ground. Autobots and humans jumped up and down and whooped and hollered and a few military caps ended up in the air.   
  
The sight of a kilotonne of Cybertronian cityformer being lifted into the sky was certainly something one didn't see every day. The robots never had either, since on Cybertron or the moons or colonies, a city was built and kindled in situ, regardless of whether it chose to move around later or not; the huge sparks transported to the site in special crucibles.  
  
Beachcomber and Miles were already in Morocco at Ighil n’Imich – a 2862 meter high peak west of the Berber village of Tissili in the High Atlas – waiting for them with a host of Moroccan and other African dignitaries, and everyone who lived in the nearby villages whose lives would be affected by the arrival of a robot city in the neighborhood. One that would manufacture its own water, plus extra if needed, to share with them. Solar and wind generators were popular in the area, but Metroplex could share power as well.  
  
“WHEEEEEE!” said Metroplex. Borealis and Skyfire and the Aerialbots laughed and pulled her higher, reaching their flight altitude in a few minutes.   
  
 _Higher!_  Fireflight urged them.  _Higher!_  Skyfire and Silverbolt exchanged transmissive “glances”, then with shouts and hollers they took Metroplex up to low orbit, to give her a good long look at the planet she was pledged to protect.  
  
...  
  
Wedge inspected the bore holes again. Metroplex would use them as guides when sinking her own accesses to the water table and mineral layers far below the mountain. Beachcomber had given the Build Team – who were delighted to haul themselves down from Russia for such an occasion – detailed geological files on the area. Wedge had accepted them politely but privately shook his head at the…um…atypical organization. After a few days of contemplation, though, he’d discovered Beachcomber’s methods had a strangely elegant kind of sense to them. Even Hightower agreed, once Wedge had explained. Heavy Load and Longarm had laughed and said that Perceptor would think Wedge himself had a processor as wonky as Beachcomber’s.   
  
The Build Team, the Bullet Trains and the Protectobots had also constructed a set of viewing platforms in a line along the mountain’s south-facing slope. They had brought in planks that resembled wood but were made of recycled plastic. Trees were in short supply at this altitude, and many of the native Moroccan species, like the Atlas cedar, thuya and the endemic argan, were threatened or endangered.   
  
At 74, His Royal Majesty King Mohammed VI appeared at least fifteen years younger, as did his wife, the Princess Consort Lalla Salma. A highly educated, progressive monarch, the King had welcomed the Autobots with honest enthusiasm and a cunning eye to the advantages in both tourism and technology.   
  
“There they are,” said Prime. He stood well back from the royal platform in case Galvatron chose to inflict another mis-kindling. While the jets and the new city were in orbit, the Autobots and their human friends and families had gotten trans-Atlantic rides on USPS C-17’s, paid for out of the Cybertronian Embassy’s general fund, though King Mohammed had offered to foot the bill. Prime projected a mist screen so the King and Princess Consort could see the approaching formation. Their children and grandchildren had augmented senses but the royal couple did not.   
  
They lowered her as slowly as they'd lifted her, meter by meter to the mountaintop. Beachcomber waited on the adjoining ridge, hugging himself and Miles with happiness. The Build Team had arranged the stacks and skeins and bales and bundles of raw protomass for the further building they would be helping Metroplex with as she grew into her full size and configuration.   
  
Metroplex released her hold on the jets and stood up in her protoform for the last time, extending her many limbs. The three drones, Scamper, Slammer and Six-Gun, as Metroplex informed the cloud mind, came fully online at last. Slammer and Six-Gun clung to Metroplex's body for a few moments as they looked around, surveying the stark mountains and clear air around them, as well as the gathered humans and mechs. Scamper, true to his given name, leapt down immediately, running around Metroplex's legs and out to the ridge to say hello to Beachcomber and Miles and down to say hi to Prime and Ultra Magnus and give Ultra Magnus' knees a hug.   
  
Ultra Magnus bent to pat the drone's helm. This was too much for Slammer and Six-Gun, who bounced over for hugs and pats too.   
  
“Lively for drones,” Ultra Magnus commented, his tone indicating he wasn’t the least surprised that Metroplex should have remarkable drones.   
  
“It’s my understanding that Sideswipe helped with their programming,” said Prime.   
  
Ultra Magnus went still for half a second. “…Did you say Sideswipe?”  
  
Optimus chuckled.   
  
Metroplex gave one prodigious stretch, massive cabled limbs uncoiling to the wire-fine, branching tips, shading those around her like some vast, gleaming tree. Then, with an anticipatory shiver, she transformed, turning three times sunwise, settling as she turned to form a spiral, scooping up materials as the Build Team assembled spheres and cubes and geodesics and icosahedra and cylinders, fitting them to her limbs. She drew on the protomass directly as well, unfurling heliconia spires and hyacinth towers and spears of iris columns. Fountained terraces lifted – step, step, step. Bridges flung themselves from building to building, linking vertical and horizontal space. Sam and Mikaela were reminded of the first holo Prime had shown them of war-torn Cybertron, but also of time-lapse films of plants bursting from the soil, growing and flowering. Wheeljack clenched his hands together as he watched Metroplex’s optics disappear, snuggling into the hollow shapes, fitting herself through them, connecting them, forming the infrastructure of her body, wiring and plumbing and airways, creating a living, breathing city.   
  
Between her arms, on the bare, stony ground made of Paleozoic marine sediments uplifted and transformed, the Build Team, Bullet Trains and Protectobots assembled the beginnings of gardens and small parks. Humans would live here, and humans needed green things around them, but Metroplex would have to retain the ability to move. This way she could lift herself from the site and leave the fragile gardens safely behind.  
  
“Look,” Prowl said, perched on Thundercracker’s shoulders. Thundercracker followed the line of a silver finger to the tips of the six towers lofting at the city’s center. Familiar cupolas topped the fractal, screen-shaded spires. The screens provided shade but were also wind-traps, catching moisture in their micro-architecture and channeling it down to cisterns beneath the ground-level floors. For the gardens and the human inhabitants. The cupolas, though. Thundercracker felt his spark spin faster. Those were  _eyries_.   
  
As evening drew blue around them, falling beneath the planet’s shadow, lights sprang in swirls and dots and lines across the city’s surfaces, multicolored, moving as though underwater. The three drones left Ultra Magnus and transformed. A little jet, a sleek car, a small but burly tank. They disappeared into the moving interior.  
  
At last the roads leading in unrolled. Metroplex felt a city ought to have at least four roads reaching out to other cities, other roads. With thin plating specially engineered to encourage the winter snow to melt and run off in a controlled manner, she connected herself to Tissili, Ifoulou, Toufrine and Amassine, with a ramp prepared should there in future be a need for a road across the rugged mountains to the north.   
  
Artists and dancers entered first, singing as they went, their colorful, traditional costumes shimmering in Metroplex’s light. A hundred cultures gathered at the seven stages placed around the city. Skirts and veils and double-ended torches whirled to the music.   
  
A spotlight picked out the top of one of the six central towers. Optimus leaned out from the Seeker eyrie and loosed the highest powers of his voice, crying everyone welcome; first in Cybertronian, then in Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, then in Tashelhit, the most widely used Amazigh or Berber language in the area. Then in Classical Arabic and French and English and Swahili and Maori and Hindi and Mandarin; the Prime’s unique vocoder shifting flawlessly from language to language, cadence to cadence, atonal to tonal.   
  
Sam and Mikaela walked hand in hand. Food vendors – present since the morning on the mountain slopes – had followed the crowds throughout the city, setting up their carts and tables at well-planned intervals. The transit systems moved humans efficiently without scaring them with the breakneck speeds used in the tubes and tunnels intended for robot traffic. There were no segregated human versus robot zones, otherwise. The living and working areas were integrated with ramps and catwalks and multiple levels for people of all sizes. Inside, the floor plans varied from riad-inspired central courtyards bounded by small rooms, to series of linked chambers denoting public to increasingly private spaces as in typical Berber village homes, to the Cybertronian penchant for the extremely vertical. There were no dark alleys or dingy urban canyons. Dani and Hot Rod had run off somewhere but her parents weren’t worried. Bumblebee had Nate, who was as easygoing and unflappable at six as Sam had been cranky and overstimulated at that age.   
  
“Looks like they’re staying for a while,” Sam said, eyeing the ice cream cone Mikaela was taking way too long to finish. She knew clever tricks with her tongue, and while the mountain night was cool, Sam was considering taking off his coat. The scents of roses, incense and spices mingled with ozone and a hint of oil, but there wasn’t the overwhelming sense of  _metal_  that Sam had expected. Metroplex’s textures were varied and painstakingly engineered to not only channel heat and air and water, but evoke the look and feel of stone or wood or even brick in places, in addition to the iridescent, shifting colors and patterns, glyph-encrusted, of Cybertron-that-was.  
  
“Even this is movable,” Mikaela pointed out. The refugees could evacuate again if they had to.   
  
“Crazy, huh?” Sam said.  
  
“Like a car that returns itself after being stolen.” Mikaela grinned and kissed him, leaving a dot of ice cream on his nose.  
  
Prime and Wheeljack walked slowly down the streets, taking in the atmosphere, greeting friends and fellow visitors as they passed. Atrandom ran across an arm bridge to join them, taking Wheeljack's hand, beaming.   
  
 **How do you feel, Metroplex?**  Prime asked, smiling down at Wheeljack and Wheeljack’s first progeny as they moved within his second.   
  
 _Ah, it's so nice, Prime,_  she replied.  _I can feel everyone. Oh welcome, welcome to me, come in, the doors are open!_  A mist screen was projected ahead of them for a moment, glowing with blue surfaces and the bright silver icosahedron of the command center. Or the largest command center; Metroplex was not truly centralized, as most Cybertronian cities were not, but distributed; in power production and consumption and services and living spaces and working spaces, and most definitely in defensive and offensive devices.   
  
Ahead of them as they walked up a wide, spiraling ramp, shimmering curtain doors irised open. Ultra Magnus was already there, his arms seated into interface jacks, a beatific smile on his handsome face. Prime stepped behind him, placing his hands on Ultra Magnus' shoulders, leaning in to rub his cheek guard on Magnus'. Magnus turned his head slightly for a quick kiss, his fields flowing like Van Allen belts, like wings as he immersed himself in Metroplex's burgeoning personality, as her self expanded to include her inhabitants. Wheeljack and Atrandom fitted themselves to other sets of jacks to share.  
  
Down among the streets and bridges and walkways, the three drones rolled and ran and cartwheeled; learning their territories by body as well as mind, greeting people as they met them, every one by name, knowing the niches they were meant to fill, knowing there would be new niches and habits and habitats found along the way as people lived and worked here over the years.   
  
 _Is it just me,_  Ratchet tight-beamed to Perceptor as they walked out onto a high balcony in one of the six central towers, Perceptor happily training his lenses on the local cosmic wonders – and the not so local.  _Or have a lot of the newforged taken on rather more compactly humanoid root modes?_ Scamper had transformed in a plaza below them, and was shaking the hands of the Tissili village elders, speaking Darija or Tashelhit with Metroplex's voice, with her mind and authority. He was about four meters tall, bright armor shining in smooth plates across his limbs and torso, making him appear like a kind of high tech knight in shining armor.   
  
 _Oh I suppose so,_  Perceptor said idly. He waved a hand vaguely between Ratchet's bilaterally symmetrical form and Scamper below.  _The similarities are greater than the differences. We realized that soon after arriving here, did we not?_  
  
 _Just an observation,_  Ratchet said.  _We haven't lost our knack for adaptation, clearly._    
  
 _Indeed not,_  Perceptor said, moving his lenses aside and putting his arms – heavy and fine – around Ratchet, nuzzling his cheek spar.  _I rather hope we never will. For all that many of the changes we have endured of late have been unfortunate, sorrowful ones, I believe we yet retain our, hm, our joie de vivre, as it were._  
  
Ratchet returned the embrace, not needing any high-grade to put the joie in his vivre just then.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2037 – April  
  
Silence fell among the onlookers as they realized what Bluestreak was carrying. Red Alert and Smokescreen flanked him solemnly. Metroplex had hollowed a little space in one of the gardens between her spiral arms; a niche to contain the sculptured column that held Kalis’ damaged consciousness.   
  
Kalis had made no sound since Vector Prime had touched him, but Smokescreen assured everyone that the AI remained viable. Listening. Smokescreen thought perhaps a quiet nook in the new city might be the balm Kalis needed. As Bluestreak had opted to be one of the dozen or so mechs taking up residence in Metroplex, he promised to visit Kalis every day – barring emergencies – and talk to him.  
  
…  
  
Her father would probably have a spaz if he saw her walking the spun-steel catwalks between towers; he could get weird about heights sometimes. There were railings, but the wind here above the moisture sails had risen with the night. Roddy would never let her fall.   
  
Watching Metroplex unfurl had reminded Dani of a weekend when she’d been wandering the embassy, exploring. Bored. Sometimes new corridors and chambers could appear suddenly, and while Dani could access the shortwave map, it was more fun to find them on her own. Mom said body memory could be important.   
  
…  
  
Four months earlier.  
  
A short but broad corridor led down a spiral ramp to a closed door almost as big as the main hangar entrance. Dani leaned forward to let the key dot read her left iris. Nothing happened.   
  
That was new. Dani hadn’t encountered a door in the embassy she wasn’t allowed to open since she was twelve.  
  
“Danaela Witwicky,” said Red Alert behind her. Dani jumped.  
  
“Hi, Red,” she said, the image of studied casualosity.   
  
“You want to know what’s in there,” Red said.  
  
“Oh, you don’t have to,” Dani said, pulling her ponytail forward and twirling it around her fingers. “I was just…”  
  
Red Alert gave her a tolerant look. The door unlocked – Dani heard massive bolts sliding back, echoing in the stone corridor. Inside, dim lights came on in the high ceiling. About three hundred meters in diameter, the chamber was neatly filled with massive spools of dark grey material eight meters tall and about half that wide. Spools wasn’t the right word, Dani thought. Spools implied that the material was wound  _around_  something. This stuff, whatever it was, stood in coils on its own. More like giant, cylindrical skeins of cable.   
  
“This is the protomass Optimus Prime and the rest of us have been donating over the past ten local years for Metroplex,” Red explained. He touched one of the skeins, running his fingers over the irregular, smoothly nubbed surface.   
  
Interpreting this as permission, Dani touched it as well. It was warm; warmer than room-temperature metal should feel. Alive. The texture reminded her of the silk dress Bee had commissioned from Judith Straeten in New York years ago. Dani’s mother, Bee had asserted, needed a nice dress for formal occasions. It had been dyed a shimmering blue to precisely match Mikaela’s eyes; the silk manipulated into tiny pleats in the Fortuny technique thought lost until Ms. Straeten recreated it. It draped Mikaela’s statuesque form like something out of a Greek fantasy, the nigh-weightless silk anchored by Venetian glass beads around the hem. Mikaela hadn’t found out how expensive it had been for several months, but by then there was no question of her refusing the gift. Dani, when she’d been little, had thought the dress the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.   
  
“You’re going to be a part of Metroplex too?” She looked up at Red. “You’re all going to be a part of her?”  
  
“We are,” Red said, smiling.   
  
Dani pressed her cheek against the warm, living metal for a long moment. She returned Red’s smile, then ran from the chamber so Red could lock it up again. Precious cargo.  
  
Red allowed himself another moment to caress the protomass skein, remembering.   
  
…  
  
Four days earlier.   
  
 _Teletraan?_  Red Alert tight-beamed.  _I’m taking Prowl below. He’s wound tighter than Skywarp’s—_  
  
 _Please do not provide me with further imagery,_  Tel responded hastily.  _I will monitor the screens._  
  
 _Thank you._  Red grinned. Keeping the overall tone of the cloud mind positive and hopeful aided Prime in coping with his anguish. Prowl was having some difficulty contributing to this. Red placed his hands on Prowl’s back between the door-wings, leaning in to murmur, ”Prowl. My antennae are throwing auras.”  
  
“Hm? Oh.” Still mentally distracted, Prowl allowed himself to be led down the stem corridor, down the broad spiral ramp and into the protomass storage chamber. It was easy to find one of Prime’s skeins. Most of them were his. Red pushed Prowl unceremoniously up against a skein and slipped cables in the moment Prowl uncovered his ports.   
  
Flattening his door-wings, Prowl took in the scent and feel of Prime. He arched his lower back and raised his arms, sinking fingers into the strands of protomass, spreading his legs and armor. Red’s hands and mouth took full advantage, lingering on every edge, every buried line and wire, feeding his own charge from Prowl’s. Slow, delicious; their heat radiating into and reflecting from the skein. Prowl rubbed himself against it, head tossing, denta half extended as if in aching need to bite. Red growled, arousal surging at the sight of Prowl like this.   
  
No. Let the charge build. He kept his chest closed, though he could see the alloy whorls of Prowl’s spark chamber between trembling plates of parted armor. Red was so hot he could feel electrons moving.   
  
Red slipped his hands deeper, lifting Prowl bodily, St. Elmo’s fire ghosting across their helms. Prowl shifted his grip on the skein, pulling himself higher until Red could get his mouth on the lower curve of Prowl’s chamber, the feverish spin of the spark within transmitting a hum through denta and jaws and neck and helm. Prowl lowered one hand and drew silver fingers slowly down Red’s antenna, chased with blue fire.  
  
From cores and partitions the charge leapt like lightning in a volcanic cloud. They slid to the floor, retaining consciousness but taking comfort in one another’s silence.  
  
“Tell me what you see,” Red whispered, stroking Prowl’s face, kissing him gently. Prowl was a fantastic resource. While others might accept his predictions with disquiet, Red – and Smokescreen – understood the complexities of the future wave-states that Prowl’s CPU handled with such facility. When Prowl gave you a percentage, you were to take that percentage with exactly the level of certitude the numbers described. No more, no less.  
  
 _Based on Skyfire’s scans and Wheeljack’s extrapolations of the observed weapons capabilities of the_ Flay _and the_ Vivisector _, I estimate an 87.5 percent probability that they are extending said weapons’ range. They’ll rake Earth from Jupiter’s orbit or farther._  
  
 _I concur._  Red settled himself on Prowl’s body, resting a cheek spar on Prowl’s slowly cooling chest.  _Fortunately Jhiaxus and Bludgeon don’t appear to know that not only did Perceptor survive that initial engagement over Saturn, but eight of his and Beachcomber’s progeny have built light cannons of their own._  
  
Prowl’s optics widened. This had not been common knowledge.  _Perceptor must be…_  
  
 _Flattered but not ecstatic, given what happened to the original Light Brigade._    
  
Prowl nodded, shivering a little. After a moment, he relaxed. Red felt him shutting down auxiliary systems, preparing for recharge. Smiling, Red followed suit.  
  
...  
  
2037 – April  
  
“Comeon, Ratchet, joinusit’sfun!” Blurr tugged at his arm, blinking suspiciously large optics up at him.   
  
As the sky began to lighten in the east, Jazz and Scamper were leading two intertwined conga lines – human and Cybertronian – among Metroplex’s towers. Blurr wisely declined to mention that it had been Sideswipe’s idea.   
  
“Pleeeease?” Blurr hopped on one foot then the other.   
  
Ratchet made a grinding gears noise, but let Blurr lead him down to the plaza to join the line. “Very well, but if this turns into the Bunny Hop I’m leaving.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2037 - May  
  
In the cold northern starlight, Hook had reassessed many things. The launch of the Allspark into space, for example. He now saw it as an act of desperation motivated by existential terror, not psychotic terrorism.   
  
His gestalt had never entirely taken Megatron’s gradual and repeated waves of reprogramming. They needed to remain flexible and creative in their intelligence. Because of the gestalt, they tended to reinforce their own modes of thinking, which were thus less easily influenced from the outside.  
  
So much had happened on this ridiculously obscure little dirtball; simply because the Allspark had fallen here. Hook shook himself and glanced over his brothers. They were ready. Chameleon mesh altered to new forms, chromatophores shifted to brilliant white. They had decided.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Three…two…one…” Hot Rod whispered, watching the small readout screen at human height, though his own chronometer was properly synched. Beside him, Dani decided that she was far too old now to jump up and down, clapping her hands, and settled for hugging Roddy’s shin and grinning wildly.   
  
“Inshallah…” Metroplex whispered back, a smile in her harmonics. Ultra Magnus lifted an orbital crest, but he was smiling, too.  
  
 _YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE,_  Metroplex’s voice boomed through towers and parks and plazas.  _EVACUATION CODE: VALKYRIE. I REPEAT. EVACUATION CODE VALKYRIE. PLEASE GO TO YOUR ASSIGNED EVAC STATIONS NOW. TRANSFORMATION WILL COMMENCE IN FIVE MINUTES._    
  
The first wave of Metroplex’s occupants were pure military; EDF personnel, roughly half from Morocco, the rest a truly international mix. They had performed drills for several days now, until every human could get to a command/observation bubble or safe bunkers concealed in the between-arm gardens within five minutes. The second wave would be a mix of military and scientists – most of whom would also have some military training. Once they were established, they and Metroplex would consider the possibility of allowing civilian families willing to face the inherent risks.   
  
Dani felt briefly dizzy as Metroplex adjusted the gravity field in the command bubble. Roddy looked down at her to make sure she was okay, because for certain Ultra Magnus was far too rapt to pay attention to anything but the feel of the city changing shape around them. The process wasn’t anywhere near as noisy as Dani had thought it would be, though there was something to the air, a frisson of immense, leashed power on the move. When a section of wall phased transparent, Dani saw they were closer to the ground than they had been, but still high up the mountain.   
  
The view lurched as Metroplex leapt down the mountain. Dani whooped and clutched Roddy’s shin tighter.   
  
Down the mountain, hurdling the Ifoulou valley, each eightfold stride placed with exacting care; she veered east to avoid the Draa valley, crossing the Jebel Sahro, crossing from rocky ground to sand as she passed into Algeria and out into the Sahara. Arms swept back like a mane or wings, the footfalls of the passing goddess left little imprint despite her vastness, the sound of her like the desert wind.   
  
…  
  
2037 – June  
  
 _YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. EVACUATION CODE: MACROSS. I REPEAT. EVACUATION CODE: MACROSS. PLEASE GO TO YOUR ASSIGNED EVAC STATIONS NOW. TRANSFORMATION WILL COMMENCE IN FIVE MINUTES._  
  
The city compressed, rose up, unspiraled herself, lifting on her AG drives to avoid damaging the mountain and the gardens left behind. Weapons jutted and swiveled from sturdy towers and heavily shielded recesses. Higher and higher, until the sky turned dark, spangled with stars. Dani – standing this time between her parents – pressed her hands to the not-glass of the window and watched her homeworld drop away.  
  
On the Moon, the deltas and Aerials watched a bright speck rise from the cloud-jeweled orb.  
  
 _Boom de yada,_  said Borealis.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Within/throughout the notplace of the Allspark, the pattern that was Impactor moved/thought of moving/arranged his focus beside the pattern that was Beta.  
  
 _What do you think? Take another swipe at embodiment?_  
  
Beta changed her orientation within/through him in such a way that he lost focus for a nanosecond/supereon. All are/were/will be one.  _What? Leave **this**? Why?_  
  
Impactor coalesced again with some difficulty.  _…All right, there is that. I’ve been thinking about Prowl’s sentence ending. And the war ending. And I think there are a few more things I’d like to see and feel before returning to Source for eternity._  
  
 _Huh. Whatever turns your screws._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Optimus Prime was afraid. Soon, he feared, he would do anything to make it stop. He could tell his people that Omega Supreme was alive and he could send Skyfire out to wake the giant from his 75,000 year stasis. He could drag the last omega back into war and death and order him to slag everything and everyone on Chaar. In the end it wouldn't help. Galvatron would survive, regenerate and begin again.   
  
“Prime?” Prowl had found him. Kneeling in the empty protomass chamber, arms wrapped tight around himself. The mis-kindled spark had been non-viable this time, extinguishing as swiftly as it had been forced into being. Prowl went to him, reaching up to touch Prime’s face.  
  
"Garden?"  
  
Under better circumstances, Prowl would have smiled. It was sweet how Prime held that particular memory in such affection. Prowl didn't mind reliving it himself, though at the time the incident had been uncomfortable. He seated a pair of cephalic cables and initiated the link.  
  
...  
  
5.2304 million years ago.  
  
“We thought we’d spend the afternoon at the Helix Gardens,” said Spiral as Warrant and Aequitas entered their suite. Warrant’s observation time with Aequitas was done for the day, so they both nodded. The gardens were on Warrant’s map of Praxus of course, but he’d not yet been there in person.   
  
The five of them took the 0-15 transport tube to the Helix station and disembarked, transforming and driving down the gracefully arching ramp to the plaza that served as the garden’s primary entrance. Passing between elaborate white columns, they followed the amethyst-paved road down another level and through the methane containment fields. Warrant stopped and transformed to root mode.   
  
Gigantic crystals, shading from cerulean points to lapis to deep cobalt at their hearts, floated around them, turning and tumbling majestically in currents of air. Warrant thought at first the crystals had been allowed to form naturally, their structure random within the constraints of their chemistry. A small plaque set into the slender column of a filigreed copper and titanium arch explained, however, that the crystals’ structure corresponded to certain numerical sequences. If the numbers were then matched with glyphs, each crystal told a story.   
  
Warrant stared in awe, his processor spinning out the correspondences, unfolding the nested tales.   
  
Somewhere, a small group of musicians playing varied flutes from half a dozen worlds filled the atmosphere with a deceptively simple melody. Warrant could perceive more complex harmonics and subharmonics, but lacked the programming to analyze it properly.  
  
The music slowly grew louder and louder, until the crystals chimed in harmony. Warrant felt his entire body stiffen, though he had not sent any command to his articulation locks. Spiral and Rede were watching him closely. Something very odd was happening to him.  
  
When next he came to a semblance of coherence, he was cradled in Aequitas' arms. Spiral, Rede and Veracity nestled beside them. They had not left the garden, but had drawn him aside to a curving bench etched with intricate verdigris designs and padded with soft copper. As people passed, they stopped to touch him and murmur encouragement. New people weren't kindled often but everyone remembered their own early days. Fourth-level acquaintances and strangers brought them vials of energon. Warrant was given a special mix of high and mid-grade to boost his exhausted systems without overwhelming them. Once, Aequitas had to recharge.  
  
"I'll hold him if you like," offered a mech of approximately Aequitas' size. "Is he thrashing much?"  
  
"Only in spurts," Spiral said, smiling. "Thank you."  
  
Warrant felt himself lifted, and then the chest, and beneath that the spark, against which his cheek rested was a different one, but the big engine rumble was friendly, and Warrant slipped into recharge too.   
  
…  
  
2037 – June  
  
“Can you recharge?” Prowl murmured, cradling Prime’s great head against his chest. Optimus liked the feel of Prowl’s voice transmitted through their metal.   
  
“I’ll try.” Cybertronians don’t dream, and waking was – for now – the nightmare.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _Arrogant slagger,_  Scrapper tight-beamed. There he was, the great and worthy opponent, Optimus Prime. Standing at parade rest in front of the mesa that hid (not very well any more) the supposed Cybertronian Embassy.   
  
Scrapper and his team had driven across the Arctic. It had been a colder year than usual for this century, and Scavenger’s sonar had easily led them across the thickest layers of ice. They’d suppressed their energy signatures, but Scrapper had assumed the Autobot jets had probably spotted them at some point.   
  
What none of them had been prepared for was seeing Mirage appear beside them as they turned onto the embassy driveway.   
  
“Little glitch!” Ruckus shrieked, transforming and jumping ten meters away.   
  
“How long have you been there?” Mixmaster asked, things in his tanks sloshing unpleasantly.  
  
“Since Yellowknife,” Mirage said, none too happy about it. Flicking the last traces of mud off his tires, he transformed and strolled over to Prime, chirping a report. Prime nodded.   
  
“Frrrraaaaag,” said Longhaul.   
  
“We’re strictly neutral, got it?” Scrapper said, swaggering up to Prime and eyeing the Sec Def beside him. The fleshies were learning at a frightening rate. Scrapper wanted it to be clear they weren’t looking to start any trouble in this system. “What Vector Prime said, that’s true, yeah?”  
  
“Yes,” said Prime. “We’d be grateful for your help.”  
  
“Grateful!” Perceptor stalked out of the hangar, sensory fins fanned sharp and stiff, hands clenched. The light cannon was locked in firing position but not powered.   
  
“So, how’re we doing this, Percy?” Scrapper asked, grinning. “Old Vector wasn’t forthcoming with details.”  
  
“The mathematics involved are exponentially beyond your processor’s substandard yet habitually underutilized capabilities,” Perceptor asserted.   
  
“Which probably means it doesn’t work, right?” Scrapper said. (Hook facepalmed.) “You might as well hand over the specs now so I can get to revising ‘em.”   
  
“I’d sooner stuff my cervical data ports with Mentos and stand in a soda fountain. You lot can start by flushing out the carbon tetrachloride tanks and scrubbing the sodium deposits out of Wheeljack’s distillation apparatus.”  
  
“Sounds like you need the sodium scrubbed out of your exhaust. Remember that time you got thiepane switched with oxipane and Professor Archenteron made you decontaminate the entire organic chemistry level?”  
  
“That was azepane not oxipane, you undercycled hydrogen-eater. It’s astounding you can remember your own name. Oh, that’s right, your team shouts it at you all day.”  
  
“You always were a miserable pedant, Perceptor,” Scrapper sneered.  
  
Perceptor folded his fine-arms across his chest, propping his strong-hands on his hips. “At least I can tell a minicon from a housecleaning drone.”   
  
“THAT NEVER HAPPENED!” Scrapper roared. Hook and Trample, having eased into place beside their leader, grabbed his arms before he could launch himself.   
  
“Woo!” said Wheeljack, hurrying into the line of fire, waving his hands. “Hey, so you guys are neutral? I’m fine with that. Wanna come down and see what we’re working on?”  
  
…  
  
Two days later.  
  
“No!” Perceptor shouted. “Stop! Wheeljack has a—”  
  
 _BOOOM!!!_  
  
Literally fuming, Perceptor dragged Scrapper from the tower and threw him to the ground, deploying all four arms to hold him there and initiate repairs. Scrapper’s lower chest and hands were mangled and melted. “You NEVER use a fermion beam in the presence of a tertiary dichorial field! Even a novice comprehends that. I don’t care what you were compositing – you’re trying to kill us!”  
  
Scrapper shoved at Perceptor’s fine-hands with blackened forearms. “Who would keep a tertiary dichorial field emitter INSIDE a planetary atmosphere?! You’re insane!”   
  
“I’m sorry!” Wheeljack cried, following Hook who was half-carrying Scavenger and Ruckus. “I use it to anneal the astatine coating on the polyphasic control rods...” Longhaul, Tread and Trample were still down in the tower wondering why everyone else had left in such a hurry.   
  
“Hold still,” Perceptor snarled at Scrapper. “You entered  _Wheeljack’s_  workspace and you didn’t even, oh, I don’t know,  _look around_? Are your optics as non-functional as your processor?”   
  
“Get your filthy organic-crusted hands off me, you incompetent hack!”  
  
“Maybe for now we can find somewhere else for that?” Ratchet offered, sidling up to a dejected Wheeljack.  
  
“Okay.” Wheeljack brightened. “I’ll haul it up to Oregon! Feldspar says she won’t mind tucking it into one of the tunnels they’re digging, and they can also use it to prep alpha-emitting radiocolloids.”  
  
“Great,” Ratchet said drily.   
  
…  
  
The rift in communications between the parties involved was negatively affecting the production and testing schedule. The Constructicons weren’t speaking to Perceptor, so they made Scavenger do it.   
  
Perceptor was in the damaged storey of the tower, repairing the equipment. Scavenger decided to take down the flattened and charred wall panels. That needed doing anyway. “Do…do you think we could rebuild Crystal City?” Scavenger asked. “When Cybertron’s been moved?”  
  
Perceptor didn’t look up. “Why ask me? Large enough planet, I’m sure you can do as you will, as long as you can refrain from killing and maiming other people in the process.”  
  
Scavenger lowered his cutter, his tail wrapping around his leg. That was how the Autobots thought of him and his brothers. That was what they were, wasn’t it? What Megatron had wanted. Killing machines.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Perceptor said at last, lifting his tools from the innards of the emitter. “I’m afraid I remember Hydrax too well. 10,000 civilians slaughtered when you and your gestalt blew the base of the plateau.”  
  
Civilians? Megatron had said they were Autobot sympathizers. That was as bad as being Autobots, right? Scavenger’s spark felt small and dim for a moment. But Perceptor wasn’t the only one who remembered things. “The Light Brigade killed the entire Cerulean Seeker Flight. You cut them in half vertically. CPU and spark.”   
  
Perceptor hadn’t known it at the time, but that Flight had been the last of the  _rho_  subclass. “And then Megatron led the battle at Nova Cronum where seven-tenths of the Light Brigade died.”  
  
“Then you and Vanguard and Shearpoint broke into the rift base south of Polyhex and killed everyone.”  
  
Perceptor retracted his tools and let his arms fall to his sides. “…Yes.”   
  
“Prime is right,” Scavenger said in a small voice. Perceptor would have thought it frightened, coming from someone other than a Constructicon. “We have to stop.”   
  
The ability to finely gauge the emotional state of his fellow mechs had spared Scavenger, by his own estimation, 5,183 beatings of various potential severity. If this had been Hook or Longhaul, Scavenger would have thought him overenergized into a maudlin funk. Scavenger would know just how to comfort him into recharge. But this wasn’t Hook or Longhaul. This was Seekerbane. And Seekerbane wasn’t overenergized. The opposite in fact. Scavenger estimated he had about two local hours of low-power functioning before forcible recharge protocols kicked in. The war had taught them, however, that people could overcome their design specs in surprising ways. Scavenger couldn’t assume that Seekerbane didn’t have the reserves to prime the light cannon.  
  
He put up another new wall panel. If he approached too cautiously, Seekerbane might feel he was being snuck up on. Too bold an advance would be interpreted as aggressive. Perceptor hadn’t moved, aside from the slow, thoughtful waving of his sensory vanes. He was so beautiful. And those arms! Scavenger wanted to touch them. He thought about the marvelous things those four hands could do. He continued around the circumference, determinedly not looking at Perceptor, until the damaged sections had all been replaced.   
  
“Yes,” Perceptor said softly. “The expertise of your cohort will be of inestimable value when the time comes to rebuild. If we get the chance.” Perceptor wondered what was wrong. He wasn’t usually this cynical. Checking his chronometer, he realized how long he’d gone without recharge. Again. Oh. “Pardon me, I must…I…” He rose slowly, staring ahead – or maybe behind – and left the tower.   
  
Scavenger wanted to follow, to make sure Perceptor made it to the recharge bay all right. Instead he gathered the damaged wall panels, carrying them down to the tower’s lowest level, and dumped them in the smelter.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2037 – August  
  
As Perceptor arrived at the Oregon base, his habit was to do a cursory scan. A small assurance that his people were there, were well. His tally this time, however, had a few holes in it.   
  
 _Polaris? Azimuth? Blueshift? Where are you?_  
  
“They went down to Nevada,” Seaspray told him, giving Perceptor’s shoulder a pat as he passed on his way to the beach. “Borealis flew ‘em. They’re in Metroplex’s tank.”   
  
“Whatever for?” Perceptor asked, though he suspected he knew.  
  
Seaspray grinned. “They’re rebuilding themselves into deep-Seekers.”


	75. How Can I Keep From Singing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mirage and Wheeljack have a snuggle, Rio creates a music room, and Prowl sings.  
> The aftermath of Prowl's singing is felt and enjoyed.  
> Borealis teaches the new jets a dance; Raze returns; robots fight over Earth; Optimus spends some time on the floor; and Elita brings a goodly portion of her crew out for a visit.

  
_My life goes on in endless song  
Above earth's lamentations,  
I hear the real, though far-off hymn  
That hails a new creation._

_Through all the tumult and the strife  
I hear its music ringing,  
It sounds an echo in my soul.  
How can I keep from singing?_  
\--Enya

  
  
  
2039 - March  
  
Watching Perceptor work himself half to deactivation motivated Wheeljack to take breaks more often. Besides, it was Spring, and gorgeous outside the tower. Of course Wheeljack thought all the seasons on Earth were pretty spiffy, so he was happy no matter when it was. He stretched hard, enjoying the odd sproinging noises his back and shoulders made. His shoulder fins twitched in the ambient EM. Hmm. Someone behind him.   
  
Wheeljack turned, and looked up. Elegantly pointed toes…pedes…feet…oooh he was tired… had found purchase on irregularities of the tower wall. From Wheeljack’s perspective they looked like tiny hooves. The mech attached to said hooves…feet!...had climbed up to admire the rooftop garden. The Joshua tree wasn’t much bigger, but they grew slow. The wildflower composition had shifted slowly over the years, but most of the roof was in bloom now; the air thick with resinous and nectary scents.   
  
“Hullo, Mirage,” Wheeljack said. He could hear Mirage’s olfactory fans going. Collecting the wild perfumes to share later with Hound and Tracks and whomever else was interested.   
  
“Mmm, Wheeljack,” Mirage hummed in Cybertronian. Pushing away from the wall, he somersaulted and landed neat. Wheeljack leaned at him. They were of a height now. Mirage had pollen on his cheek spars.   
  
“Heh. Maybe we shoulda called  _you_  Bee.” Jack rubbed the pollen off with his lateral thumb, Mirage pressing his head into the contact. An armful of Mirage was always nice. “Were you waiting for me?”  
  
“Hound and Prowl are offline for the day,” Mirage purred, wrapping his arms around Wheeljack’s shoulders. The better to play with his fins and antennae. From the smugness of his harmonics, Mirage had been instrumental to getting them into that condition. He chirped Jack an image of Hound and Prowl, recharging; Hound sprawled atop Prowl, limbs splayed as though he could keep Prowl there that way; Prowl’s body positioned tidily, even in relaxation, though his head was tipped back and his lip components slightly parted. Sexy, Wheeljack thought.   
  
 _And I’m, unh, nnnext on your list of conquests?_  Wheeljack had to transmit since his mouth was thoroughly engaged in kissing Mirage.   
  
 _Mmmm. If the cookie fits, eat it._  
  
Wheeljack laughed, not expecting Mirage to quote Miles. His giggles cut off abruptly as Mirage seated a first set of cables, desire blossoming across the link, bright and fragrant as the desert in spring. Wheeljack clutched him tighter, hooking fingertips around the edges of Mirage’s dorsal armor. He sank his face into the hollow of Mirage’s shoulder, where the olfactory vents were, breathing in the perfume of wildflowers mixed with Mirage’s native, exotic oils. Mirage rippled against him, pressing in, drawing away; wheedling with his body. Overclocked, overheating, Wheeljack’s gyros lurched and he stumbled, letting Mirage steer him back inside the tower, down a level to the recharge table shoved out of the way against a wall under the ramp.   
  
(Scavenger poked his head above the floor to see what that thump had been. He ducked down again hurriedly.)   
  
Another set of cables had them writhing, minds dancing, twining; a wild passiflora tangle, thirsty roots and sensuous leaves and strange flowers aching for the touch of another, flinging scent and glittering pollen into the wind. Sunlight rayed from their centers, binary dawn beneath the earth, heat and light passing from mouth to mouth, copper and aquamarine. The tower rang, multi-throated, exultant, lightning-struck, and the dear friends shattered and fell and sang through overload.  
  
…  
  
Wheeljack was halfway to recharge, Mirage a pleasant weight on his chest. Memories sifted idly between them, slowly coalescing, finding a focus. A tall mech, elegant and spare, wondrous and wondering, whose mind wandered strange paths and took peculiar short-cuts.  
  
Serendipity had saved Mirage’s life when Iridium Tower had fallen and she had saved his sanity as the war ground on, giving him a specialized function to perform. Then they’d hooked up with Wheeljack and Hound; the addition of Hounds to the Turbofox teams had made everyone feel much better. No one would be abandoned, no one left behind.   
  
 _If Sleight is alive,_  Mirage murmured, stroking a non-Euclidian surface of Jack’s abdominal armor,  _then maybe Trace is, too._  
  
Wheeljack smiled and cued up his recharge protocols.  _Wouldn’t be surprised._    
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Can we watch?” Nate bounced on his toes, like he’d seen Jazz and Roddy do sometimes. Dani ruffled her little brother’s hair, but was just as determined to stay.  
  
Rio glanced at Mikaela, who nodded. Mikaela wanted to watch, too. Ratchet was seconding Rio’s assurances that they’d be safe as long as they stayed outside the room itself. Though they should grab face masks and goggles. Breathing powdered sandstone probably wasn’t a good idea.  
  
After suitable equipment had thus been gathered, and human spectators properly positioned – a few more had accumulated, once word got around – Oratorio set to work.   
  
The room was one of the smaller ones, higher up inside the mass of the mesa than most of the others branching off the stem corridor. It had been more or less unused, except for occasional snuggling by robots or humans. The walls had been planed to a height of ten meters, portioned into seven facets. The ceiling was now a seven-sectioned groined arch, and the floor was mostly level, though there remained a slight bowl-like slope to it, deepest at the center. He needed the flat walls in order to have places to hang his growing collection of instruments.  
  
Shortly after his decantation, he had started making various traditional human instruments out of repurposed wood; some of it antique, much of it he had salvaged himself after gaining permission from whatever property owners appertained. He rarely had had to draw upon the Autobots’ collective account – and that mostly for some of the other materials needed to finish each item. Strings and tuning pegs and other metal elements he could manufacture inside his own body, temporarily rearranging certain self-repair systems. Resins and varnishes he did have to buy, though carving tools he could also make of himself, with a little help from Ratchet.   
  
He built miniature (i.e. human scale) violins and guitars, kamanchehs and sitars, koto and zithers, ukuleles and citterns, lyres and ouds and mandolins. He hollowed or lathed recorders and flutes, clarinets and pan-pipes, quena and shvi, alghaita and dulzaina and hichiriki. He carved taiko and marimbas, djembe and bodhran and even constructed a cristal baschet. He could play them all with a certain technical proficiency, but it looked strange and felt awkward, and so he moved on to larger versions.   
  
Wood in whole pieces large enough was hard to come by, so he tried laminates at first, but soon discarded this in favor of carbon fiber and metals and even ceramics and glass. Over several years he had worked slowly on a particularly elaborate silver and steel guitar, painstakingly etching every surface – even the strings – with strange, fractal designs.   
  
Now that the basic shape of the music room was finished, Rio intended to etch its surface as well. He had consulted with Tracks and Mirage and Jazz, absorbing Cybertronian motifs and symbologies, contemplation glyphs and poetry, but he knew, as he limned the design in his mind, that the patterns of Earth would influence what he did as well.  
  
“Ready?” he asked his small audience, raising the coherent-plasma cutters in his fingertips. Giggles and grins answered him in the affirmative. Rio stepped to the center of the room.  
  
He chose a wall facet angled opposite the door to provide the best view, where his own body didn’t obscure what he was doing. Starting at the top of the corresponding ceiling arch, he lit the plasma torches and cut loose. Dust from the stone and steam from the moisture in the air drifted in thick whorls as he worked, soon hiding the work – and most of Rio himself – from unaugmented human sight. Jazz set up a holoscreen down in front of the humans with a polarized feed from his visor. He wished Inferno was around to hose the place down, though that might increase the steam problem even as it reduced the dust. Inferno was fighting a wildfire in Montana.   
  
Each panel – ceiling and wall – took three and a half minutes to complete. To human eyes Rio’s hands and arms were a blur. The whole room took less than an hour. To Mikaela’s surprise, Nate stayed to watch the entire process.   
  
“Shop vac?” Mikaela inquired, waving a hand in front of her face as the dust slowly settled. The walls gave off a steady heat, though only the edges of the deepest cuts were actually glowing.   
  
“Shop vac,” Rio agreed firmly. “I was gonna ask Inferno to water cannon the nooks and crannies out for me, but I think I can get by with a little blower and a sponge and bucket. Take a little longer in the doing but less catastrophic clean up afterwards.” The floor might be slightly bowl-shaped, but there was no drain at the bottom, and probably the rest of the embassy staff wouldn’t appreciate a small river of slurry flowing down the halls and spreading out across the hangar floor.   
  
“When are you going to have another concert?” Dani asked as her mother went off to drag the shop vac out of its storage compartment in the med-bay.   
  
“Soon,” Rio said. “I finished the harp-guitar, but I want to play with it for a while first, see if I can do anything interesting with it before inflicting my compositions on a willing audience.”  
  
 _I have design specs for Cybertronian instruments, if or when you get around to that,_  Jazz said. He sketched a salute and sauntered back to the war room. _No rush._  
  
 _Thanks, Jazz,_  Rio said. He crouched by Nate and Dani, hearing Mikaela already on her way with the vacuum, trundling noisily across the hangar floor. “It’s just boring cleanup from here on out for a while, sweets, but you can help if you want. In storage room B, in my easel box, you know where that is? Okay, there should be a couple of camel-hair brushes, big for you, small for me, that should work great for getting the dust out of little crevices.”  
  
“Okay.” Dani pulled off goggles and surgical mask, taking Nate’s as well. (Not to be outdone by his big sister, Nate was determined to help, too, even if cleaning did sound boring. He would be nine this year and didn’t want the Autobots to think he was still a whiny little kid.) She couldn’t wait to get a closer look; already she could tell there were layers and layers, textures overlapping, and tiny poetry-glyphs arranged in squares and polygons and even some partially three dimensional shapes. “It’s beautiful, Rio,” she said. “You should do the rest of the embassy like this!”  
  
“Aagh!” said an EDF colonel behind her who had also been watching for most of the procedure. “Don’t give him ideas! The tech guys would go nuts over the dust!”  
  
“Oh yeah,” Dani said, a bit downcast. Dust and computers didn’t mix. Even the new flexi screens and projection UIs had delicate components and lenses that would be mucked up. She was pretty sure Ironhide would do a lot of complaining, even though he’d have his shields up and the dust couldn’t really get into his joints.   
  
Mikaela arrived with the shop vac, plus ear-plugs for herself and her children. It was an industrial sized canister, with an extra long hose, so the robots could use it with equal facility, and it could reach most of the way up the walls before Rio had to pick the entire thing up. A fuel cell meant they didn’t have to worry about an extension cord. Welcome to the future, Mikaela thought.   
  
…  
  
Friday night classics had become another perk of hanging out at the embassy.   
  


Standing in the rain, with his head hung low  
Couldn't get a ticket, it was a sold out show  
Heard the roar of the crowd, he could picture the scene  
Put his ear to the wall, then like a distant scream  
He heard one guitar, just blew him away…

  
  
As the first beats throbbed through the air, Mikaela, instantly a young teen listening to her dad’s old tapes, ran and executed a classic sock-skid across the polished stone floor of the hangar, almost colliding with Maggie in front of Rio’s setup. The two women laughed and hugged and then took up air guitar as Rio pounded into the chorus. Glen was at the discreet little bar, making margaritas.  
  
A year or two ago, Dani would have found her parents’ behavior embarrassing. Well, it was good that they were having fun. She liked the oldies, just not as much as modern stuff, and her own date for the night had backed out at the last minute, leaving her a little irritated.   
  
“Hey, Nate,” she said, pausing at the hangar entrance. “Hound’s inviting us on a drive. Wanna come? He says he found a nest of baby rattlesnakes.” Hound would keep a shield between snakes and humans, but they’d be able to get pretty close.   
  
Nate wavered. He liked to watch Rio playing, too. Dad joined the dancing – more exuberant than coordinated – and that decided him. Snakes were cool!  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
He knew what they wanted. He thought he could make it be all right in his mind. Maybe now, after thirty years, it was time to move on, choose a new direction. It wouldn’t mean he had abandoned his road. He could make it be all right, but not alone.  
  
…  
  
 _Bumblebee?_    
  
 _Morning, Prowl._  Bee revved his engine encouragingly. Prowl’s tight-beam sounded nervous.  
  
 _I need your help._  
  
Bee ran down the stem corridor, into the Security office and launched himself at Prowl, hugging him with arms and legs.  _Anything!_  
  
…  
  
They trooped into Prime’s office, catching Prime, Ratchet, Maggie and Lennox by surprise. Jazz locked the doors, but told everyone present they could broadcast at will. Understanding at once, Prime’s gaze riveted on Prowl, gauging the tactician’s fields.   
  
Placing the scout between himself and Prime, Prowl settled his hands lightly on Bee’s shoulders, bowing to tap his chin on Bee’s helm.   
  
 _Ready?_  Bee asked, curling his hands over Prowl’s.   
  
 _Yes._  
  
Rio held the harp-guitar as though it was made of glass rather than salvaged mahogany older than he was. He was trying not to tremble. They hadn’t rehearsed. Prowl nodded and Rio plucked the first simple notes.   
  
Prowl opened his mouth…and the first word would not come.   
  
Bee and Rio picked it up smoothly as he struggled, processor racing. The humans’ slow realization was throwing him off, they should have rehearsed, he should have chosen a different song, he should have taken Jazz up on the offer of large quantities of ultra-high-grade.   
  
By the second half of the first verse, his hands in fists beneath Bee’s, Prowl mastered himself, focusing on Prime. His vocoder engaged, his voice a shadow beneath the others, gaining volume as Prime’s optics grew brighter.   
  


_…If it be your will  
That a voice be true   
From this broken hill   
I will sing to you   
From this broken hill   
All your praises they shall ring   
If it be your will   
To let me sing..._

  
  
Maggie almost fell off the holotable. Lennox caught her, understanding completely. Ratchet would have laughed at the small mammals with their minimal pelage standing up in an attempted threat display, but his own armor had risen sharply from his frame. The humans weren’t even getting all the harmonics. Primus! Jazz was off to the side looking like he was about to overload.  
  
Out in the night far to the south, hanging on Jazz’s broadcast, Blades had to switch to autogyro as his engine failed. Down in the tower, Scrapper and Perceptor ceased their bickering mid-shout. After several days delay, the subspace transmission would reach the Wreckers, and Drift would kneel, bowing his helm to the haft of his weirdly thrumming great sword.   
  


...And draw us near   
And bind us tight   
All your children here   
In their rags of light   
In our rags of light   
All dressed to kill   
And end this night   
If it be your will

  
  
Underhanded slagger, Ratchet thought, fighting to maintain his composure. Aims for the spark! Prime held himself completely motionless. Prowl’s voice fell to a whisper, not broken but in compassion.   
  


And end this night  
If it be your will

  
  
Optics shuttered tight, Mirage and Tracks, Blurr between them, held on till the end of the song, then, sighing, sank to the bottom of the oil bath.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

  
_Visions of rain fall out of blue skies  
Rivers of tears flow out of dry eyes  
Answer my question  
Tell me no lies  
Is this the real world  
Or a fool’s paradise_

_Love that lies sleeping  
Wakes in the night  
Secrets for keeping  
That won’t see the light  
I look to the future  
And I hope it will be  
Closer to heaven  
Than you and me_  
\--Alan Parsons Project

  
  
2039 – March  
  
If anyone had told Lennox, thirty years ago, that he would find himself standing on an enormous table beside a famous ex-hacker, while senior officers of an alien robotic army sang an old Leonard Cohen song to their commander, he'd have told them to up their dosage. Maggie's eyes shone bright, intent on Prowl, and she stepped across the holotable, through ghosts of galaxies, leaving the silver paths of wormholes undisturbed in her wake. Lennox half extended a hand to stop her, but his eyes were on Optimus. Sorrow and pride and admiration commingled on that angle-filled face that had long since ceased to be strange.   
  
Lennox sent a glyph of honor up like a signal flare. Maggie and Sam weren't the only ones who knew some of the "Vector Prime Translation" meanings, though in Lennox's case it was mostly response shorthand. The pre-Cybertronian equivalents of LOL and BRB and "w00t" – if netspeak had evolved and grown layers of connotation and nested meanings over millions of years. Maggie embroidered the edges of her glyph with a dozen others which Lennox didn't know. Show-off.   
  
The atmosphere wasn't hard to read, even without the harmonics or the field readings as cues. Grinning, Lennox climbed down from the table and exited before things got steamy. Maggie joined him, reluctant, but no more keen on getting fried by solar flares than the General.  
  
Riding the last line, as Prowl’s harmonics curled around them like clouds off a jet’s wings, Jazz slipped and slid and tilting sideways didn’t make it to the floor because Ratchet caught him. Little pockets of the cloud mind giggled at them, where it wasn’t reeling and surging. Jazz leaned his helm against Ratchet’s fine, broad chest, humming with the leap and spin of Ratchet’s fine, old spark, wobbling a bit now with the aftermath of what Prowl had done with his voice. Ratchet’s big, deft hands soothed the edges of leftover charge from Jazz’s body. When Oratorio recovered enough to set the mahogany harp-guitar on the holotable, he huddled under the shelter of Ratchet’s arms, too, curling around Jazz, shivering with delight and other emotions less amenable to description with a single word in any language.   
  
Bee grabbed Prowl by the hip armor and swung him around, placing the tactician firmly between himself and Prime. Optimus smiled at Bee, knelt and settled his hands around Prowl’s body.   
  
“Prrrrrrrrrrowl.” His intention was to make certain Prowl was all right. Kissing wasn’t generally part of such an inquiry, but that was what Optimus found himself doing. Upon reflection, kissing served as accurate a diagnostic as many. The feel of Prowl’s body, the quality of tension, the charm and spin of his fields, the cant of his door-wings, the set of his chevron and cheek spars, the taste of him, especially within his mouth, the flux of internal fields and oral polyhedron, the retraction or extension of denta, what Prowl’s hands were doing. Very helpful data, very informative.  
  
Prowl shuddered. Something like a tiny catch inside had been released; a catch that had restricted his movement for so long he had assimilated the hindrance as normal. Another small repair. It made the things in him that were still broken the more painful by contrast, but he resolved anew to see the process out. He would do whatever it took to make it to the end of his sentence, whatever it took to make him want to live beyond it.  
  
Warbling and snuggling against Prowl’s back, Bee nuzzled the door-wing joints, stroking the wing edges softly, adding another layer of sensation to what Prime was doing to him. Prime’s kisses moved down Prowl's body, a hand reaching around to stroke Bee, too, the big engine rumbling loud in approval. Bee slinked cables to both, sharing the soaring feeling he'd gotten as Prowl's voice had joined his and Rio's at last.   
  
 **You weren’t singing only to me,**  Optimus murmured to Prowl. Bumblebee and Oratorio’s voices had filled the room, and their broadcasts were even now rippling across spacetime in an ever-expanding sphere. Prowl’s voice had been focused. At Prime, but specifically at his chest.  **You were singing to the Allspark.**    
  
 _Yes._  Prowl writhed between Prime and Bee.  _The Allspark has changed you, but is it not reasonable to suppose that you might have changed it as well?_  
  
If Prime hadn’t already been kneeling, he’d have fallen on his aft. Ratchet shouted with laughter.   
  
 _In you and Galvatron,_  Prowl continued,  _the Allspark has become_  embodied.   
  
“Tel,” Ratchet said, gleeful but firm, “that doesn’t go beyond this room, understand?” Oh it was going to take Optimus a good long while to cope with that little idea. Ratchet cackled and jiggled Rio and Jazz, who stared at each other, as speechless as Prime.   
  
“Yes, Ratchet.”  
  
“Prime?” Prowl shook Optimus’ shoulders. The kissing had stopped. Prowl pitched his voice low and wheedling. “Optimus?”   
  
Jazz overloaded. Ratchet, snickering, helped Rio lower him in a happy curl to the floor. Closer to the source, in bodily contact, Bee overloaded as well, but held on to consciousness by main force.   
  
Optical shutters clattering, Optimus re-focused on Prowl. “Let’s come back to that later, shall we?” He bent to his task again, growling deep in his chest, biting at Prowl's central seam until the armor parted, baring the chamber, and Optimus tasted the whirled alloys of donated metal. He lifted Prowl onto the holotable, pinning him with his mouth. Prowl arched, chevron glowing, wrapping his hands around Optimus' audials to pull his head down, in, closer. Bee climbed Optimus' back to reach Prime's sensitive cranial structures, and to look down into the bright silver spark as Prowl opened his chamber, silver swiftly joined by blue-white and then gold; Bee clinging to Prime's shoulders, arching his chest toward the ceiling, shivering in the thrown and reflected rays from the sparks below meshing and tossing prominences from their coronae. Prime flared hard and Prowl cried out, his voice loudest in the chamber, echoing and reechoing. Prime thrust fingertips up under Prowl's flank armor, stroking wire nexi, relentless and gentle. Blue lightning coiled and snapped, joining six sparks through metal and armor and air, bending the geometries of matter and energy, building a strange, felt-not-seen shape that shimmered among them, condensing, condensing, then suddenly released, blowing outward like an expanding supernova.   
  
What heavy elements were thus created, none of them could say, (not even Teletraan, who had tried but had been unable to withdraw himself from the wave front, caught up with the others, even without a spark.) When they regained consciousness, they were wound and woven together in one dizzy pile, halfway to recharge on the floor.  
  
“Slag, that was good,” Jazz whimpered.  
  
“Mmmmmmmmmmmm,” Optimus rumbled, when his vocoder was working again. “My toes are still curled.”  
  
…  
  
“What the frag kind of singing is that?” Scrapper growled, staring at the ceiling as though his sensors could pierce the half mile of rock between the third level of the tower and the embassy proper.   
  
Perceptor didn’t answer. He retracted his tools and torches and stumbled from the tower. Scavenger bolted from the corner between two assemblers where he’d backed himself and darted after Perceptor, but Hook caught him in mid-stride.   
  
“We won’t wait up for you,” Hook said, kissing him hard, and released him.   
  
…  
  
“Perceptor!” Scavenger made sure he was walking by the time Perceptor turned around. He approached with hands raised and tail low, placating.   
  
Perceptor balled his strong-hands into fists. Prowl was in good hands, but Wheeljack and Ironhide had invited him to join them in the medbay. The human embassy staff were amused. All the robots had disappeared after Prowl’s song had ended.   
  
 _No one expects you to get along with Scrapper,_  Ratchet said.  _But if you could at least be kind to Scavenger. He means no harm, and you need to overload, my friend. One good solid charge…or twice if you can’t muster that much enthusiasm._  
  
 _Physician, frag thyself,_  Perceptor replied.   
  
 _Oh he is,_  Ironhide cut in, snickering.   
  
 _Shut up, Ironhide,_  Wheeljack said with a fond chuckle.  _Perceptor, bring him in here if you’d rather._  
  
 _One door from the growth tanks?_  Perceptor snarled.  _I think not. I’ll manage out here. If you find my charred hull at the base of the tower at least you’ll know what happened._  
  
 _Oh Primus._  
  
“Come on, then.” Perceptor stalked to the sunny side of the tower and held out a fine-hand to Scavenger.   
  
They were nearly of a height. Scavenger’s power-shovel vehicle mode was larger in dimension, but Perceptor packed as much mass into a smaller volume. Scavenger took Perceptor’s hand and, for a moment forgetting caution and the light cannon, brought the beautifully-wrought appendage to his lips.   
  
Perceptor smelled of desert sand and fatigue and the light, clear oil the Autobots used for bathing, and just a tang of high-atmosphere and solar wind. He’d been up with one of the deltas recently. Scavenger wanted to nibble on the delicate fingers, but contented himself with kissing instead, his chemoreceptor fans going full-bore, drawing the aromas in. He trailed his lips across the cunningly jointed palm, over the wrist, up the slender arm to the complex shoulder, humming and murmuring to himself appreciatively. Such marvelous workmanship!   
  
At last, Perceptor began to move under his hands and mouth, responding to rather than enduring his touch. Scavenger moaned softly, kissing his way up the side of Perceptor’s neck, carefully avoiding an old, faded scar. Along the elegant jaw, attaining the mouth as his hands dared the main anchor point and the distal lens emplacement of the light cannon, almost giggling in delight when Perceptor pressed against him.   
  
This one must be programmed to pleasure the others, Perceptor thought hazily. To be so solicitous and adept. Everyone knew the Decepticons forced individuals into strict, rigid roles for interface; rapists and victims…   
  
Everyone knew. Everyone knew. Ridiculous. Perceptor berated himself. He’d been aware of Scavenger’s admiration from the beginning – the mech’s fields practically reversed polarity every time Perceptor walked in the room. He wrapped his other three arms around Scavenger’s body, fingertips seeking vulnerabilities in the unfamiliar frame-type. Scavenger made soft noises and wriggled, encouraging. He loosened his armor, wanting those hands deeper inside, touching his protoform.   
  
 _Please, Perceptor, please. Your hands..._  Scavenger never strayed far from his mouth, but couldn’t help but dip his head to taste other parts of him, too.  
  
Giving up, Perceptor fanned out his head fins and vanes, pleased despite himself with Scavenger's admiring chirrs and warbles, and the way Scavenger was cupping a hand near but not touching the delicate sensory receptors.   
  
It hadn't been worth Scrapper's wrath, before, but now? Now at this cusp, at this gasping end of their war, Scavenger found he didn't care that much. Scrapper could vent his ire on someone else for once. Scavenger spared a regret for Longhaul, who would most likely take the brunt of that displeasure, but this pleasure, this amazing mech in his arms, with such arms around him now, so worth it. He wanted more.   
  
He extended a cable, sliding the tip against Perceptor’s heavy chest armor, tapping at the port cover in entreaty. Perceptor hissed and grabbed the cable, baring his denta, blue optics shifting to golden. Scavenger froze, wide-opticked.   
  
 _Please,_  he transmitted, shivering.  _Want you…want you… Please…you’re so tired all the time! Let me help…_  
  
“How can I recharge with you and your brothers here?” Perceptor said. In fact he could only bring himself to shut down if both Prowl and Red Alert were on watch. “Oh I’m certain you’re neutral – Galvatron will kill you if he catches you, but—”  
  
“Not just kill!” Scavenger wailed. “He said he would  _eat_  me! Even my spark! I’ve seen him do it.” He shivered against Perceptor’s body, mouth open and seeking. Perceptor held him fast.  
  
“That makes you desperate. And therefore dangerous.”   
  
“How can you trust us if you won’t let us in?” Scavenger tugged at his cable, attempting to retract it.   
  
Perceptor extended several sensory vanes and primary cheek spars. “An interesting question. You trusted us enough to leave your underground city – Vector showed us. Your safe haven. Even with the Predacons hunting you, you could have sealed that entrance, gone deeper and waited for Bludgeon to recall them. Why did you come here?”  
  
“To save Cybertron, like Vector Prime said.” He tugged at his cable again, but Perceptor wouldn’t let go; watching him intently. “He had a minicon, right? The others wouldn’t let me get a good look at him. What kind of body does he have? I’ve never seen anything like it. And his fields!”  
  
Perceptor set his firewalls very, very carefully. His memories of Vector Prime were intimate. “I’ll show you,” he sighed, and seated Scavenger’s cable in a thoracic port.   
  
Silver skin, solar wings,  _starship_ , traveling via Rhysling’s light, Firstforged! Optimus Prime rising and falling, voice rising and falling at Vector’s hands – Scavenger nearly overloaded by this alone – universes of knowledge/power transmitted through skin, through the stroke of magnificent fingers, the brush of supple lips, and fierce, fierce eyes. Ancient and spark-stoppingly advanced at once, Scavenger had thought his desire for Perceptor was time-wrought and deep, but now, feeling Perceptor's desire for Vector, the Autobots' collective desire, the feeling of having been cradled on the ancient Prime's lap, held close to that first-kindled spark, body stroked by those future-forged hands, Scavenger moaned and shook, thrashing hard through overload, helpless.  
  
Perceptor nuzzled into Scavenger’s throat, nibbling on the cables.  _Mmm, gestalts have extra afferent nodes, do they not? Ah!_  All four hands worked their way beneath Scavenger’s armor, unerringly finding the nerve-wires and secondary energon lines that served when he became part of Devastator. Scavenger writhed, his body half into combined mode without transforming, familiar inputs transposed strangely over his root mode. Perceptor stroked him with the memory of Vector’s touch and Scavenger shouted, current-swept, lost as the charge grounded – but Perceptor caught him and held him suspended past the edge, drawing out that entangled, liminal state, neither particle nor wave, and Scavenger’s mind – neither individual nor gestalt – crumpled itself through twenty-one dimensions, emerging briefly into a form of consciousness he could not name and had never experienced before, strange visions and haptics fleeting through his CPU before the waves collapsed and he followed them, offline.  
  
The sun had set and their outer armor cooled before Scavenger came back online. Perceptor held him loosely, idly stroking a single vane against Scavenger's left cheek spar, optics pale and wan but lit. Who had needed rest?  
  
“You’ve ruined me.” Scavenger seemed rather pleased with this.  
  
“Nonsense. Well. No more than the rest of us were ruined by Vector.” Perceptor stroked a fine-hand the length of Scavenger’s tail, unerringly tracing the subsurface receptor net to the sturdy input pits between the teeth of his shovel. “Your primary sensory focus appears to be olfaction. Curious. How can you bear to be anywhere near Mixmaster?”   
  
Scavenger stiffened and clutched at him as Perceptor continued to pet his tail. “M-mix…smells…interesting…ohhh! Keeps the noxious stuff in…sh-shielded tannnnnnnnks…ngh!” Perceptor's other fine-hand insinuated itself between plates of armor that had taken on the ochres of this desert instead of the white of the Constructicons' polar crossing. Scavenger lay there content to have Perceptor touching him, making no effort to hasten the charge building throughout his body. Perceptor must have recharged some, too. His fields were less ragged than before.  
  
"We should go inside," Scavenger murmured as the sun fell behind the embassy mesa, leaving them in long violet shadow. "The Preds could come."  
  
"Hmm." Perceptor did not like the idea of hiding, fleeing from the specter of possible attack on their own ground, as iffy as that definition of "own" might be. Prime's determination was contagious.  _Mesa or tower?_  
  
 _Mesa._    
  
"Hn," Perceptor grumped again, sounding a bit like Ironhide. Was the Constructicon's suggestion generosity - the tower at the moment could be considered Structie territory; the rest of his brothers were down there; and the Minicons had all moved north to the workshops of the Water Babies in the Mount St Hillary base - or guile? Providing the former Cons with a seemingly innocuous means of scouting out the so far unbreached security of the embassy. Wheeljack's tower would arguably be safer if Scavenger was that worried. Even the Predacons wouldn't willingly storm that particular fastness.  
  
A sleepy transmission from Bee offered the small, rarely used chamber still designated as Bee's room on the internal maps, just off the stem corridor near the hangar.   
  
Replying with an affectionate glyph of thanks, Perceptor stood briskly, pulling Scavenger up with him. They transformed and drove for the hangar in rather unseemly haste. Scavenger's power shovel alt proved much speedier than its conventional model, and Perceptor had to gear up to stay ahead of him.  
  
Bee's room was a hemisphere nine meters in diameter, furnished simply with an adjustable recharge berth, storage niches carved into the rough sandstone walls, and a catwalk running up one quarter of the circumference with a human-sized table and chairs and two cots. The largest niche held a collection of handmade gifts Bee had received from Dani and Nate and Annabelle, and most recently, Annabelle's oldest child. A smaller shelf held a collection of the joke bee-related gifts Miles still occasionally picked up during his travels with Beachcomber.   
  
Perceptor slid the door shut behind them, but did not lock it. He wanted others to be able to get in quickly if necessary. Scavenger didn't head immediately for the recharge table, instead scanning the array of presents and tchotchkes curiously.   
  
"The organics made these?"  
  
"The organics have names." Perceptor sat on the table and drew the power line out, connecting to a thoracic port.   
  
"I know," Scavenger said. "They make music, too. Mixmaster likes it." He bent closer to smell the literally earthy scents of plaster and clay and paper and pigments, and the fainter traces of oils from the tiny hands that had shaped them. "These aren't sacrificial offerings?"  
  
"Of course not. They are gifts, from Bumblebee's family." Mostly for the winter holiday, but Mikaela and Sam had celebrated Bee's kindling day - after some relativistic and calendrical gymnastics - as May 1st since 2008.   
  
"Family?"  
  
"Consortium. Though the translation is imprecise." Perceptor crossed his fine-arms over his chest.   
  
Scavenger turned a circle around the room. There were no other ornaments, no great, decadent accumulation of things, no hoard. Just the tiny, crude gifts from immature organics. And Perceptor. Watching from the recharge table, complex expressions fleeting over his face plates. Complex and so beautiful. Scavenger rushed him, all needy hands and mouth, and all of Perceptor within easy reach this way, sprawled on the table.   
  
"Oh, Perceptor, Perceptor," he clicked and whirred, reverting automatically to Cybertronian. It had never become a habit to speak in human languages. "I'm so sorry we had to hate you at University. Scrapper was so angry when you got the Neodymium Prize instead of him, and there was always something..." He paused to kiss and nibble on each plate of Perceptor's abdominal armor, hands working their way down Perceptor's legs, fingers finding sensitive places behind knees, inside ankle mechanisms. "And everything he put his mind to outside of engineering you seemed to be better at, and Hook thought your equations for the double-hypersphere parallactian sequence were brilliant but we didn't dare say anything about it." His lips followed his hands, wandering down, down Perceptor's long legs, to the compound ankles, and the cleverly shielded and cushioned sensors in his feet. "Mmm. And when you finally shared the specs on your secondary mathematical processor it turned out Scrapper's CPU wasn't compatible and he said you'd designed it that way on purpose and Mix said you and Scrapper were otherwise too alike anyway, and—"  
  
"Alike!" The heat rising in Perceptor's core systems warred with his outrage. He forcibly unclenched his strong-hands. Not trusting anything a Decepticon said or did had kept him, and his team, alive for a long time. How could he abandon those reflexes now? Yet there was Scavenger, climbing atop the recharge table, pressing their bodies together, pressing Perceptor's legs apart to get at the inner surfaces of hip gimbals, mouth gently skirting the old scar on his neck cables, engine running so high and hot Perceptor could hear it skipping and stuttering.   
  
"That's how Scrapper said it, too," Scavenger murmured, grinning.   
  
"Presumptuous scraplet," Perceptor growled. Scavenger kissed him before he got any farther. Aloud, anyway.  _Hook liked my equations?_    
  
Scavenger clacked his denta together and made a rude noise. He flattened Perceptor against the table, moaning happily as the four arms wrapped around him, moving independently, hands petting the nice places they'd found earlier. Scavenger sank deeper into the kiss, lay heavier on Perceptor's body, their legs and Scavenger's tail twining, rubbing, sparks and charge dancing along them.   
  
"Herrrrre..." Perceptor tipped his chin up and to one side, exposing the old scar on his neck fully. Delighted, Scavenger nuzzled the cables, biting a little roughly at the undamaged areas, encouraged by the way Perceptor arched against him, strong-hands gripping at his waist; then grazing the scar with the lightest of touches...  
  
...Perceptor thrashed beneath him, crying out as overload slammed through him, arcing off the points of his armor bright as lightning; striking the walls, the table, the metal catwalk railing. Scavenger activated his shielding to divert the charge away from his own body. He wanted to keep watching Perceptor. Delicate mouth open wide, optics bright then dark, the seductive array of sensory vanes alive and flashing iridescent across his helm, cheek spars lifting free, exposing vulnerable, thinner facial components beneath.  
  
As the waves of current subsided, Perceptor's body stilled and settled, but his optics relit, warm and steady, looking up at Scavenger in full consciousness. At least the wariness was gone.   
  
"Stubborn," Scavenger clicked. "You must have an afferent node right under that scar." Impressive. And Scavenger had been avoiding it all this time.  
  
"Precisely." Bringing his fine-hands up between them, Perceptor traced Scavenger's asymmetrical seam. I should be the first, he thought, to offer that vulnerability. But Scavenger had already opened beneath his hands, baring a spark pale and silvery green, like sunlight through Manzanita leaves. Perceptor squeezed his optical shutters closed tight. Then rearranged the cannon's anchoring struts and opened his own chamber.   
  
"Oh!" Scavenger gasped. "Who...what did that to you!?" He straightened his arms, pushing himself away, almost choking on his horror. Perceptor's spark chamber and chest armor beneath the chameleon mesh looked like it had been melted... _clawed_  by something big. Scavenger had never seen wounds quite like it.   
  
"Thunderwing," Perceptor lied smoothly, and pulled Scavenger close again.   
  
Their coronae touched.   
  
Remorse and distress met caution and waning fear. These swiftly gave way to ringing curiosity, a spark-deep joy in learning and thinking, a zeal for searching things out that drove both of them. Perceptor could never be chained by the borders of a single school of knowledge. Scavenger was bound by his loyalty and love for his brothers, a bond so strong it could drag him back from the brink of death, or pull all seven of them down with him. Fear again tangled with wariness and frustration, to be pushed determinedly aside by the exultation of their shared task – the restoration of their homeworld and the preservation of their species.   
  
 _The dawn!_  Scavenger sent as emotions and charge cascaded; his ancient desire for Perceptor finally attained.  
  
 _The blue nights,_  Perceptor agreed. He held Scavenger through overload, stroking with all his fingers as they shuddered and clenched together on the berth. Idly simulating the constellations as they would appear if there was not two hundred feet of stone between him and the sky, he prepared his own systems for shutdown once Scavenger had quieted into recharge.   
  
 **Perceptor,**  Prime tight-beamed, basking in his people's pleasure as much as he had shared his own.  **Thank you.**  He sounded exceptionally self-satisfied. Most people would, Perceptor reflected, if they had Bee and Prowl snuggled together on their chest, recharging.   
  
 _Hmph. If we forgive ourselves, I suppose we must forgive them as well._  
  
 **Even for terrible wrongs.**  
  
 _And if Scrapper shows no remorse?_    
  
 **That remains to be seen. Perceptor, if it was up to me, I’d simply keep the two of you in different galaxies for the next five or six billion years.**  
  
 _Acceptable._  
  
 **Heh.**  
  
…  
  
On the north end of the mesa top, Thundercracker mantled over Strake and held him as the young Seeker shivered. Skyfire had landed behind them – more than a little shaky himself – and, after a tumultuous moment of hesitation, knelt to embrace both alphas.   
  
 _Delirium’s voice was like that,_  Thundercracker murmured across the top layers of the cloud mind.  _Cure a sickly spark just by singing it well._  He nibbled Strake’s central crest.  _Or snuff one longing to rest._    
  
 _Delirium._  Skyfire had heard the name before, but it was fathomy work, rummaging in memories that old.  _She was before my time._  
  
 _Don’t ask me for files,_  TC said, fending off requests from Blaster and Rio.  _Never kept ‘em. Voice like that? Not the same anyway, no matter how good your capture was._  He seated cables from Strake and firmly, deliberately overloaded him once, twice, holding the young Seeker so he wouldn't scrape wings on stone.   
  
"Prowl wouldn't do that," Strake whispered unsteadily. "Wouldn't kill someone with singing."   
  
"Maybe not."  
  
"Wouldn't!"  
  
Thundercracker kissed him quiet again.   
  
"Even if death would be a mercy?" Skyfire asked gently, running a fingertip between Strake's wings.   
  
Strake growled. Everything was complicated in the old deep-Seeker's mind. Mostly that made talking with him interesting, but sometimes it just made Strake feel tired. He wanted Prowl to come up, to join them flying, to swoop and soar through this world's pale skies and heavy, scented air. Yet it also seemed right that he should be down in the safe place, curled up with Prime.   
  
Skyfire transformed around them and leapt for orbit. Out in the black, he transformed again, cradling the alphas to his chest, turning his broad back to the blue world and opening wide to the chorus of stars and galaxies.   
  
 _Aren't we a fine arrangement,_  Thundercracker chuckled, nevertheless stroking Skyfire's hand where it curled around his cockpit.  _Two half-trined alphas and a delta who can hardly stand to be in company for more than a voor at a time._  
  
Skyfire made no attempt to deny this. The star-ways called him. When Cybertron was moved he would go. Maybe not far. This would be his home galaxy, then. He should become better acquainted with it.  _You've never wanted to kill me as much as Starscream does, and I've never wanted to kill you as much as I want to kill Starscream. I think we're all fairly safe with each other._    
  
 _Don’t wanna talk about Starscream,_  Thundercracker snarled.   
  
 _Between you and I? How can we not, at some point?_  I can’t forgive him, Skyfire thought, rubbing his cheek on the alphas’ crests, and you can’t stop loving him, and neither of us want to, but we’re both tied, trapped. Prowl might yet fix TC’s problem, but Skyfire felt himself keenly doomed. Strake shifted restlessly between them.   
  
 _I'll stand watch,_  Skyfire said. Offering them a platform, a bounded space in the void, a haven.   
  
Thundercracker wasted no time, clamping his hard mouth on Strake’s.  _We’ll take it in turns._  
  
…  
  
Leaning on the eyrie’s lowest railing, Ultra Magnus looked out at the folded land, seeing far, far, where stone became sand rippled like an ocean.  
  
 _And end this night  
If it be your will…_  
  
The words haunted him, alien as they were. The harmonics rising and folding and breaking like the layers of stone in these mountains. Behind him, Bluestreak emerged from the lift. Joining him at the railing, Blue wrapped his arms around Magnus’ hips, burying his face in the much larger mech’s side.   
  
“It’s a beautiful song, it really is,” Blue said. “But it was written as a prayer and Prime thinks it was kind of cheeky of Prowl to use it like he did; although I don’t think Optimus minded very much aside from the cheekiness. We’re not really supposed to pray  _to_  a Prime, in any of the religions I know of anyway; he’s a Prime, sure, but not  _Primus_. Not that I’ve ever believed in Primus exactly, though I remember I did used to like the stories when I was first kindled; but I mean everyone knows the whole Primus and Unicron cycle is a myth, right? Although we all thought Vector Prime was a myth, too, and there he was, real as anything. Real as  _everything_. Mmm!”   
  
Ultra Magnus chuckled and rubbed Bluestreak’s back, enjoying the wash of words and ideas. Enjoying Blue’s ramble overlaid on the feeds he was constantly getting from Metroplex; his very spark seemed hungry for a city’s input.   
  
“Do you think there really might be a Primus and Unicron?” Blue asked, shifting his door-wings to give Magnus better access to the attachments.   
  
“No,” Magnus said. “But they’re good stories, I’m glad we have them.”   
  
…  
  
Hot Spot laid a hand on Blades' tail, well away from the rotor, as Streetwise and Groove unhooked the last crate. Blades had landed it undamaged despite his engines cutting out 800 feet up. Breakaway transformed in midair and landed neatly beside them.  
  
"This is a good thing, right?" the jet asked. The cloud mind's reaction was confusing and chaotic. "He's...feeling better?"  
  
"Yes," Spandrel said, lifting the crate onto her shoulders and starting down the trail to the chasm where the bridge was being assembled by teams of villagers. "He's a little bit better."   
  
Spandrel was close to Hot Spot's height, though more gracile. Near as anyone could decide, her forging seemed to be  _she_ , but she was a triple-changer with one flight mode and one ground mode, like Springer, which would technically make her a subclass mu Seeker. The one time anyone had ever seen Spandrel get testy was when Brawn and Huffer had embroiled Catscan in a debate over which pronoun to use, which had nearly crashed poor Catscan. Spandrel said "she" was good enough for government work, that Borealis had been a little odd out of the tank, too, that no one really knew what Tessera was either, and that a quarter of the Water Babies – including some in the latest batch of twenty who'd decanted this year – were Ratchet-certified entirely new forgings. They'd started borrowing pronouns from Native American languages for Two-Spirit people, and Glyph said she could supply them with terms from other species as well if they needed or wanted, including mostly ones the humans were physically capable of pronouncing.   
  
When First Aid had finished setting a worker's broken leg, he joined them on the mountainside, picking his way among the most stable rocks. Marching up to Blades, Aid tapped on his chest. "Let me see?"  
  
"It was his singing, not his spark," Blades insisted, chuffling at Aid and capturing the medic's hands in his own. "But I'll show mine if you show yours first."  
  
Aid rolled his optics, but he and Hot Spot did a fast scan for humans and animals, then Aid shifted his armor and protoform, cycling his chamber open. Human astronomers at Johns Hopkins University in 2002 had surveyed the spectrum of light emitted by 200,000 galaxies and mathematically extrapolated to reveal the color, if not of magic, then of the universe. The color they had arrived at initially was a pale, sprightly turquoise. Precisely the color of First Aid's spark.   
  
(This turned out to be a miscalculation due to a computer bug. The corrected color, described formally as III E Gamma, was actually beige, or as some wag put it, "cosmic latte".)  
  
Blades was unable to maintain his attitude thus, and obediently opened himself, pulling Aid close, humming contentedly.   
  
"Oh, Aid," Spandrel said, as she and the others joined them. "There's nothing wrong with him, you just wanted a snuggle."   
  
…  
  
"Ah," Groove said, from the middle of the pile. "The great outdoors."  
  
"We're always outdoors," Blades pointed out.   
  
"Except sometimes during thunderstorms," said Hot Spot.  
  
"We should build a fire and have s'mores!"  
  
"Who would eat them?"  
  
"I'm not cleaning marshmallow out of your tanks, so you can leave me out of the whole plan."  
  
"How can we properly appreciate a camping trip without at least a campfire?"  
  
"We don't need one to keep warm or to see by, for one thing; and for another, I don't think we can properly appreciate a camping trip like the humans do without being vulnerable to the bugs. They just bounce off our shields and even if they didn't they can't bite or sting us."  
  
"I'm pretty sure the humans would be happy to trade."  
  
"Their haptics are mostly better than ours."  
  
"Except Aid's hands."  
  
"Mmmm."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
…  
  
They found a hollow hill under the moon. Near Lascaux. Dense clays masking their energies, Nightbeat and Afterburner waved to the Aerialbots as they orbited past, then submerged, taking warmth from each other, sparks delighting in shared ancestry. Five million years ago hominids had walked Africa’s forests and plains, and Prowl had walked the gardens and high bridges and quiet, orderly courts of Praxus.   
  
Five million years. An unimaginable span, really. They could display the number in several different ways, on holo or in their CPUs. They immersed themselves in Prowl’s public memories, but the sheer experience and weight of that span they knew was beyond them right now. Afterburner and his brothers were six, Nightbeat was eleven.   
  
“Eh, so what?” said Afterburner.  
  
Nightbeat laughed and kissed him.   
  
…   
  
The stone skipped eleven times before skidding to a halt on the ice. Miles put his arms up. Personal record! Like Maggie, he had the software to  _see_  the harmonics that accompanied Prowl, Bee and Rio's little impromptu caroling, but even after all this time, Miles knew he'd never understand what half of it meant. Not in his human lifetime. There was just too much, too many layers.   
  
He heard a soft clank behind him and turned to see Seaspray pat Beachcomber's shoulder. Perceptor had pitched the mother of all hissies when Beachcomber had said he wanted to survey Štrbské pleso – an interesting tarn in Slovakia – alone but for Miles, as usual. Seaspray volunteered to go with and keep an optic out for Predacons.   
  
How hard would he have to work, Miles wondered, to live long enough to see Prowl’s sentence completed? Or would he give up, knowing his mindstate-copy would see it through mech optics? He pitched another stone, but this one bounced off an uneven jag of ice and caromed off sideways. He threw another, harder, just to be throwing something. He’d have to make it to 117. Doable, right? So far 125 seemed to be the natural limit, no matter what medicine could do. But Miles had seen Perceptor get that motionless, waiting look when the possibilities for extending human lifespans were discussed. That meant he thought there were other things that hadn’t been tried, that might work.   
  
Another quiet clunk drew his attention. Seaspray had sat beside Beachcomber and they were holding hands and cabling. Miles looked heavenward, but knew he’d be joining them in a minute or five.   
  
Screw the copy, Miles thought, digging around in the snow for a bigger rock. I want to see things myself, with whatever I’m using for eyes, with my human brain doing most of the signals-processing, dammit.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2039 - April  
  
“There you are, lad. Are you a—” Kup halted abruptly. He wasn’t surprised to see Drift kneeling on the deck, with the jewel of his Great Sword pressed to his chest – Drift communed with the thing often, though he never explained exactly why – but the weird, melodic trilling coming from the blade was new. “Why is it making that sound?”   
  
Drift looked up at him with an expression of undiluted longing. Kup found himself beside the mech, cupping his narrow, lovely face, running his thumb across parted lip components almost before his conscious algorithms had a chance to catch up. Drift leaned heavily into the contact, fields rising high and fast, engine revving.   
  
 _Ahh, that’s right,_  Kup said.  _You made a newspark with him, didn’t you._  
  
 _Afterburner,_  Drift said, harmonics a low keen of sorrow that he hadn’t been there for the decantation.   
  
Kup nodded.  _Funny the effect the kids have, ain’t it._  Kindlings had always been an occasion for celebration. With their species dwindling, the decantations had taken on even greater importance.  _Ratchet sent me clips of Roddy, yanno. Before and after legs. Rotten little slagger cracks me up, but I gotta admit, I get a peculiar feeling in my old spark, watching ‘im._  
  
 _Yes._  Drift replaced the Great Sword against his back, the gem even with his spark.  _Unbreakable bonds, for as long as we live. Maybe longer._  He wanted more. He wanted a tribe he would never have to leave. He knew he might never get another chance. With Perceptor, with Prime. With Prowl again, mmm yes. With Chromia maybe, if he could get past her reflexive desire to punch him. After the war was over, he could return to Yoketron and demonstrate merging. Yoketron and Bump and Wing and Dai Atlas…a veritable feast.   
  
“So they are, lad.” Kup smiled. Whatever layers of stealth and lies Drift had lived beneath as Deadlock had been stripped away. His emotions, his spark’s desire shone pure and true through his fields, optics, harmonics. Kup cached the rust stick he'd been chomping and bent his head. Kid had a fine, responsive mouth. Nice.   
  
This body that Perceptor had built for Kup was only two or three thousand years old, but to Kup it felt new. He was grateful especially for the knees, which bent so obligingly and silently, allowing him to kneel with Drift and press their bodies close, hands wandering among loosened armor as their mouths wandered, finding thinner plating, sensitive joints. Kup let the reactive ins-and-outs of Drift’s fields tell him where to move his hands. Old trick but people liked it. Up the sides, inner surfaces of arms, hollow of elbow, down to wrist…  
  
“You…” Kup murmured, half laughing, realizing that Drift was directing him. “You’re manipulating your poles! Too clever by half, lad.”   
  
“You were being so courteous.”  
  
“Thought you’d return the favor?” Over the centuries, Kup had discovered other things Perceptor had built into his new body. Unusually sensitive nodes in certain places. Kup wasn’t certain he’d found them all yet, but he enjoyed letting people help him search. Drift’s small hands were clever and thorough, and Kup soon pushed him to the deckplates, straddling the narrow hip gimbals, nipping at cheek spars and finely-wrought neck cables, his engine revving in time with Drift’s. Somehow, Drift had managed the shift in position without unscabbarding the Sword. Neat trick, that. Thing went to below the mech’s knees, when upright. Reaching back, Kup pushed Drift’s thighs apart and drew a single fingertip down the center of the blade.  
  
“DON’T!” Drift cried. Not grabbing his hands, not thrashing or trying to throw him off. The plea in his voice and shrill harmonics were enough.   
  
“Sorry, lad, didn’t mean any disrespect.”  
  
Drift shook his head. “No, it’s…it’s not that. It’s…I’m not ready for that yet. I …can’t.”   
  
When he said  _ready_ , Kup was pretty sure he meant  _worthy_. Funny things, Great Swords. Didn’t pay to mess with ‘em, or their bearers.   
  
Kup returned both hands to Drift’s body. Nothing loath. The sheen on the white armor Kup had an Earth word for; pearlescent. The weirdly programmed chromatophores were better camo than a rookie’d think, thinking white was a stupid color, designed to get a mech shot. But if your fieldwork was good, the enemy’d have to spot you by optics alone, and white made it harder to judge the distance. Maybe fatally hard. Played funny tricks in shadows, too. Kup traced the elegant planes and angles, so smooth, usually cool but hot now, reflecting his own greys and grey-greens and here and there the bright glow of his optics. Watching that sleek body overload…mmm. That would be worth doing in the time they had. Kup spooled out a pair of cables.  
  
Drift snapped his ports open, accepting, link engaging smooth as his chameleon mesh. Kup rumbled his appreciation of Drift’s disciplined mind, out of respect and kindness not dwelling on the pain it had taken to make it so. He arranged his body comfortably atop Drift’s, crossing his arms on Drift’s chest, resting his head near to kissing distance. Drift twinkled his optics at him.   
  
 _You’ve heard of morphobots, right?_  Kup began.  _Well there’s a subspecies on Delgon. Less voracious, more numerous. Called catlats. They’ll eat any kinda robots, but Autobots aren’t their favorite flavor, and anyway these must’ve eaten something big just before I got tossed into ‘em._  
  
 _Kup… Kup, please…_  
  
 _Patience. You gotta understand the situation. Don’t want ya to be surged out. So anyway, there I was, dropped in the middle of the biggest patch of catlats on the Sahravian continent. Thought I was a goner for sure._  
  
 _Kup._  
  
 _But these catlats, they were feeling kinda frisky, if you know what I mean. They usually use this huge charge to stun their prey so they can nibble it down, relaxed-like. All they had left for me were little charges, see? Nice little zaps. All over. Inquisitive zaps._  
  
 _Kuuuup…_    
  
 _I spent an entire quartex in a state of near-constant overload. My CPU was half-melted before Dai’s team found me again._  Kup leaned closer, evading Drift’s attempts to kiss him.  _Ready?_    
  
“Yesssss!”  
  
Kup pushed the memory through – and held on for the ride.  
  
…  
  
“Looks like you got him by the tow-line.” Lounging against the doorframe, Springer leered interestedly at Drift.   
  
“Young bots,” Kup grinned. “Not that you fare any better when I put my mind to you.”  
  
“Mmm.” Springer cocked his head, gauging the way Drift twitched and arched with small, repeated overloads. “Catlats?”  
  
“Good guess.”   
  
“You gonna let him up or fry him?”  
  
“Hmm. Suppose it has been a while.” Springer rolled his optics and left as Kup brought the memory file forward to its conclusion, holding on as Drift shuddered through one last solid overload. Beautiful. “You all right there, kid?”   
  
Drift’s optics flickered on, then shut down. “Now I know why Borealis called you an old pervert. Interspecies…kinky…”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. She liked the catlat file, too. I want you on the ready-line with the rest of those yahoos in six groons.”  
  
“Yes, Kup,” Drift purred, and cycled himself down into recharge.  
  
…  
  
 _Recharge, Prowl,_  said Blades, across two continents and a dateline.  
  
 _Yes, Blades,_  Prowl sighed.  
  
 _That totally worked!_  Spandrel crowed, though she was careful to keep it on the Protectobots-only channel.  
  
"You need rest, too," Blades said, and pulled her into the heap.  
  
...  
  
It was Moonracer who had found the old transportation nexus. A dark icosahedron seven levels below the fourth spinwise hub of Polyhex. Undisturbed for vorns, even the scraplet and glitchmouse nests were abandoned. It was large enough to hold everyone, and to spare, though it felt strange, not safe, to have everyone in one place. Elita called all but three patrols in. Energon rations were passed around with the latest shared files from Earth and Ultra Magnus. Elita stood on Chromia's shoulders in the center for the best acoustics and broadcast Prowl's first singing to Prime.   
  
Spiral leaned hard on a slanting beam, enduring until the song was finished. When it was over she dug her fingers into the embrittled alloy and keened.   
  
“I know I tttold you I didn’ttt want to knnnnnow,” she said as Chromia approached and laid gentle hands on her shoulders. Spiral had thought it would be easier to know as little about the other Autobot groups as possible. It would make staying isolated bearable. “What has he done, Chrrromia? You met him. You saw him. What has happened to him to make his voice… like  _that_?”  
  
Chromia drew Spiral into her arms. And explained. Another pair of arms embraced them both.   
  
“Elita…” Spiral began.  
  
“When Chromia and I go to Earth, Spiral, you may come with us if you wish it.”  **And anyone else as well,**  she broadcast to the rest of her command.  **Our task has altered. Prime is right. This war will no longer rule us.**  She dipped her head to nibble on Spiral’s audial, one hand already deep in Chromia’s chassis.  
  
 _Can I come, too?_  Moonracer called, bouncing in Firestar’s arms.  
  
 **Yes.**  The ship Firestar and Soliton were rebuilding would take all of them if necessary. Elita would let her people decide.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2039 – May  
  
Space is big. Even confining their search to the limits of Jupiter’s orbit gave a rough estimate of 1.99 x 1036 cubic kilometers.   
  
199,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 km3  
  
Perceptor assured Borealis that, during the Cybertronian Empire’s heyday, this would have been a normal in-system traffic control task. Now? Even with the new Light Brigade and all the available jets and a large proportion of Earth’s amateur and professional astronomers keeping eyes on the sky they stood very little chance of finding the two Decepticon warships prior to an attack.   
  
Borealis didn’t like it. Her armor felt tight, the temperature of the energon in her lines was off, and something was hinky with the transmission speed of her efferent wires, making her jittery. Within her cockpit, Orris patted her console.   
  
“I don’t like it either,” he said. “But if you do one more aileron roll while I’m trying to get astrogation captures…”  
  
“Ack, sorry.” Fumbling for calm in lieu of a deep breath, she settled into a recent memory with half her attention, keeping the rest on flying and scanning.  
  
…  
  
2038 - June  
  
Borealis sphynxed herself down and wrapped her arms tight around Prime. He was closer to forty feet tall than thirty these days, despite the latest skein of protomass he'd donated. His protoform was no longer a cool steel blue, but the warm variegated bronze of the Cube. He smelled of ozone and pain and, just now, of summer rain and desert.  
  
"They say they're almost done," she told him. She'd spent whatever time she could spare watching and conversing with Azimuth, Blueshift and Polaris in the big tank; their bodies coiled and intertwined, a triskel of wings and fuselage and really big feet. Once they were out, there would be three more deep-Seekers to ferry the enormous pallets of spacebridge components out to Cybertron. The smaller jets took smaller packets up to geostationary where they were combined into the big bundles the deltas would haul. Despite the near-constant arguments between Perceptor and Scrapper, the bridge's construction was taking far less time than originally estimated now that the Constructicons were helping.   
  
''They're beautiful," Optimus said, cadging a glimpse of them from Borealis' overhead view.   
  
"Well, you know,  _deltas_ ," Borealis said, a giggle in her subharmonics. “Oop! Gotta go. I’m giving the Pbots a ride from Sri Lanka to Columbia. They’re escorting a new crop of engineers for Gaviotas.”  
  
“Safe journey.” He gave as much of her as he could encompass a squeeze and she squeezed back just hard enough to make his armor creak like a sub going for a depth record.   
  
As she left she passed the inner chamber of the med-Iab, with a new batch of protoforms. Spark-kids of Bluestreak's, mostly. She thought it was interesting that it was mostly the less aggressive of the Autobots who had taken so enthusiastically to the merge process. Um. Not that Perceptor was exactly passive, but his warlike tendencies only emerged when he was stressed and his work interrupted. And Prime. Well, Prime did what he had to.   
  
Later. Growth medium rippled and sloshed as Azimuth poked his head above the surface. He shook it to get the heavy fluid out from where it was dripping and tickling between armor and facial plates, spattering an emerging Polaris in the process.   
  
“Hey! Watch it.” Polaris hefted a glob and threw it at Azimuth. Blueshift decided to stay submerged until his brothers quit horsing around.   
  
“If Ratchet catches you slopping that stuff everywhere,” Borealis said as she entered. She grinned, leaning over the side of the tank to give Azimuth a hand up over the side. Azimuth tried to yank her in, but she was well-braced and used the recoil to pull him out anyway. He clattered to the floor, dripping and awkward as a hatchling, gleaming silver and midnight blue. Polaris was white like Skyfire, and Blueshift’s armor graded from celestite-pale to lapis dark. Good grief, Borealis thought. We’re like a dance troupe with matching leotards. Very pretty, though. Jazz would redouble his efforts to get the deltas to perform in some charity air show now.   
  
“Got all your ducks in a row?” Wheeljack asked, laughing as he came in with Beachcomber, Miles and Perceptor.   
  
“Whoa,” said Miles, dodging a ropy strand of fluid dripping from Polaris’ wings. “Wet jets!”  
  
“We are not ducks,” Azimuth said firmly. His suddenly assumed dignity did not prevent him from folding down for hugs from his progenitors, however.   
  
“Albatrosses, then,” Beachcomber said, his voice low and thrumming with laughter and delight. These enormous sparks had somehow grown from the joining of threads from his and Perceptor’s. Weird physics. It was kind of ridiculous. Fantastic!   
  
“Better at landing, though,” Azimuth said, completely confident.  
  
“Um,” said Borealis.  
  
“Better your landings than mine,” Perceptor said, patting her foot.   
  
“You’d think Grapple would have fixed that angle when you guys were building the base,” Azimuth agreed thoughtfully. “Unless he left it that way on purpose to tease you, Perceptor?”  
  
Perceptor blinked. “He told me he liked the canted angle. It adds visual interest and protects the entrance from the prevailing winds…”  
  
Wheeljack lost his battle to keep a straight face and cackled as he keyed in the big tank’s self-cleaning sequence. As far as he knew, no one was going to be using it for a while. The chamber echoed with the deep hum and hiss as the tank lid lowered and sealed.   
  
“It does add visual interest,” Borealis said in rather a higher voice than usual. “Come on, guys, let’s get some sun on our wings.” She shooed the young jets into the corridor and outside, to dry off and expand in the desert heat.   
  
The sky was liquid and soft in the wake of the afternoon storm, though the sunlight struck their armor like the hissing radiation it was; actinic and fierce on optics that had spent two years underground. Borealis took two hands, coaxed the third to clasp her wingtip, guiding them to the road. Their runway, though they all had the new anti-gravitics. Silverbolt was a little less than four months from returning, and Skyfire had just begun his run out. It was up to Borealis to show them the gulfs and streams of the star-ways.   
  
She transformed and taxied northeast along the road, giving them lots of room to line up behind. Scanning, she listened keenly to their engines as they warmed up. A thrilling, bone-shaking roar, rising in volume and pitch. Autobots and humans gathered at the hangar door to watch.   
  
“Where are we going?” asked Polaris, bouncing on his landing gear.  
  
“Planet 10! Uh, I mean the Sun-Earth L1. Gonna show you a Lissajous orbit first. Uses way less energy.” Plus she liked the name.   
  
Glen watched them take off with what Maggie felt was a rather soppy grin on his face. “That’ll be me in a few decades,” he murmured to her.  
  
“Oh, so the favorite forging of the week is delta, hm?” Maggie poked him and went back inside as the four starships were lost in the haze far above. Once at her station she pinged Red a request and got in reply a little window on one screen tracking their flight.   
  
“Hey, it’s been my favorite for at least two weeks.” Glen soon had a similar window up on one of his screens.  
  
Five hundred miles and climbing. Gleaming blue-white below, black glittering with stars above. Heat from friction with air molecules was replaced by radiation from the sun. The three new deltas had the math, but it wasn’t the same as feeling the maneuvers in your frame, in your engines. Knowing how much energy you were using wasn’t the same as feeling it drain from your lines.   
  
Rather than wait for a fine-tuned launch window, they were going to make a handful of loops around the Earth in order to get themselves lined up on the trajectory they wanted. One side of each loop passed along LEO, and the other side swung far out, almost to the distance of the Moon’s orbit.   
  
 _VROOM! VRRROOOOOOM!_  shouted Blueshift as they accelerated around in the last phasing loop and shot toward the Moon. Borealis almost laughed herself off-course. The Moon’s gravity gave them a slingshot boost for the 1.5 million kilometer trip out to the Lagrangian point between Sun and Earth. A gravitational balance point – unstable, but the Lissajous orbit around it could be maintained without using any extra fuel. NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer was still there in a Lissajous orbit as well, but Borealis showed them how to insert on the flight path so as to avoid the 1300 pound satellite. She’d brought a couple of astronauts up here in 2024 to refuel and upgrade the thing; she didn’t want anyone bashing into it.   
  
They basked in sunlight never shadowed by Earth or Moon, only dimmed at times by the transits of Venus and Mercury. The newly reforged jets stretched and popped their armor, feeling it harden in the bombardment outside the protection of Earth’s magnetic field.   
  
 _Ready to get closer?_  Borealis asked. With a snap and crackle of maneuvering thrusters, she fell out of the stable orbit, following the light tug of the gravity well of the Sun.   
  
As they approached the orbit of Mercury, Borealis transformed and adjusted her optics. There was a particular band of high-energy UV that gave a beautiful, highly-detailed image of the chromosphere. She could – and often did – watch for hours, mesmerized by the bubbling granules and bright faculae; the dark sunspots and their plages; the shifting, spiky spicules caused by immense sound waves propagated across the Sun’s surface – the Sun’s very roar – and the fibrous, gleaming plasma in stunning coronal loops. The face of the Sun was always changing.   
  
Borealis almost seemed to have forgotten her charges until hands touched her arms, her wings, her chest. Azimuth wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek spar, snuggling close but deliberately not obscuring her view. It was their natal star as well.  
  
…  
  
They spiraled down to Earth dizzy and hot and overcharged from their sunward journey, the new jets’ armor second-stage hardened, landing giggling on the mesa top.   
  
“No, no, you don’t need a file,” Borealis said, waving off Blueshift’s offered cable. “Just do  _this_!” She demonstrated, shifting her weight back and forth, pushing hips out with each shift, and holding her hands up near her temples, waving her fingers in time to the music she broadcast. (After giving Red Alert ample warning of what she was up to.)   
  
The other three lined up and joined her, attaining unison almost immediately, despite a good deal of jostling of wings. Before the second verse, Breakaway and Fireflight had joined them and something small and lively whizzed around their heads, getting video from all angles. One of Prime’s battle gnats. The online clip Teletraan put up eventually received over a million hits in less than a week.   
  
“What the heck?” Sam laughed as he and Mikaela drove up to the embassy in Bee.   
  
“Caramelldansen,” Bee explained, after digging around in some older internet files. It was old enough a meme now to be almost vintage. “Also called the uma uma dance.”  
  
 _It’s not even a dance,_  Ironhide grumbled from the Lennox farm.  _They just do the same thing, over and over. For two hours!_  
  
 _Aw, Ironhide,_  Borealis said.  _We wanted to see how long it would take before someone came up and started shooting at us!_  
  
 _Very well. Sunstreaker…!_  
  
“AWK!” yelled the jets, and scattered.  
  
…  
  
2039 – May  
  
“Got a transit,” Orris said. Borealis snapped her attention back wholly onto the sector he indicated. A dark blip against the stars, tiny at this distance and well “north” of the ecliptic plane. She wasn’t certain at first that it wasn’t just another chunk of random space rock caught by the system’s collective gravity. Orris enhanced his optical feed, and the outline gave it away. The  _Torment_. The chromatophores of the hull had been shifted to matte black, and the en-sig was dampened. They would never have found them unless the ship had happened to pass between them and one particular background star at precisely the right moment.   
  
“Damn you’re good.” All right, she told herself. Fly casual. The protocol was passive scans only, do not engage, tight-beam coordinates and sensor data to Prowl, and get your aft back to Earth. It wouldn’t do to flip over and hare off right away, though. The Cons would know they’d been spotted. Borealis dropped one of Wheeljack’s Little Brown Bird drones and continued on with her sweep. The space between her wings itched, waiting for plasma fire.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“This one?” Prime asked. “Are you certain?”  
  
Lennox smiled and patted the side of the brand new M1A4 Abrams. “When you told me who you were bringing back I pulled a few strings. Believe me, the American taxpayers will be getting more than a fair return on their dollars.” That wasn’t what really mattered, Lennox knew, but it was the line he’d taken while wheedling the DoD. Wheeljack had already snuck out here to fiddle with it, too.   
  
“Thank you, Will.” Prime knelt and Lennox took up a safe position well behind Prowl and the watching Seekers. Fortunately the Allspark radiation behaved a lot like x-rays in certain ways. For every ten feet of distance, the exposure dropped off exponentially.   
  
Blue lightning struck and the tank unfolded, a blunt, memorable head rising from the shifting planes of the chassis. Blue optics glowed first at Prime, their hands touching briefly before the risen tank focused on Prowl.   
  
“Are we calling you Raze again?” Prowl asked. “Or…?” He stepped into the tank’s embrace, chevron and optics bright.   
  
“Raze will do,” Raze laughed. It was probably best if Impactor stayed dead. He bent his head to kiss Prowl, holding him close against a chest still hot, newly re-embodied spark spinning faster, scents of warm oils and metal and a roiling storm front on the wind, the static causing blue crackles to follow in the wake of Prowl’s roving hands…oh Primus bodies were good.   
  
Thundercracker lunged and caught Prime, Strake hurrying to the other side. They lowered him to his knees and knelt beside him, supporting him as his optics flickered. One kindling at a time wasn’t so bad.   
  
“I guess it’s better to resurrect the old war dogs than drag the new kids out to the front lines,” Lennox murmured, watching the loving reunion of executioner and executed. It took deliberate effort to remind himself of that aspect of the relationship. It hadn’t been Prowl who’d killed Impactor the second time. The living, the dead, the Allspark, the Matrix; and Prime the intersection, the crossroads. Robots, robots everywhere.   
  
“Not all the new kids are soldiers,” Thundercracker said. He looked at the human thoughtfully. “We have civilians again.”  
  
Lennox smiled. The old Seeker sounded pleased.  
  
…  
  
Galaxies away, Galvatron screamed in rage. Far worse than sparks in dying corrupting the purity of his inner power, was the escape of prey rightfully his in death. How dare Prime!   
  
“No matter,” Galvatron snarled, shoving an ostentatiously concerned Knockout aside. “No matter. I shall have my own Graveyard Legion.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _LENNOX!_  
  
He was out of bed and reaching for his chair-tossed uniform before he was awake.   
  
 _Libbies just went nuts out there – the Cons are going hot. And…fr—_  
  
The signal from Jazz skwarked out for half a second. Lennox ran from his tiny DC apartment, down the stairs and out to where Sideswipe had pulled up at the nearest curb.   
  
 _—And some fragger just lit off an EMP. Your whole District’s fried, man, outside the hardened gear down in the EDF hubs and that cute little Ratchet Special you got in your head. Prowl thinks it’s probably Lockdown. I agree._  
  
Pulling his pants on in Sideswipe’s passenger seat while the late-model Lamborghini swerved at ludicrous speed through the parking lot that the roads had become wasn’t easy. Lennox concentrated on keeping himself from being bashed around too badly, and what his HUD and the feeds were giving him. There wasn’t power enough left over in his brain to swear.  _Anybody still up, this is General Lennox, authorization Zulu India Papa 42. Initiate Glass Aegis now, now, now. I repeat: Initiate Glass Aegis now, now, now. Blaster, we global?_  
  
 _Yessir._  
  
 _Good. Metroplex, status._  
  
 _Going to Macross in five, General._  
  
God, he wanted to hug that city. Telling her to “go kick their asses, sweetheart,” wasn’t exactly protocol, though.  _All right._  He switched channels, sending a quick burst to Sarah and Anna, waking the latter as she and her family were closer in terms of time-zone. Out west, Sarah was already up feeding the animals.  _Get to your shelters, m’ladies!_  Ironhide was at the farm and Roulette was acting as Anna’s car.  _Love you!_    
  
Their replies thrumming across his mind, he vaulted out of Sideswipe and hurled himself at the checkpoint, flashing badge and right iris at the guards and scanners. One of the guards stepped lively and had the door open for him as soon as the machine bleeped green.   
  
Tucking in his shirt, he descended into familiar, tightly controlled chaos. The Secretary of Defense and the Lieutenant Director of the EDF were already at the holotable surrounded by their assistants and the Combatant Commanders’ flag adjutants. The Lieutenant Director made a space for Lennox beside her at the table.   
  
“General,” she said, “all Aegis systems are up and running except two. New York and Ottawa. Prelim reports indicate sabotage. Repair crews are working on them.”  
  
“Lockdown again,” Lennox said. Prowl was going to shit a brick.   
  
“Or the Preds,” Williams added. “How long till Metroplex is in position?”  
  
 _Little over an hour,_  came Jazz’s voice from the table.  _Deltas are all up now, too, carrying our guys._  The two Decepticon battleships glowed malevolent purple from high and low 629 million kilometers off the ecliptic plane. The  _Vivisector_  had Earth’s Northern Hemisphere in its sights, the  _Torment_  had the Southern. Six little red dots lifted from the blue sphere of Earth’s surface, splitting into two groups while a larger green dot preceded them on an intercept course with the  _Vivisector_.   
  
 _They’re firing,_  Jazz said.  _In 35 minutes we find out if the shields work._  
  
Lennox frowned at the Sec Def. “You should be under Cheyenne Mountain, Len.” If the Pentagon was taken out, they’d lose the United States’ second-highest link in the armed forces chain of command  _and_  the leader of the EDF. Williams gave him the hairy eyeball.  
  
“When the shit goes down I’m sticking to your charmed ass. Besides, you got the Lambo Twins upstairs, right?” Where Sideswipe was, Sunstreaker was likely not far.   
  
…  
  
As the minutes ticked by, three more Aegis systems crashed, taken out by computer attacks slipping past AIs and human cyber-divers, and by physical explosions. Simple mines had been placed at the bases of the shield emitter towers. Lockdown in vehicle mode was spotted driving off a pier in Massachusetts, any pursuit quickly lost in the ocean after he destroyed a swarm of Kuppies.   
  
…  
  
Above the eastern United States, above Europe and the north coast of Africa, above Johannesburg and Praetoria in the early hours of their morning, the skies burned livid, boiling violet, spitting lightning across the stratopause. At first in eerie silence, then a dull, louring roar fell smothering through the air. Circular points a kilometer across coruscated through the spectrum from crimson to orange to yellow to white, moving across the face of the planet at 1600 kilometers per hour as the planet rotated. Humankind looked up in defiance or hid in terror, each according to their nature and training.   
  
They were using the nightside, aiming for places where the lights were brightest – the simplest way to decimate a civilization.   
  
In the bowels of the Pentagon, Lennox watched the screens. The New York Aegis station had been repaired. Where the shields were up they were holding. Where there were no shields, the Cons’ beams turned everything down to bedrock to plasma.   
  
“Aegis towers down in Indonesia and Singapore,” an adjutant murmured, keeping running tally. “Prague towers back online.”   
  
…  
  
Einstein, bless his heart, might have been wrong, but he’d been working from the best information humans had had at the time. Cybertronian minds and Cybertronian engines could work with classical relativity, and bend it to their purpose.   
  
When Borealis suddenly took off heading “south” away from the  _Vivisector_ , requesting a diversion, Prowl began recalculating and sent Smokescreen and Hound into an already messy melee. When at the apogee of her arc she curled into cometary mode, Prowl shuttered his optics. He kept firing, forcing Starscream and Skywarp briefly away from Thundercracker and Strake.   
  
Aiming for the battleship, Borealis – in realspace, not skirting relativistic effects via any of the ways available to her – accelerated to 98% of the speed of light. At this distance she only had to move them a tiny fraction of a degree and the beam would shoot harmlessly past her home planet.   
  
She hit the shielding at the midpoint of the cannon. The  _Vivisector_ ’s station-keeping thrusters stood no chance; the battleship flipped end over end in a wild rotation that slammed the crew to the fore and aft bulkheads. The shield had buckled at the point of impact, damaging the cannon enough to trigger an automatic shutdown.  
  
Lightspeed whooped with laughter, remembering how he and Borealis had been watching Shark Week last fall. Certain sharks had a very similar hunting strategy.  _I love when Great Whites fly!_  he sang.  _Primus on a pogo stick, I didn’t know you could move that fast in realspace!_  
  
Cliffjumper shot Stalker in the aft and shrugged.  _Yeah? So what?_  
  
 _Run the calculation for mass at that speed,_  Skydive told him.   
  
 _Wha-… Oh. Oooh!_  As a body closely approaches the speed of light, the mass as measured by an observer that is stationary relative to the moving body increases, becoming infinite at the speed of light itself. Borealis had hit the  _Vivisector_  at almost five times her normal mass.   
  
 _I’m surprised she didn’t punch a hole right through the thing,_  Skydive said. Although Thunderwing had had amazing shields, too.  
  
 _Borealis! Are you okay?_  Azimuth tight-beamed. She hadn’t altered trajectory and her engines were out. She was coasting, but very, very fast, and headed out of the system. No reply. He launched a handful of Wheeljack’s extra-annoying missiles at a nearby clump of Cons and took off after her.  
  
 _Get out of the way, get out of the way, GET OUT OF THE WAY!_  was shouted across every Autobot frequency. Mechs fled in every direction, Autobots pursued by Decepticons who didn’t know why they were running, but weren’t going to stick around to find out.   
  
Metroplex was in range.   
  
The  _Vivsector’s_  shields held for three minutes. Metroplex paused in her barrage to give the mechs inside a chance to get out, watching and counting, relaying video and stats to Ultra Magnus within her command chamber.   
  
“Where’s Jhiaxus?” Magnus wondered aloud. The Terrorcons had been out in the melee from the moment the deltas had arrived with the Autobot troops. “He’s hardly one to go down with his ship.”  
  
The city around him quivered with leashed power. “Yes or no, Ultra Magnus!”  
  
Trying to salvage Jhiaxus’ ship would be an order of magnitude more trouble than it would be worth. Magnus shuddered just thinking about it. “Light it up.”  
  
A web of incandescence linked city and battleship for an instant. A new star shone briefly in Earth’s sky. Metroplex gave a triumphant roar, sending waves of exultation through Magnus as she changed course, focused on the  _Torment_  1.2 billion kilometers away.   
  
…  
  
It was just a big, rusty old semi. But no ordinary vehicle with any electronics should be moving. Sunny and Sides transformed and unlimbered their guns.   
  
“You moron! Your buddy set off an EMP two hours ago!” Sideswipe yelled.   
  
Jhiaxus transformed and shot him.   
  
…  
  
Lennox lay where he’d been blasted, under a pile of monitors and desk fragments against a wall, ears ringing, nose bleeding. What the hell? The DC towers were holding, the second battleship was hightailing it out of the system with Metroplex snarling at its heels. Fires raged and scars had been seared across the planet that would take geological time to heal, but the fight was over and humanity was still standing. What now?   
  
He needed to get up, to assess the situation, call for help. The implant in his skull was operating but his brain couldn’t seem to make sense of the input. He felt a change in air pressure, squinted against the bright early morning sunlight that shouldn’t be reaching him down here in the basement, saw a huge, shadowy shape approaching.  
  
Jhiaxus reached for the tiny flesh creature. He so wanted to capture one of the Autobots’ particular friends, to explore the interesting modifications, do a little recreational dissection. The Autobots’ reaction to what was left would be entertaining as well.   
  
Someone grabbed him by the pelvic anchor-bolt and threw him backwards, out into the crater of debris his entry had created. Jhiaxus rolled with the impact and tried to regain his feet, but whomever it was was shooting at him now, hitting him with depleted-plutonium shells followed by some kind of plasma beams striking the same places as the solid shells, so quickly his armor couldn’t react fast enough to prevent damage.   
  
Later. There would be plenty of time for specimen collecting once he’d rendezvoused with what was left of his crew. The slagging cityformer had destroyed his ship, but Bludgeon could be made to share. He took to his flight mode and departed.  
  
Sending a last few rounds after him, Atrandom watched long enough to make certain he wasn’t going to double back, then turned a frantic search to the rubble. Movement, sound, heartbeats – life! “Lennox!”   
  
…  
  
 _Aw, Primus,_  Air Raid groaned.  _Not Abominus again! We just got the smell washed off from last time._  
  
 _Yeah,_  said Slingshot.  _Where’s Defensor?_  
  
 _Look at Earth, guys,_  Silverbolt said,  _and you tell me where Hot Spot and his team are._  Dark plumes of smoke like bruises were spreading across the pale blue globe.   
  
…  
  
“Worms.” Cascade shook her shoulder. “Worms, come on, we have to go.” The horizon was on fire.   
  
Worms finally looked up from the microorganisms happily reproducing in a still bend of the creek. “Oh. Oh no…” Goldfish  ~~herded~~  followed them up the embankment and onto the road. Ryder and Lightskein had already transformed, engines idling impatiently.   
  
“Hot Spot wants us to take this section of the southeastern border,” Cascade told them. “Marina, Anticline, and Fumarole have the next ten kilometers. Castle, Rook, and Knight, Botanica, Slate, and Tideline have the northwest. Shearwater and Tern are running air support.”   
  
They weren’t equipped for fire suppression and rescue the way Inferno and the Protectobots were, but the Water Babies could help.  
  
…  
  
 _Skyfire!_  Azimuth, towing Borealis’ inert cometary form, met the elder deep-Seeker at geostationary orbit above Earth. Skyfire had been leading the attack on the  _Torment_.   
  
Transforming, Skyfire unhooked Borealis and ran his hands along the overlapping plates of her tightly closed armor. Azimuth chirped him the full sensory file of what she’d done.   
  
 _I’m pretty sure she’s alive in there,_  Azimuth said, transforming as well.  _But she’s still not responding._  
  
Reckless, Skyfire thought. Prime and Ratchet would have suffered if she’d managed to kill herself with that stunt. He prodded gently at one of the few marginally permeable seams around the engine’s exhaust.  _She’s alive,_  he said gruffly.  _Ratchet, I’m taking her to L 4 to keep her warm until you can get up here. As far as I can tell she’s compacted her externals and bounced her CPU pretty hard. We might have to cut her armor off before she can transform again._  
  
 _Flat-bottomed girls you make the rockin’ world go round!_  Streetwise – up to his optics in a structure fire – sang.   
  
…  
  
“Told you,” Williams said, hauling Lennox to his feet. “Charmed ass.  _Damn_  that was one ugly motherfucker. What is that motherfucking  _smell_ …?”   
  
“Terrorcons,” Atrandom grumbled. She grinned suddenly, receiving annoyed pings from the Twins, who were coming online after the pounding Jhiaxus had given them. They’d been knocked out, but were not as badly damaged as the Con had probably thought if he’d left them like that. Rummaging through the debris, she uncovered another survivor. After a quick scan showed no broken bones or internal injuries, she helped the dazed aide to his feet. “Sorry, boys, but you’ll be living with that for a while.”   
  
Williams exchanged a look with Lennox. “Wife’s gonna kick my ass, I bring this stank home.”  
  
“Stay outta my apartment,” Lennox said. “Maybe we can get Inferno to douse us with something. Preferably something that doesn’t take our skin off.”  
  
“Good luck with that,” said Atrandom. “I’m starting with aqua regia, myself.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2039 - June  
  
3 AM. The midnight of the soul, according to Bradbury. Optimus felt he now knew what the human author had meant. The cool stone floor felt good against his overheated cheek guard.   
  
First would come a barbed, brittle puckering; as though a microscopic black hole had lodged in something vital. He had learned that at that point he had a handful of seconds to distance himself, to reach the safety of the ground. The puckering grew into tearing, rending; white-hot levinbolts scouring his mind and body from within, power wrenched, riven away, twisted into the spark-form Galvatron desired. Shutting off his pain receptors was ineffectual. This pain wasn’t transmitted through his body, interpreted by his CPU. This pain existed as an integral aspect of every part of him the Allspark had infiltrated.   
  
The cool stone floor felt good. Not moving felt good. Frantic pings and requests flooded his comms, but he kept the door locked, gave terse replies. He’d be properly functional again shortly. He had to be.   
  
Powerful arms lifted him from the floor. A familiar field enveloped him. Familiar hands touched his face. Optimus kept his optics off, shut down his vocoder before a groan escaped as he was moved, turned over. The hands touched his frame here and there, sought beneath his armor. Metal skin touching metal opened a link.  
  
 **Optimus?**  
  
How can I solace anyone like this? Optimus thought. What kind of harbor am I now?   
  
The body entwining his seemed to phase insubstantial for a moment, then doubled strangely, sinking into him, between his armor and protoform, between his legs, between his chest plates, between himself and the pain. Sails whose color he could feel as vividly as sight wrapped around them.  
  
Vector had seen what became of Primes who had been broken. He would not allow a similar fate to befall this one.   
  
 **Optimus. Beloved, I cannot stay long. Can you unlatch your armor?**  
  
It took a grinding four seconds for Optimus to recall where within his memory core he’d stashed the codes that freed his armor from his protoform. One by one, then in a tumult the heavy plates and crumpling chameleon mesh fell away. He felt small and cold and vulnerable, shivering until Vector’s hands trailed blue glyphs in their wake along the planes and segments and whorls of his naked body, stirring his spark from its wounded lassitude.  
  
“You must resist him.” Vector’s lips brushed his forehelm.  
  
“I’ve been trying.” For the past six years the “attacks” had come every two or three months. Each time Optimus tried to call out to his twin, to reinstate their old spark-pulse code, the twin code. No answer. He tried through the Allspark itself, delving within; but the sickness from Galvatron’s moiety drove him back, impenetrable.   
  
Vector shook his head but his voice was gentle, soothing. “You attempt only to blunt the force of injury to yourself. The Allspark itself is in distress. You must try to affect the kindlings Galvatron forces.”  
  
“Impose my will over Galvatron’s.” Optimus shuddered. How could that not end in disaster?  
  
“You forget one of your greatest skills,” Vector laughed. “Wheedle the Allspark itself.  _Turn_  the kindling. Send the Decepticons good sparks and true. Yes, they will suffer, surrounded as they will be by remorselessness. But in the end you aim to save them all, do you not? And if Galvatron’s new battalions contain within them the seeds of kindness, how much sooner, how much easier might the end of the war come?”   
  
Optimus stared at him. “The miskindlings are harming the Allspark.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Prowl hypothesizes that Galvatron and I are changing it, that we have embodied it.”  
  
“Clever Prowl,” Vector purred. Wrapping a hand around the back of Optimus’ helm, he pressed their mouths together, pulling their chests into conjunction. Optimus at last bestirred his limbs, clutching at the ancient Prime. “You are a healer of sparks, Optimus. All sparks…” Vector opened him, opened himself, disassembling the false spaces between them.   
  
When Optimus came out of recharge, Vector was gone. So was the pain.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2039 – November  
  
The Autobot parking lot behind the moon was getting crowded. Elita inserted her ship into a halo orbit at the Earth-Moon L2. The  _Ark_  was there, along with Smokescreen’s cruiser and Ultra Magnus’ long-range shuttle.  
  
“Everybody’s ready to drop,” Chromia said. Elita unlocked herself from the pilot’s chair and joined them in the airlock.   
  
…  
  
“Uh, Optimus…?”  
  
The fireball was coming right toward them. Some of the newer, younger embassy staff bailed to the sides. Optimus took a few steps closer. The cometary form carved a hundred-meter trench in the desert, halting so close to the road a couple of dirt clods tipped over onto the asphalt. Optimus leaned on his knees and laughed.   
  
“Show-off,” Sam muttered, grinning up at Prime. No way was that Kup. Springer maybe? Why hadn’t Prime told anyone who was coming? It was someone pretty big anyway. As the form unfolded and stood, he thought for a second it was Chromia. No, the colors were wrong.   
  
“Elita,” Prime hummed, embracing her warmly. She smiled, not accustomed to having to look up to meet his optics.  
  
“Oh ho!” said Sam. He scuttled hastily out of the way, dragging Mikaela with him as the embassy mechs, plus Ultra Magnus and Bluestreak, visiting from Metroplex, converged on Prime and Elita with happy shouts and much banging of hands and shoulders and armor. Introductions were made where needed via cloud mind, human and Cybertronian curiosity and joy-of-reunion shared and expanded.   
  
“How many?” Ratchet asked after some while.   
  
Elita curled a finger around one of his cheek spars and pulled him in for a nuzzle. “Cubes of high-grade should you break out?”  
  
“That too,” Ratchet agreed.   
  
“Nineteen of us came,” she said. “I know you wanted me to bring everyone, Optimus, but we couldn’t bear to leave Cybertron completely unguarded.”  
  
“I understand,” Prime said, hugging her so their armor creaked.   
  
“I meant to ask you before; what are these?” Elita plucked one of the wipers away from Prime’s windshield, then let it snap back in place with a loud _THWAPP_. Optimus flinched, clapping a hand to his chest, emitting a garbled burst of noise from his vocoder.   
  
“I so did not need to see that,” Sam groaned, having attained a reasonable perch on one of Bee’s shoulders. Mikaela had the other.  
  
“Wow,” said Mikaela. “That’s going to be all over the tabloids by tomorrow. ‘OPTIMUS PRIME’S GIRLFRIEND GIVES NIPPLE-TWEAKS IN PUBLIC’…”  
  
“Very like the media-drones in Iacon,” Elita laughed. The tangle of mechs around them ooohed and swayed with her laugh.  
  
Prime was saved from further comments or explanations by the arrival of another cometary protoform. This one at a more discreet distance from the road.   
  
Optics lowered as she uncurled from her crater. Faces turned away. No one spoke. (Except Fireflight. He couldn’t bring himself not to look at her, and his brothers caught and held him before he could run to embrace her.) Sam felt his stomach twist. He’d never seen them act like this. Never. Shunning, Bee explained via tight-beam, was gravely serious for Cybertronians. People had died from it, long ago.   
  
Chromia walked the empty space that opened between herself and Prime. Head up and armor taut, fields painfully neutral.   
  
“Aw, c’mere,” Prime said, holding out his arms. Chromia wished Ironhide at least would shoot her, but Prime’s subharmonics had been imperative. She accepted the embrace if only for the wave of relief coursing through the gathered mechs. Silverbolt let Fireflight go and Prime relinquished his hold to let Chromia pet down the jet’s anxiously rutched wings.   
  
“I gave the order,” Elita said.  
  
“I chose the way I carried it out,” Chromia insisted. “I’m sorry, Optimus.”  
  
“It is not me you should apologize to,” Prime said.   
  
Prowl stood rigid, head turned aside. The formality was unnecessary. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it. His battle systems kept trying to run sims of Beta’s death. He wanted to bolt into the Security Office. Thundercracker knelt behind him, hands on Prowl’s shoulders – not restraining him; lending support – with Strake prickly and stiffly upright beside them.   
  
Chromia felt as though she’d fallen ten thousand meters to land across a diatanium beam. Her spark lurched in her chest, but she patted Fireflight’s shoulders and moved past him toward Prowl.   
  
She touched his hand, offering an arm cable. Strake hissed but she ignored him. “Prowl. I’m so sorry. I…I need to know what you’re feeling.”  
  
Turning his head finally to look at her, Prowl accepted the link. A flash, thermonuclear annihilation, and then his looping memories and emotional tumult were locked behind hard firewalls.   
  
 _Prowl…_  she entreated.  _I deserve…what you can show me. I didn’t think how our use of that alloy would upset you. It never occurred to me._  
  
 _No. Cruel enough, what was done to me without my knowledge or consent. Cruel enough what I have done to others already._  He touched her face, pressed his forehelm to hers.  _There’s no need to add to it._  Chromia shivered and retracted the cable as he severed the link.   
  
Fireflight dashed to her side, winding an arm around her shoulders, bestowing a quicksilver nuzzle upon Prowl, and baring his denta at Strake, who snapped back at him. Thundercracker rolled his optics, but giggles fluttered across the cloud mind at the two younger jets. There was something of a grin between them that couldn’t be entirely masked by the overt hostility. Chromia allowed herself to be drawn back into the cluster surrounding Elita and Prime.   
  
Two more living meteorites landed. Firestar and Moonracer – soon encompassed by old friends. Red came pelting out of the Security Office and tackled Firestar and Inferno, knocking them all to the ground in a noisy tangle. No one had seen Red laughing like that in tens of thousands of years. Powerglide nearly crashed as he arrived from Oregon to sweep Moonracer up and swing her around.   
  
“I can’t believe you’re still alive, you glitch,” Moonracer hooted, giving his shoulder a shove. “You call that flying?”  
  
“Oh, shut up and kiss me,” Powerglide said. Arcee, however, had detached herself from Chromia and stuck her head between them, catching Moonracer’s kiss instead, setting Powerglide squalling like a stepped-on glitchmouse until Cliffjumper and Windcharger joined them in a rowdy clump.   
  
Three more carved new craters in the sand. Then another two and six and four, all but one bounding into welcoming arms, voices chorused, harmonics ringing across the desert.   
  
The last to land paused at the edge of the road. Matte black with jagged patterns of dark red that made her difficult to see amid the rubble of long-dead cities. She knew from Chromia’s memories which one he was – so different now from the slim, dark mech he’d been. Standing between two alphas. She knew the instant he noticed her.   
  
Prowl took a single slow, deliberate step; nothing precipitous, nothing to startle her; but then he was running and his knees carved furrows in the road as he dropped and Spiral was in his arms – impossible, impossible – and warbling keens rose and fell from their throats and cables bound them tight.  
  
“That’s…impossible,” Jazz said, knowing better as he said it. “I  _heard_  her in there, man! How can that be her?”   
  
Prime turned to him, appalled at his First Lieutenant as he hadn’t been since the earliest, roughest days of the war. “You told him she was dead?”  
  
Jazz clenched his jaw. “As much as. I thought she was!”  
  
“Jazz… Never mind. I could have made the same mistake.”  
  
But you didn’t, Jazz thought. Angry mostly at himself. Prime had volunteered to Mirage that Sleight was alive; if Jazz hadn’t known Optimus as well as he did, he’d have thought that a careless, almost cruel slip. Except Mirage had been kinda…bouncy…ever since. Slag. I gotta get Ratchet to give me a tune-up.   
  
Three million years had separated them. Three million years was torn apart, categorized, repartitioned, shared and reassembled. Prowl accepted Spiral’s horror at what he’d become and done and not done. Spiral confessed to her own hard-driven cruelties, and to having volunteered for the spark chamber modification. She rode the forecasting loop this threw his CPU into, holding his body fast as he shook with visions of her nova. Prime knelt beside them, setting his mouth against Prowl’s helm.   
  
 _I’m all right,_  Prowl sent. He couldn’t stop the loop outright, but he could alter his focus, let it run its course without being trapped by it. Spiral held him, alive, spark spinning bright. She looked up – and up – at the approach of the two Seekers. She kept Prowl’s head cradled to her chest and extended her denta.   
  
“Fierce little  _je_ ,” Thundercracker said, approving.   
  
 _They’re trining,_  Jazz explained helpfully.  
  
 _Shut up, Jazz,_  said Prowl.  
  
 _And you’re trine leader,_  Jazz continued.   
  
 _Shut up, Jazz,_  said Thundercracker, but he was grinning. Spiral released Prowl at last and leapt to the Seeker’s shoulder, stalking up to his face, hands on hip gimbals. She cocked her head, taking in the blue optics in the raptor’s face.  
  
“I think I like you, too,” she said.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Nice suit,” Optimus told the new Secretary of Defense. Leonard Williams had finally retired with a tidy pension and his wife to an equally tidy little house on the Canadian border, far from bright lights and big cities.  
  
“Like it?” Epps said, spreading his arms. “Wife picked it out.”  
  
“I suspected as much.”   
  
“What? What’s wrong with what I pick out?”  
  
“I’ve seen your t-shirts.”


	76. Sigh No More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Borealis is bruised, First Aid is tired, there are two funerals and some reminiscing, Spiral and Prowl have a snuggle, the robots help with planetwide disaster relief, snipers attack, Bluestreak snuggles Seekers, Prowl sings, and Springer has some uncomfortable thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from "May It Be" by Enya on the FotR soundtrack. The Sursameni gleefully stolen from Iain Banks' Matter. "Sigh No More" by Mumford & Sons is a neat song. The notion of districtformers borrowed from the otherworldly and talented Thousanth with permission.  
> The Autobots on Chaar have a bad time; friends gather for Winterthing; fun is had in snow; and Dani is morning sick.  
> Ratchet has a close call, Mikaela is not entirely happy, Prime tries to talk with Razorclaw, Hoist and Wheeljack get snuggly, and one of Galvatron's version of the Graveyard Legion tries to put thoughts into words.  
> Borealis has thinks and feels, Prime navel-gazes, the nature-bots hang out, and Blades and Prowl have a snuggle.  
> Perceptor sings the Krebs Cycle lullaby, TC makes a pass at Borealis, Bee and Sam have a chat, the Preds attack the Oregon base, Nellis AFB puts on a special show, and the new kid in the big tank looks funny. ;D

2039 - May  
  
Six deltas in the med-bay was at least four too many. Helms and wings knocking ceiling and walls, feet in everyone’s way, including their own. Ratchet shooed Silverbolt and the new ones out. Skyfire at least had had the sense to sit on the floor, taking unobtrusive scans of Borealis in stasis on one table and helping Wheeljack repair the Lambo Twins.  
  
Casualties among the Autobots had been light this round. By dawn Ratchet had discharged most of his patients and the med-bay hummed in its own quiet, intent sort of sleep. Borealis’ optics lit.   
  
Skyfire retracted his monitoring cable and stood, leaning over to stroke her cheek spars – so like Ratchet’s – with the backs of his fingers.   
  
She sifted through status reports and alerts as her HUD came up. She was banged up, but someone had cut away parts of her armor, pounded it back into shape, and reattached it. She hoped she wouldn’t make a habit of this. Pulling a thread from Skyfire’s optical feed, she knew she looked terrible. About how she felt. Everything ached. Skyfire nuzzled her helm.  
  
“You understand now, don’t you, why we don’t do that?” Flying close to c, in realspace, he meant. She sat up, groaning, and he sat next to her.   
  
“Yeah. No more long enough levers for me. If I ever meet Archimedes, I’m gonna kick his ass.”  
  
Skyfire laughed softly. “That was a very physicist-like tactic. I’m sure Prowl’s tucking it away in his memory core.”   
  
“Oh dear.”   
  
Skyfire leaned his chin on her shoulder, smiling. She leaned back, opening connections to cloud mind and Earth’s net. News vids and emergency reports flashed across her mind, shuffled and sorted, and she bolted upright, Skyfire grabbing her and holding her down as she struggled and wailed. “No! Oh no! The winter!”  
  
“Hush, hush. We know, Borealis.” Earth was even now heading toward the beginning of at least ten long, bitter, dark-skied winters. “Perceptor and I have studied these effects before. Every planet is unique, but there are protocols. We can mitigate the worst of it with technology the humans already possess.”  
  
There would still be famine. So many had already died. Cities had been torn in two, separated by glassy canyons a kilometer across. Along coastlines the chasms had filled with ocean, hissing and boiling until the stone cooled. The fires would take months to fully extinguish. New maps would have to be made. Sunsets, where they could be seen at all, would be spectacular.   
  
Borealis pressed her face to the angle between Skyfire’s head and shoulder and keened.  
  
The morning waxed fair, sun through the skylight filling the med-bay. Maggie wandered in, her first coffee steaming in her hand. She climbed the ladder up to Borealis’ table one-handed with the grace of long practice. Women half her age envied her and Mikaela’s shoulders. She clambered and tightroped across hills and flanges of thirty yards of robot landscape; dark blue scuffed and scraped to dull charcoal. A white-armored cave of hand formed around her for the last ascent to a shoulder bigger than her old Civic. Mission Control, the Eagle has landed.  
  
“This won’t stop us,” Maggie said, leaning her body against Borealis’ cheek spar. Even through the parts of the robots that were meant to be armor, you could feel that they were warm and alive. “You know it won’t. New things will be built from this.”  
  
“I do not doubt you,” Skyfire said. “But perhaps it is just as well that the Autobots will be removing back to Cybertron in a few decades.” He was watching the news as well, with different filters.   
  
“Not all of them,” Maggie insisted. She turned and braced her back on Borealis’ helm, sipping her coffee. “Not all of us.”   
  
“No.” His optics were enormous, unreadable, ancient; the scale of his thoughts a gulf Maggie found she couldn’t bridge. He could bend himself to shapes that helped him adapt to vastnesses of time and gravity, but he had never completely bent himself to a shape that Earth could hold and translate. Yet she had audio-visual memories from Hound – so many layers pared away so her brain could make sense of them – of Skyfire kneeling and holding Safeguard close. The starship loved at a level commensurate with his size, and a tenderness.   
  
“Plexie won’t leave,” Borealis said, quiet but sure into Skyfire’s shoulder. “She built herself for here. Hi, Maggie.”  
  
“Mornin’, Little Bird. How’s that headache?”  
  
“Urgh. Battleships are hard.”  
  
“I bet.” Maggie sipped her coffee again, wondering if Borealis thought it smelled good even though she couldn’t drink it. She patted Borealis’ helm and began the long descent. Skyfire handed her down. Out of chivalry or a desire to have her leave more quickly she wasn’t sure until she turned to back down the ladder and saw him tilt his head to kiss Borealis. All right, she could take a hint. No big deal, it was a work-day anyway.   
  
Skyfire nibbled at Borealis’ lip components with short sharp movements, rising fields coloring the birdlike motion with focused heat. His hands were still, but she could feel a kaleidoscope of scans pass through and into her, return signals painting the limits of her pain, guiding him to the places he could help. His snow-white armor was splashed and spattered with carbon – he hadn’t had a chance to bathe yet, hadn’t bothered with cosmetic damage. She cupped his chest with her own hands, replying scan for scan, feeling the thrum of his spark in her wrists, up her arms, in her chest.   
  
Perceptor was online. Still. How long had it been this time? He caressed them across the air, rising from the hasty berth he’d taken in the bunkhouse down the stem corridor. Limping slightly, it took him longer than usual to reach the med-bay, but Skyfire pulled him up between them once he arrived at their table.   
  
He cabled to old friend and new, sharing a pleasant low buzz of desire that slowly subdued the afterimages of terror from the battle. Eight light cannons aligned with his, running off eight sparks of his spark. He’d wanted to drag them all to the lowest floor of Wheeljack’s tower.   
  
“Don’t chide me, Skyfire,” he whispered, shivering. “Please don’t. I know… oh, I  _know_  what I’m doing.” He kissed the elder delta fiercely.  _Vector’s hands… We must align life against cruelty and ending._  Borealis flared and unlimbered behind him, stretching her wing-segments, fingertips inquisitive. Skyfire belled and bowed like a cloud-bank. He didn’t answer with words or glyphs, pushing instead across the cables the blowing tide of his love, admiration, affection, gemmed with tiny, distant points of fear.   
  
The fears were charted, navigated by, approached and orbited. Skyfire laughed and surrendered, pulling them with him as he rolled onto his side on the repair table, Perceptor happily pinned between the deltas.   
  
 _Perceptor sammich!_  Borealis hummed.  
  
“Yes, but I’m afraid there’s more bun than meat,” Perceptor said, and Borealis almost fell off the table. In retaliation, Skyfire extended a fine manipulator and stroked the scar on Perceptor’s neck, watching, pleased, as Perceptor writhed.   
  
Seeing him, feeling him, Borealis dove, following his consciousness as it wavered, slipped into different states on his way through and recovery from overload. He gladly shared his mind with her, and with Skyfire. His truncated memories helped make him seem like a much younger person, one with little experience other than immersion in war. He had given up his civilian life, bit by bit, in order to save something larger. Skyfire’s sadness swept over them swift and powerful as a gamma burst, but brief, both honed and blunted by acceptance. Perceptor let them wind around him, touching, petting, mourning what was lost.   
  
“That is not all that I am,” he said, and he opened his spark chamber. Teal light mingled with pale blue and deeper blue as the deltas followed, unleashing a binary around him, their meshing coronae passing entirely through his body, bending around his own chamber to create wave patterns that sent him over the edge again.  
  
“Don’t fight it,” Skyfire murmured. “You’re that tired.”  
  
“I’ll take you with me yet,” Perceptor gasped, and pulsed the spinning of his spark, throwing the waves back at them, coupled with giddy pleasure through the cables.   
  
Skyfire locked an arm between himself and Borealis’ shoulder to keep them from mashing Perceptor between them as they arched and warbled, laughing as the table beneath them groaned. “Aren’t we a fine trio,” he said, as the blue static seeped into the table’s grounding wires and faded. “Red Alert taught us too well.”   
  
“Toes,” said a small voice from the floor.   
  
Borealis lit her optics. Tessera – minus one lower arm – stood at the repair bay door. There was quite an expanse of delta feet hanging over the edge of the table. Perceptor giggled and beckoned and Tessera climbed up between him and Borealis, collecting her bit on the way. She arranged herself in the rather uncannily boneless way she had between her progenitors, began the preliminary shut-down protocols for recharge and blinked shyly at Skyfire.   
  
“Can we recharge now?” Skyfire asked.   
  
“Yes, dear,” said Perceptor.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
First Aid stood as he finished treating the last patient in the row, to find that that was the last row of patients. The next section of supine people on tarps were the human doctors catching some sleep while they could before the next group of med-evac helis came in. Mirage appeared at his elbow with a full cylinder of energon. Aid wanted to kiss him.   
  
Prowl, Jazz and Smokescreen were organizing the worldwide mobilization of food, personnel and supplies, while Smokescreen underhandedly kept a surreptitious optic on where the money was going, particularly whether it was going to where it was supposed to, or disappearing down individual pockets. They and Teletraan, as usual, kept an active site open where anyone who wanted to access their observational data could do so. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing, or not doing. Not everyone was pleased with this transparency. But the complaints appeared as well, on the same page as observations regarding the complainants. One could accuse Prowl, say, of doctoring the numbers, but most human authorities tended to respond to such allegations with raised eyebrows and a tired, “Really…?” With optional rolling of eyes. Not that this stopped the yelling, but it tapered off fairly quickly. The Autobots had enthusiastically shared intel for over twenty years; and they were always terrifyingly scrupulous in allowing the humans to do with that data whatever they chose.   
  
Aid activated his articulation locks to keep himself from falling over until he’d finished the entire cylinder. “Oh, Mir. Thank you.” According to his readouts it wasn’t enough, but it would keep him from involuntary shutdown for another 24 hours. Mirage wrapped an arm around his waist.   
  
“Come. Rest. Blades says you have half an hour.”  
  
They found a rubble-covered hill, where partial walls hid them from the smoky morning. A beam of sunlight found Mirage’s helm as he lifted his face to Aid’s, rainbows blooming across the iridescent metal like the warmth blooming between them, rising through the spectrum. Mirage’s hands danced beneath Aid’s armor, telling ancient stories in motion and pressure and patterns of pleasure that Aid didn’t know enough Cybertronian history yet to decipher fully. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Gilgamesh in the original Sumerian. He found himself spiraling into overload, clutching at Mirage, gasping cries escaping him.   
  
He reflexively fought falling into recharge for a moment, but then came to his senses. He set a timer and let himself go. Half an hour of shutdown would be nice.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2039 - November  
  
There was solace to be had in the hum of wheels on a road. Comfort offered by the wind across a body. Daveed Wazir’s funeral had been not unlike Ixchel Chase’s all those years ago. More colleagues than family, little official fanfare, a handful of self-important academics making unfelt eulogies.   
  
Wheeljack had enjoyed their talks over the years. Sometimes he brought Mirage or Tracks along; gaining as much from the Tower mechs’ tales as the human – some of the details were equally new to both of them. Wheeljack had known many Towers mechs, had built many things at their requests, both sensible and fanciful, but he had never lived in the Towers, hadn’t been built and programmed for that peculiar environment.   
  
“There were apartments within apartments,” Mirage explained once. “Suites within suites. Unlike the cities, who plan everything down to the nanometer, the Towers were spontaneously added to and modified and disassembled and reassembled and changed constantly; growing like a living forest, up into the sky, down into the canyon separating them from the Universities. If you knew the way, you could travel from suite to suite of a night, from party to party, and never see or smell or taste or feel a field or hear music the same in any chamber. Artists and poets and singers, musicians, playwrights, actors, dancers, and architects; dabblers, dilettantes, innovators, synaesthetes, and integratrixes mingled and argued and forged new ideologies and arts.   
  
“The rest of Cybertron preferred us to stay in the Towers, but of course we didn’t. We happily made nuisances of ourselves anywhere the whims took us. We had to see and experience everything. We had to talk with people, even if we later decided they were boring.” Mirage laughed, leaning toward his listeners in their candle-lit dark as though imparting a delicious secret. “You’ve never been shooed properly if you’ve never been shooed by a century guardian.”  
  
Daveed had set up a camera in one corner. He knew Wheeljack was recording for him, but he liked having his own set of disks, a copy from a slightly different point of view, with all the static and pixellations his old video camera provided. There was something human and flawed and homey about it. Daveed had never seen the Blair Witch movie. On nights like this his empty garage took on the atmosphere of a sheik’s tent on a caravan route, and Daveed knew he was hearing tales millennia older and lightyears more exotic. He wished with all his heart that he didn’t have to sleep. Although even if he nodded off, the robots might continue talking, leaving the recordings behind as proof the enchantment had been real for Daveed to find the next morning. He wasn’t certain how they had carried him to his bed, though.   
  
One day Wheeljack brought him to the embassy, and up to the mesa top to talk with the Seekers and Prowl. When the three landed, Prowl initially kept himself firmly between Thundercracker and Strake and the human. Daveed stood firm. He wanted to talk with all of them. It was important. Even though, he thought, the dinosaurs themselves could not have been so imposing.   
  
“How many humans have you personally killed?” Daveed asked, cutting to the heart.   
  
“Are the numbers that important?” Thundercracker clacked his mandibles. Not reticent but a combination of disgusted and curious. “4,712. I have discovered the names of 3,658 of them.”  
  
Daveed felt odd. But he was concentrating very hard on the very large predator with whom he was speaking. “Is…is that important to you? Knowing the names?”  
  
“Names, voices, sparks,” Thundercracker said, touching his own helm, throat, chest. “All are important.”  
  
“The names recall the individuals,” Prowl explained. “Raw numbers alone turn people into objects. Knowing, understanding the relationships between people is part of our learning process.”  
  
“Punishment, you mean?”  
  
“Consequences,” Thundercracker said. “More effective than punishment, in the long run.”  
  
Daveed looked at Strake. Wheeljack had explained a goodly deal about all three of them. Daveed was given to understand that trining was something akin to marriage; a certain formality of emotional bond, though the physical requirements were quite different.   
  
“I…I wanted to ask you about that. About the Decepticon side of the story, and how you’re feeling now, fitting in, or…or not?” Predator! Giant predator! He was hesitant to say anything about switching sides, turncoats, traitors. Civil wars were always difficult for the populace. How much worse when the civil war had nearly ended the civilization itself?   
  
“What difficulty we endure now is unimportant,” Thundercracker said. “Reconciling will be difficult. Rebuilding will be difficult. And maybe it’s too soon to think about those things. We are Cybertronians. We adapt, we transform. Megatron’s Great Experiment, his plans for expansion, for remaking our race into a superior version of itself… It felt so noble at the time. It felt like what we needed.”  
  
“It was exciting,” Strake agreed. “We were the Empire’s guardians. We were strong and beautiful and everyone loved us, wanted to be us.” He struck a dramatic pose, and even Daveed, from his perspective so close to the ground, so far from the alien’s world, could see the irony thus conveyed. “We were programmed to believe we were the superior form of life in the universe. And Megatron’s armies were the best of the best.”   
  
“Strange how similar events in your species’ recent history are,” Thundercracker said. “Every horror your people have visited upon each other we have also committed, to a far greater degree.”  
  
Daveed rubbed his forehead, wishing he didn’t understand so well. “How do you cope with that knowledge, then?”  
  
“As best we can,” Strake said, examining the trees around them as though they might contain enemies. Or as though he had suddenly acquired a compelling interest in botany.   
  
“Remorse can be gained by sharing the memory files of the injured party,” Thundercracker explained. “Even, usually, if the injured party was deactivated. But once the spark’s snuffed, it can’t forgive.”  
  
“Murder was your one unforgivable crime, then,” Daveed said. This too was familiar. He was Mizrahi on his mother’s side.   
  
“Yes,” said Prowl. “Civil procedures aside.”  
  
“What was the punishment?”  
  
“Medical stasis until the Council decided what to do with you. Depended on a lot of things.” Thundercracker scraped a talon along a cheek spar. “If the spark was deemed …how would you put it, Prowl? Healthy? Salvageable? Worthy?”  
  
“Depending on the era, usually ‘healthy’. But there were times when ‘worthy’ would be more appropriate. There were lexicons of definitions for both.”  
  
“Yeah. Comes down to, long as your spark wasn’t psycho, you got benefit of the doubt and they’d just fiddle with your programming, maybe reforge you _ae_  if you’d been something more aggressive.”  
  
Daveed set aside his emotional and physical reaction to the notion of being forcibly rebuilt, body changed by order of the state. “Knowing what you do now about what happens to your sparks after death, would you keep those laws as they were or modify them?”  
  
Thundercracker laughed and nudged Prowl’s shoulder. “I know what Prime’s gonna have you and Spiral doing, once the war’s over.”  
  
“For one thing, the murdered can in some cases be consulted,” Prowl said. “Not…not always.” He shuttered his optics. Strake lunged at him, hugging him hard until the flashback eased its grip. Daveed sat motionless, bearing witness, knowing he had been asking the correct people the correct questions. He was glad he’d come, despite how terrifying the Seekers were.   
  
“Optimus talked with the Dalai Lama a lot,” Thundercracker said quietly. “And Desmond Tutu. And Dorothee Soelle. He took especially the Buddhist notions of forgiveness to spark. It won’t be the same on Cybertron, when this is over. It can’t be. Not forgiving creates discord in the cloud mind. Almost a fifth of our remaining number is Con, and two fifths of all Cybertronians have taken a life.” Would death really bring him, or Prowl, peace? Thundercracker wasn’t so sure. They couldn’t count on oblivion. Perchance to dream. Perchance his aft. Prime’s ruling was scorchingly clever. It could be that their only hope lay in continued life. Only by living out their sentences could they make amends and gain some measure of peace before surrendering to the Allspark.   
  
On another day, Tracks joined them in a park, sunny and clear in autumn, too bright for spooky tales, perhaps, yet Daveed had unsettling dreams that night.   
  
“Polyhex, as you no doubt guess from the name,” Tracks began, “was composed of six districtformers, rather than a single city-entity. One of those six was called the Well Market, because she was the biggest commercial district of offworld goods on the planet. At the bottom of Cybertron’s gravity well, you see?”  
  
Daveed nodded. He knew the deep-Seekers thought in terms of gravity and many of their senses were tuned to its fluctuations and gradients in the universe. The Allspark was also sometimes called the Well of All Sparks. Daveed thought it was interesting that a species that did not have much use for water nevertheless did have a word for “well”. There were such things as oil wells, he reminded himself.   
  
“At the Well Market you could buy anything you could think of, and many things most people couldn’t. There were energy exchange columns at all the entrances; just open a fuel line and get coded chits the offworlders would accept as money. The only place on Cybertron you needed them.”  
  
Mirage nodded. The distinction between goods and services was somewhat blurred on Cybertron. “The Well Market was actually below one of the other five districts of Polyhex; three above three below. Our cities were usually sunk some distance into the active layer, straddling the older shells. Anyway, this made getting there interesting for the aliens, but once there most of them could remove their respirators, because the whole district was atmospherically modified. Bubbles for oxygen-breathers, bubbles for methane-breathers, bubbles for carbon-dioxide-breathers, separated by selective fields rather than airlocks.”  
  
“Imagine getting Skyfire through an airlock down there,” Tracks laughed. “People that big could walk the main thoroughfares, but the Well Market had a lot of narrow side streets. Mechs Prime’s size or larger usually borrowed a proxy drone.”   
  
“Oh! Proxy drones!” Mirage’s optics brightened. “Those were fun! They came in bright colors and they were simple – just arms, legs, torso, head – nothing fancy but anyone could hook into one and control it without having to fiddle with specialized proprioceptive algorithms. And they didn’t transform.”  
  
“Remember Kaleid?” Tracks said. “That used to freak her out.” He looked at Daveed. “Kaleid always had at least four alt modes, often six, and she was always changing them. There were repair and reformat shops that wouldn’t let her in because she was so particular, and the transform geometries got really complicated.”  
  
“I remember the night she got stuck between hoversled and skimmer,” Mirage said, chuckling. “You could literally hear her yelling from the University Side. I asked Moonheight over in Helium. He’d thought someone had stepped on a turbofox.”  
  
“Ouch,” said Wheeljack. “I actually did that once, on accident. Had to reset my audials, after. Anyway, now, me, the thing I liked most about the Well Market was getting lost in it. The shops and stalls changed all the time, and there were a couple of places like Knockturn Alley, where things got a little rascally and a mech did well to cache her money-chits cleverly. The aVevbri have a lot of tentacles, and they’re  _fast_. If you got really lost, Well herself would tell you where you were, but the shortwave maps were never updated on purpose, and it was deep enough most people couldn’t hear the stars, and Cybertron doesn’t have a magnetic field – imagine the havoc! – so compasses like you have here on Earth wouldn’t work.   
  
“Oh yes, getting lost was a traditional pastime,” Mirage said. “Like in Venice. You inevitably found all the best places that way. There was a corner stall that served the most fantastic arsenic-molybdenum pretzels, oh Primus.”  
  
Tracks sat up and pointed at him. “I know exactly the stall you mean! Wryhinge’s!”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
They reminded Daveed of any other travelers, trading memories. What did it matter if the other travelers he knew before now had only toured places on one planet, instead of many? The horizons expanded as they might; the call of the road, the lure of the journey was the same.  
  
They talked through that day and night, and in the morning, after he’d nodded off in mid-story and been somehow carried to his hotel bed, Daveed had dreamt of aliens, shadowy forms with glittering eyes and mis-arranged faces, pacing through veils of force and smoggy atmospheres, hawking wares he could not identify, in languages he didn’t know, and he hadn’t any money and they had tried to cut him, to get him to open a vein to pay in blood.  
  
On another summer’s day, they met at a grassy patch by the road near Middle Lake in Golden Gate Park. Mirage and Tracks liked San Francisco despite the frequent rain. The hills were fun to drive and the scenery was always interesting.   
  
Daveed sat at a park bench and ate a bento lunch while the three mechs sat or sprawled carefully on the ground.  
  
“Do you know,” Daveed said, obviously embarrassed but willing to plunge through it, “when I first saw the two of you, I noticed the traces of decoration on your bodies. I wondered if perhaps you were elites, aristocracy of some kind.” The rules of primogeniture would not, of course, operate in quite the same way among robots.   
  
“Aristocracy? Us?” Mirage grinned as Tracks made level-3 rudeness coughing noises, remembering the ambassador from Sursamen.  _Nobles!_  The Sursameni had of course made the assumption based on his own society’s structure. But Mirage, whose name had been Susurrus back then, had fallen among a heap of his friends later, helpless with laughter. Nobles, if he was understanding the concept correctly, were the wealthiest and most respected and powerful tier of a hierarchical society. In one way or another; apparently this got messy sometimes. Residents of the Towers, by contrast, were widely regarded by the rest of Cybertron as weird at best, deviant at worst, and tolerated with varying mixes of affection, covert admiration and incomprehension. They had virtually no power as the Sursameni would have understood it, aside from the cultural power inherent in art and literature. Wealth was a chancy notion among Cybertronians, most of whom could transmute other elements to gold or platinum or high-grade plutonium within their bodies; though most people wouldn’t see the point of doing so unless one was damaged and needed such elements for self-repair, and the energy cost generally made the process not worth the effort. Anyone could walk around with a gold-plated aft if they wanted one, but they'd get laughed at by everyone else.  
  
Tracks, coming from Vanadium Tower, where the collective sense of humor had more knives in it than that of Iridium, remembered that ambassador, and the jokes  _his_  friends had played on the unsuspecting Sursameni embassy.   
  
Daveed watched them, working hard to understand, finding his way by many false paths around the idea of their society, which no longer seemed to fit any of the neat anthropological labels he’d learned at university. Aliens. Aliens! And even that word seemed inadequate, self-centered, xenophobic.   
  
He let Wheeljack read all his notes, not just the official ones he meant to publish, but his private journal entries, his interior struggles, wrestled into words on paper. Held so carefully, like a doll’s book, in Wheeljack’s big hands, delicate tools unreeling from his fingertips to turn the pages; his optics visibly focusing on the tiny handwriting. Daveed felt that Wheeljack would be kind, would not savage his fragile human thought processes. And there were questions, Daveed was sure, that he hadn’t thought to ask, but that might occur to the engineer.   
  
How odd to think Wheeljack might understand him better than most of his fellow humans.   
  
Wheeljack shared his thoughts with candor, too, Daveed felt. He could never be empirically certain of course – everyone’s mind was its own Chinese box. He introduced Daveed to Prime, who also answered every question with a gentle comfortableness that set Daveed at ease despite Prime’s size and status. The UN council kept trying to elect Prime as their President. Prime declined all such offers, stating that he was not qualified for such roles. He had been built as a leader of his own species alone. Daveed had warmed to him quickly, had been excited to be able to ask questions not only of the living Prime, but have answers relayed from the previous Primes as well. Cybertronian living history, living memory…well, there was a tricky concept.   
  
Living memory was shared, distributed across all living Cybertronians, like bacterial RNA, flashing across the population fast as thought, facilitated by the AIs. AIs who were not themselves alive as measured by Cybertronians, for whom the presence or absence of a spark seemed to be more fundamental than the presence or absence of a vertebral column or cell nuclei. A binary distinction.   
  
And the memories themselves could have come from mechs who were no longer living. The Matrix was only the most obvious example. Mirage and Tracks in particular seemed to be repositories of their subculture’s collective recollection. Keepers of the culture itself, in all its richness and variety.   
  
The sensory opulence never stopped amazing him. They recorded all their inputs, not just sight and sound, but touch and chemoreception and EM information and gravity data and emotional states and spectra of things human science hadn’t dreamt of yet. Even attempting to encompass what the merest fraction of that kind of sharing was like had been overwhelming until Daveed accepted his own limitations and went with what he  _could_ understand.  
  
“When we first began, I wanted to ask if you could give me the video without the text data and target sights or whatever those are. The HUD layer, I suppose? But then I realized that’s how you see. I had to learn to accept that complexity of input if I was going to have any chance of understanding anything about how you perceive your surroundings.” The little man smiled. “I knew then how completely I was out of my depth. But I couldn’t give it up.”  
  
“I’m glad. It’s like a backup, what you’re doing, ya know.” Wheeljack touched Daveed’s back between the shoulder-blades, as gentle as Daveed had thought he would be. He’d been slapped harder by over-jolly human colleagues.   
  
“Drives always fail,” Daveed said ruefully. “No such thing as too many backups.”  
  
“You got that right,” Wheeljack laughed.  
  
…  
  
Hound, Prowl, Arcee and Cliffjumper met them at the hangar door as they drove up and transformed.   
  
“Oh,” said Wheeljack. “Hey.” They took his hands and Mirage’s hands and drew them inside, down the stem corridor, to a sphere-room banded in red and ochre and honey amber like the inside of a gas giant’s cloud layer.   
  
Prowl was the largest of them now, the base the rest of them built themselves around, attached themselves to. The holdfast. They swayed around him, in motion relative to his steadiness, their minds streamering down into murky depths and cold. Exposing the loss, tracing its borders, pulling up the insidious roots before they could lodge too deep. Cold currents stirred the waters of this world’s oceans. Cold currents brought the richest nutrients, enabled new blooms of life.   
  
“Doesn’t seem fair,” Wheeljack said, “to only know somebody a couple of decades. Doesn’t seem long enough. Pretty obvious, huh? We know it in our processors how long they live the minute we come down and load up the nets. I just hadn’t really thought about it. Anybody could see he was getting up there, I just didn’t really think about it.” Daveed, ironically, had declined the mindstate backups. He wanted his work to speak for him. His individual life, his human mind by itself, he’d said, was no more important than anyone else’s. Wheeljack would remember him, without having to reproduce him in a metal body, creating a person that wouldn’t really be him any more.  
  
Mirage refused to think about the lines on Bobby’s face, the silver in Theresa’s hair, the beautiful daughters each in their turn marrying princes – brave princes and sincere; they dared not be otherwise – and transforming their parents into grandparents. Hound didn’t push, only held him. The inevitable would come when it would, borrowing misery ahead of time wouldn’t help.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 _I’m staying,_  Spiral tight-beamed. She and Prowl were curled up on the highest tier of berths in the bunkhouse, next to the door, where they would be easily overlooked by anyone entering. They’d been there for two days. No one seemed particularly inclined to disturb them.  _I’m not going back to Cybertron until we all do. I’d like to stay here with you and Prime. And your trine._  She didn’t have to append or ask: if it’s all right with you. The surge of joy-exultation-relief-desire in his fields and over the still-warm cables was more than answer enough. Although he added a small glyph of fond rebuke over the insistence of her and everyone else on this trining nonsense. He wasn’t an alpha. He’d never been an alpha. Sixty-nine years had yet to pass before he could consider whether he wanted to be reforged as an alpha.   
  
“That’s not even a vorn,” Spiral laughed. “You’re still fun to tease – you’re adorable when you’re flustered; though I think at least half that fluster sometimes is exaggeration. For the benefit of whoever’s teasing you.”  
  
“If you intend to spread that rumor in the most efficient manner,” Prowl murmured against her helm, “I suggest you tell Teletraan, Cliffjumper, Huffer and Grapple first. In that order. They’re the biggest gossips on the planet.” Among a cohort of Autobots no less, and Autobots in general were a gossipy bunch at baseline.   
  
Spiral laughed and tickled his chest. He opened instantly under her fingers. Her laugh turning to a soft hum, she followed suit, pressing the edges of their chambers together, their consciousnesses sinking together, spins synching together, reaching for the wholeness that was their origin and ultimate fate.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Yeah, we gotta get that outta there but there won’t be a crane available that can handle the weight until next week.” The foreman checked his datapad. When he looked up again, Optimus Prime and Elita One had waded out and positioned themselves at either end of the capsized tanker.  
  
“Where do you want it?” Elita asked. The foreman pointed.   
  
With no outward signal, the two robots lifted. The trickiest part had been finding handholds where the tanker itself wouldn’t buckle under the strain. Each step perfectly in unison, they moved the damaged hulk to a cleared space by the road, where it could be easily maneuvered later into a drydock for repairs or disassembly.   
  
“That’s… You…” the foreman gaped. With a visible effort he took hold of himself and closed his mouth. “Thanks. Thank you.” The leader of a whole planet (the foreman hadn’t had time for months to watch much TV; he wasn’t clear on who Elita was, exactly, but he was glad enough of her help), up to his knees – and that was a long way up – in grease and mud and oil and garbage and soot, helping the East Coast recovery crews in any way he could. Which so far seemed to mean mostly doing a lot of heavy lifting. Really heavy lifting. That hadn’t been the biggest tanker on the Atlantic by a long sight, but Mary and Joseph it was quite a thing to see it picked up and maneuvered like an oversized couch.   
  
Elita dusted off her hands. “Next?”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
There was a soft chuff. By the time the incoming sound waves reached her audials, Borealis was already moving. She stuck her hand between missile and Thundercracker’s portside optic, its target. The needle-like missile scraped along her chine and went whining away harmlessly into the scrub. She hadn't even felt it, really, but she rubbed that wrist thoughtfully as she watched the human would-be sniper scurry away through the abandoned building. She was appalled to realize that she had a target lock on him. She had weapons that could pierce his tiny body or fry him alive, even from blocks away and through any intervening structures. Repressing a shudder, she turned to glare at Thundercracker instead.   
  
What the hell have I done? Why did I do that? He deserves anything he gets. The projectile probably would have blinded him at most, but it was hard to be certain. Even bargain basement IEDs these days could be surprisingly sophisticated, and optics were one of a Seeker's few vulnerable points.   
  
She considered. Perhaps it was because her spark had evolved from Ratchet’s and Prime's. She would have done as much for anyone, tried to protect anyone if she found herself in a position to do so. It was an Autobot-ly thing to do. And...and maybe she hadn't thought about who it even was. No, you big lummox; you think at nanosecond speeds. You knew who you were protecting.   
  
Thundercracker regarded her, blue optics unblinking.  _Thank you,_  he tight-beamed.  _You didn’t have to do that, but thank you._  
  
She bared her denta and growled in reply. When he brushed her wrist with his wingtip, though, she didn’t jerk her hand away.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The earthquake turned the hillside to a tossing, frothing slurry of mud, rocks, debris that had been houses, cars and bicycles, and everything else in its path. Travelling at a speed faster than the average human could run, with the consistency of wet concrete, no one in the way stood a chance. Inferno, therefore, ran right in.   
  
Plucking the entire family off their verandah just before the wave of mud and what was essentially shrapnel hit their house, he held them above his head and braced for the impact. Back the way he’d come would bring him to the edge of the slide sooner, so that way he headed, leaning almost parallel with the slope of the hill, taking each step with calculated care.   
  
Firestar – a cow under one arm and a car full of humans under the other – watched him even as she made her own swift way to safer ground. She heard metal striking metal, saw Inferno jerk, falter…and regain his balance and momentum. The flow of the slide was up to his chest. With a last heave, he leapt clear, onto what Firestar hoped was a more stable section of hillside. A long spar of metal – a lightpost, she realized after a moment – was sticking out of his side. No, sticking through his side. If it had gone in a meter closer to midline… Well, it was hard to tell. Probably his spark chamber would have deflected it, unless the angle was just exactly unluckily right. But she’d read about straws being punched through two by fours by tornadoes. The velocities weren’t quite the same here, but there was a lot of force, a lot of mass, behind the flow.   
  
Inferno set the family down, spoke to them briefly in their own language, and sauntered over to Firestar as she set her passengers down as well. He grinned. “Just like old times, ey?” Firestar laughed and punched his shoulder with a resounding clang. She took hold of the lightpost and yanked, her optics and Inferno’s locked as she hauled the length of metal out of him. Sparks flew and energon dripped, but nothing important had been hit.  
  
“Yeah,” Firestar said. “Guess it is.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Having a proper eyrie to return to after a long flight felt good and right. Thundercracker had been more moved than he wanted to let on that Metroplex had built herself deliberately with a space for his kind to be comfortable. The mosaics on the columns and thin, arching bands of walls and domed ceilings were exquisite; fractal compositions in blues and golds and whites, evoking clouds and air deepening to eternal night and stars.   
  
He toyed with the notion of having himself and Strake remanded to Bluestreak’s supervision permanently now that Spiral was staying. He could imagine how Strake would take that. Not that they didn’t like Blue. Fragging kid was ridiculously personable, though he could be jumpy if TC and Strake approached him too silently. Prowl didn’t like being pounced either. Strake had nearly gotten his face shot off enough times you’d think he’d learn not to do that. Young alphas and moving objects. Never a good combination   
  
Strake landed next to him, black wings glossy in the high mountain sunlight. He nibbled on Thundercracker’s mouth before leading the way down the ramp spiraling the interior of the tower. Bluestreak met them halfway, reaching up for hugs and pressing his helm against their chests, listening to their sparks spin fiercely, not yet slowed after their flight.   
  
“Ultra Magnus is out with the others in Marrakech,” Blue told them. “So it’s us and Plexie for tonight. Polaris says he’s bringing Prowl and Spiral out here in a few weeks so Spiral can meet Plexie and Prowl can catch up with Nightbeat and Afterburner. I think they’re tracking more than food supplies, don’t you? Nightbeat definitely has a chemoreceptor for trouble.”   
  
They followed him down and out to a nearby garden, settling around a glowing sculpture that functioned as a fire pit without actually burning any precious wood. The trickle and rush of fountains nearby meshed with the wind through Metroplex’s towers and sails, though between her arms they were sheltered from the cold. The amber light from the sculpture reflected into the niche with Kalis’ column, creating a chiaroscuro of the abstract form.   
  
“It makes me sad that Kalis won’t say anything anymore.” Blue nestled between the two Seekers, squirming himself a space among their angles and armor where he could feel their heat, and the hum of their sparks. “I almost miss the screaming. At least it was something. You knew he was in there.”  
  
Thundercracker bowed his head to nibble on Bluestreak’s audial. There was no form of Cybertronian life that hadn’t been damaged or destroyed. Rebuilding would take eons. He found himself anxious to start; he wanted the boring part, the dying and killing and attacks and feints and counterattacks and convoluted strategies, to be over so that they could get to the interesting part of the story. The remaking part. The growing, living part. He drew air through the vents in his forearms, pulling the wet, green scents of the garden into his chemoreceptors. This weird planet was getting to him.   
  
“Yeah,” said Strake. “Now we have to take Smokescreen’s word that he’s still functioning. Or calculating. Whatever it is AIs do when they’re not talking.”  
  
“We could ask Prowl,” Blue giggled.   
  
“Heh.” Thundercracker quirked his mouth in a half-grin. “Lance wasn’t much of a blabbermouth. Military AIs aren’t so much.” Spiral had originally been a district AI for one of the Torus States. Definitely a blabbermouth. A very attractive blabbermouth, though.  
  
“That’s not the first thing you want to do when you see Prowl again,” Bluestreak said, squiggling closer to Strake.   
  
“Maybe not,” Thundercracker rumbled, wrapping a hand around Blue’s body, pinning him against Strake, dipping his raptor’s head to nuzzle and nibble on Blue’s door-wings and dorsal armor. Blue squeaked and scrabbled at Strake’s chest plates, optics flickering. Strake thrummed, watching Blue’s face, intrigued by his open sensitivity and unleashed arousal. Thundercracker bit gently at the curve of armor protecting Blue’s starboard hip, grinning as Blue scrambled to partition charge to keep from overloading. Winding Blue up never stopped being delightful. Blue’s body was so similar to what Prowl’s might have been, if Prowl hadn’t been assigned to Sentinel’s battalion and gone all badass halfway to Decepticon levels of armor and fury.   
  
Strake sunk talons into the backs of Blue’s knees, finding the hidden sensory nodes as Thundercracker stroked Blue’s legs slowly and gently; the contrast of sharp and smooth sending Blue shuddering close to the brink again. Thundercracker offered cables. Blue inserted them eagerly, opening a full body link the moment the connection firmed.   
  
Rearing up, head tossing, wings splayed and trembling, Thundercracker shouted, echoed by Strake; imagery and mythology of this planet melding strangely with theirs; eagles locked in mating flight, electric dragons streaming blue fire.   
  
Curled between the Seekers, more than halfway to recharge, Blue reached toward the bronze column. His hand fell short of the haptic pad, but Strake shifted, placing his own hand there, linking their shuddering fields with Kalis. Thundercracker, in the half astrosecond before he too shut down into recharge, reflected that the post-overload fizzies were probably the last thing an AI wanted to experience, but maybe it would give Kalis something new to think about.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2040 - January  
  
Elita and Prime waved from the grassy verge of a runway at Dover AFB in Delaware as Polaris touched down and opened his ramp for his passengers. Prowl and Spiral transformed and approached Prime and Elita, Prowl offering each of them an arm cable.   
  
 _Most of the_ Vivsector _’s surviving crew appear to be hiding – or attempting to hide – planetside. Jhiaxus himself is most likely aboard the_ Torment _with Bludgeon and Starscream._  Certain isolated “accidents” and seemingly unrelated killings of humans in remote areas probably were neither accidental nor unrelated.  
  
 **No sign of Soundwave, I take it?**  Elita asked.   
  
 _Not yet. I estimate 74 percent probability that he is aboard the_ Torment _as well._  
  
Elita nodded.  **If he’s down here instead we’ll never find him unless he wants us to.**  Every police chief and military base commander had Red Alert’s personal contact info, but that wouldn’t be enough.  
  
“The two crews wouldn’t have meshed well,” said Spiral. “A few days in close quarters with the Terrorcons can’t have been anyone’s idea of fun. Jhiaxus must have gotten them into stasis or we’d have heard from them by now, but until he did...”  
  
“Agreed,” said Prime.   
  
“I wonder if the Predacons are using the Constructicons’ city in Norway as a base,” Elita said. “We could send someone up there, with Scavenger perhaps, to see.”  
  
 _I’ll go,_  Polaris said, not quite bouncing on his landing gear.  
  
 **First we’ll have to find out if you can fit through the door,**  Prime said, winking at him.  
  
 _Oh. Yeah._  
  
Prowl looked north, sensory chevron rising. “Hmmm.”  
  
Spiral and Elita shivered. Prime would have, but he’d braced himself.  
  
“It was in part the recording Blaster sent of your singing to Prime that triggered us to come here,” Spiral said, taking Prowl’s hand.  _Me in particular. I had to see you, after that._  
  
“As Thundercracker said,” Prime rumbled happily, “your singing has become a healing balm.”  
  
Prowl’s optics widened. The clunk of the articulation locks in his knees engaging sounded loud in the brief silence following Prime’s statement. Spiral and Elita laughed and hugged him.   
  
“Are you forecasting?” Spiral whispered, when he didn’t respond further and remained motionless, thunderstruck.   
  
 _I have merged with Prime,_  he said slowly, lifting a hand to his throat. He had damaged his vocal apparatus screaming. Each time it had repaired itself per his nanocell programming. But Ratchet had explained once that the damage was so pervasive after some incidences that the programming itself had suffered tiny changes. His voice had changed over the years, over the decades, now. His voice had  _been_  changed.   
  
 **Several times,**  Prime agreed, with such expansive self-satisfaction both Spiral and Elita wanted to kick him.  
  
 _Prime’s spark and the Allspark are alloyed._  
  
Optimus’ optics flared as he jumped to the same conclusion. “It seems the Allspark answered your request before you asked it, Prowl.”  
  
“Jazz said time was a strange variable, within,” Spiral said. Jazz’s apologies, she had decided, were almost worth manufacturing offenses to get. The incident that had landed Spiral in Elita’s battalion had indeed very nearly killed her. Her spark may well have flickered, and in that flickering sent a copy of itself back to the Allspark. Hence the echoes he had perceived of her presence there. Elita’s battalion was almost entirely composed of mechs everyone else thought were dead.   
  
“When will you sing for us again?” Elita asked, no few layers of harmonics in her own remarkable voice. Prowl’s optics irised to pinpricks. Now he was forecasting.   
  
“Tonight, apparently,” he said.   
  
…  
  
They arrived at the embassy amid chaos. Soundwave had attacked the Technobots, sonic and CPU bores setting the gestaltmates against each other. Scattershot had nevertheless combined with his brothers, one by one, until Computron stood mentally whole to defy the ancient Decepticon and send him into retreat. They couldn’t hold it, though. Physically they were in trouble. Strafe’s spark chamber was breached, Lightspeed’s throat was spraying energon and Nosecone had taken a shot from Afterburner to the helm which had melted optics and face, and heat-damaged the CPU behind them. Azimuth had evac’d them to the embassy, where Wheeljack and Ratchet were in the process of hauling the non-ambulatory ones into the repair bay. Prowl sprinted to help Wheeljack with Strafe.   
  
“Worst case scenario,” Elita said. She and Prime stood at the holotable, tracking documented attacks and possible incidents with feeds from Red in the Security office. “Soundwave’s on the planet. Going after the newsparks. I don’t think I like that.”  
  
Optimus suppressed a shudder at the harmonics in her voice. Primus help Soundwave now.   
  
…  
  
Strafe’s optics lit. Med-bay ceiling. Well, he’d seen that before often enough. Prowl was leaning over the repair table, stroking his helm. That was…a little bit unusual.  
  
“What the slag…?”  
  
“Easy.” Prowl laid a hand on his chest. “What do you remember?”  
  
Accessing his memory core  _hurt_. How the slag did that work? He was his team’s field medic, he ought to understand it. There weren’t any sensory nodes there were there? No, there were…why was his CPU so sludgy? He ground away at the resistance. Oh. Soundwave. “That bastard…”  
  
“He remembers all right,” Ratchet said drily.  
  
“How’s Nosecone?” Strafe tried again to sit up but Prowl held him down with apparent ease. His lateral systems were only getting minimal power.   
  
“Needs a new face,” said Scattershot, appearing in Strafe’s field of vision on the other side from Prowl. “But Hound already has Mirage and Tracks working on a design. I have a feeling old Nosey’s gonna be a heartbreaker when they’re done with him.” Scattershot pressed his forehelm to Strafe’s. “Slag it, you scared me half to death, Raf.” It had been Strafe’s injury that had jarred Scattershot, jarred all of them, into their combined mode. Killing a gestalt by mortally wounding one of its members was a tricky business. A plan like that could backfire, and you probably didn’t want to be at ground zero when it did.   
  
“Which one of us put the hole in me?”  
  
“I honestly don’t know, and I don’t want to. We were all firing wildly at that point. It could have been Soundwave.”  
  
“Energy traces indicate it was an enhanced heavy-plasma weapon of a type the Decepticons commonly use,” Prowl said. “It was Soundwave.” Not that the Technos hadn’t done a lot of damage to each other anyway, but the near-fatal shot had been from outside.   
  
“All right,” Ratchet grumbled. “Strafe, don’t make me put you back into medical stasis.” He glared at Scattershot and Prowl. “Try to get him to recharge.”   
  
Strafe grinned up at Prowl. “Sing me to sleep? You did for Blades that one time.” Having the Protectobots as older brothers would have been an order of magnitude more aggravating if it wasn’t systematically impossible to hate them. First Aid would simply hug you into submission if you tried.   
  
Prowl nodded. The silver hand on the new protomass patch across Strafe’s chest shifted, fingers spreading, feeling the vibration of the spark beneath.  
  


May it be an evening star  
Shines down upon you  
May it be when darkness falls  
Your heart will be true  
You walk a lonely road  
O how far you are from home

Mornie utulie  
Believe and you will find your way  
Mornie alantie  
A promise lives within you now…

  
  
Maggie jumped up from her workstation and bounced around the human scaled area, hands clasped in front of her mouth. “Omigod omigod omigod that was  _Elvish_!” There was a better than even chance that the first mech Maggie’s future robot self would tackle, post-integration, would be a certain tactician. Him or Hound; she couldn’t decide. Both, then? Her skin was still tingling from the harmonics.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2040 - August  
  
Avoiding detection by humans used to be easy, Divebomb knew from intel files Starscream had reluctantly shared with Bludgeon and Razorclaw. When it was just radar? No contest. But the Autobots had been interfering, and the humans were little mimics themselves, barely intelligent though they were.   
  
Nevertheless, the highly concentrated urban environment provided many possibilities. There! Frag. That color! Not even the slightest nod toward subtlety there. The scout. All alone. How convenient. He was even carrying his organic parasites. Three with one shot, if Divebomb was lucky. What fun! He repositioned himself slightly, homing in on the spark signature with specially modified sensors. One shot three kills. Well, the humans barely counted, but Divebomb was in a good mood. He had a new gun, one that should punch through the scout’s light armor easily. He just had to remember to get out of range or hide once he’d made the shot. There were a lot of humans and collectively their puny weapons were a nuisance.   
  
He fired.  
  
Neither Sam nor Mikaela would remember afterward whether Bee had been travelling at freeway speed or stuck in traffic. They could barely recall what city they’d been in at the time. There was shock and heat and blinding light and they were ragdolls thrown clear, not noticing their own injuries until later, when they couldn’t ignore them.   
  
“Spark chamber breach!” Mikaela shouted. “Sam get everyone back away from him.” She squinted in a particular way and her corneas darkened, allowing her to look directly into Bee’s chest without damaging her retinas. Miles wasn’t the only one packing some interesting modifications.   
  
She climbed to the ragged edge of the hole, assessing damage, sending her vid feed to Ratchet, digging in the back seat for her toolkit. There were small gaps she could weld, small lines she could cap or reconnect, but the worst of the damage was simply beyond her physical strength without her waldoes. She kept her stinging eyes wide open, keeping the feed open, watching Bee’s spark sputter and fade, shrinking for a moment to a tiny seed in a suddenly dark, cavernous chamber.   
  
“No,” she whispered. “Dammit, Bee, don’t you dare…”  
  
The darkness seemed to spread from the interior of the chamber. Mikaela blinked angrily. The little golden light wasn’t out, not yet! And then the shadow, she realized, was the looming wings of Skyfire, landing afoot beside them, bending down, the sun bright on his shoulders, refracting off his helm. Sword in hand and ringing trumpets wouldn’t have surprised her.  
  
He knelt, pulling a cable from his own torso and plugging it into Bee. The golden sun flared and sputtered and grew to its accustomed size. Mikaela wrapped both hands around the power cable and rested her cheek against it. An enormous fingertip touched her back.  
  
“Mikaela, you are absorbing dangerous amounts of radiation.”  
  
“I don’t care. Not leaving him.” Her nanites would take care of the worst of it, and she’d have to drink Perceptor’s hideous cocktail later in horrific quantities. It would be worth it.   
  
“Very well,” said Skyfire, and transformed around all three of them. Sam hadn’t gone far, either.   
  
…  
  
Sam ran a hand through his hair. Thank god for male pattern baldness heritability traits. His maternal grandfather had had a full head of hair his entire life. Good Italian genes.   
  
Mikaela had finally fallen asleep. They were in sleeping bags up on her gantry, overlooking Bee’s repair table at the embassy. Skyfire had flown them direct, carried them in himself. Sam barely understood what was happening outside the pain in his chest. Ratchet had grabbed him for a moment there, injected him with something, scanned him, and let him go. What the hell had that been about? He rubbed at his breastbone. Still kind of tender. Had someone been pounding on his chest, or was that because Bee had a gaping hole in his?   
  
No, that had been repaired. Soft grey protomass like pulled taffy stretched across the opening. There was already more yellow armor appearing than there had been last night. Bee’s optics were dark, but the spark monitor made reassuring bleeps.   
  
Damn, that had been close. He had thought they’d won a major battle, with Metroplex chasing the Cons off – albeit a pyrrhic one, given the damage to the planet. Could have been a lot worse, though. But these guerrilla attacks were nasty. And frightening. They’d lost eleven more of the Graveyard Legion, and Huffer had nearly been killed last month, too. Tough little guy, though. He’d shot the Con who’d sniped him and then approached to take a trophy, thinking the target dead. The rest of the Autobots had been dodging sniper fire as well; except Metroplex. No one was messing with Morocco these days.   
  
Maybe they should all move to her for a while. Blue would love the company. Sam could work on his tan. Mikaela could work on her tan. Mmm!  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2042 – March  
  
Fields and towns below huddled under a blanket of snow likely to stay in place for another month or two. Prime brought up the rear of the procession leaving Holyhood Cemetery. Just behind the Lambo Twins. Reginald Simmons had been laid to rest in the family plot there, rubbing decaying elbows with senators and Boston mayors and a handful of Kennedys.   
  
Borealis circled, keeping pace with Prime’s progress, surfing silently above the planet on her AG drives like an enormous manta ray. She’d never  _liked_ Simmons exactly. She’d been just as glad when he’d written his books and left the government for better pay. None of the Autobots could forget he’d had Bumblebee tortured in the name of Sector Seven’s curiosity. She couldn’t say she’d wished him dead of a massive stroke, though. He’d been a mean, small man who didn’t handle power well, but he’d gotten better the less authority he’d had.   
  
The Twins had enjoyed their antagonistic friendship with him. She felt bad for them. No one else would take their teasing as well as Simmons had, nor give as good as he got.   
  
Rest in peace, jerkface. She flipped her wings and headed for Logan International where she’d be picking Prime and the others up.   
  
One by one, Ixchel Chase’s family had passed away, married, borne children, nurtured grandchildren. Borealis had tracked every change, but kept a distance. The gulf between a funeral and an awakening in a tank was a chasm she didn’t know how to fly across.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hunting Cons on Chaar was almost like the good old days when there were plenty of Cons to hunt. That thought itself took away some of the fun. As did the inescapable knowledge that Prime felt every death. Springer never let it weight his arms with hesitation during battle; but afterward, in the dark and quiet of the recharge bay, regrets and restless worries ate at him like scraplets; going for the juicy bits first.  
  
And now Turmoil had shot the  _Trion_  down. It was badly damaged, hidden in a canyon on the far side of Chaar, with holo-net above. Brace said the ship could be repaired, but it might take a while to fabricate parts. The crew would be using parts of themselves as raw materials, unless they could scavenge enough of the right ores without attracting Con attention.   
  
They’d been so close. The war would be as good as over if only they could kill a few more Cons. A hundred more, six hundred more. At least kill all the worst of them, then start again with only good, unpolluted sparks.  
  
Springer folded convulsively around his spark, gritting his denta. Megatron’s philosophy had been the same; hence the drone army, hence the slaughter of most of Cybertron’s three billion inhabitants. Purge the inferior, start again with the strongest. So easy, so easy to keep following the patterns of thought that had led them this far, kept a few of them alive. So hard to forge new protocols, algorithms, cultures of survival.  
  
“Spanner says Freewheel’s gonna make it.” Roadbuster stood at the door, leaning on the frame. Springer uncurled and sat up. They didn’t use internal comms any more than they could help. No telling who was listening, this close to Shockwave.   
  
Pyro leaned over the side of the bunk above Springer. “So are we heading out yet?” Springer flicked his forehelm (which suspiciously resembled Prime’s; and didn’t Pyro take a lot of ribbing for that) with a resonant  _spanng_.  
  
“Not until Guzzle’s team gets back,” Springer said. “Which should be in about three breems, if nothing’s gone wrong.”  
  
“Oh Primus.”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2042 – March  
  
“Incoming!” Lodestar shouted. Kup joined him at the screens. “Twenty-seven. Missiles. From the sigs looks like…”  
  
“Pinpoint nukes,” Kup said, already moving. “ABANDON SHIP! Minimum safe, lifeboats, wings or wheels I don’t care, GO!”   
  
 _Slagging Pit slag glitching frag!_  This from Brace, who had been down in a narrow space inside the lower starboard engine, working on repairs. He didn’t object to Tap-Out hauling him out by one foot, though, and they both ran for the stern lifeboat.  _Almost had this fixed! Almost! Slaggit._  The  _Trion_ ’s unshielded hull could take one small nuclear strike, but a barrage? The ship’s weapons were offline and it would take too long to reroute enough power from batteries to charge those that had the range to take the missiles out at a distance that wouldn’t still fry them.   
  
Kup and his crew scattered into Chaar’s tortured basaltic landscape, heading downhill when they could. Standing orders were to rendezvous at the _Xantium_. Ultra Magnus had passed his command of the  _Sparkreaver_  to Highbeam. Highbeam was a steady, serious mech, but they were busy up in the black, chasing and being chased by Turmoil. They couldn’t count on air support from that quarter.   
  
When the blast hit, Kup knelt, shoving Flack down. Half-fried by the gamma burst, Tumult dropped out of copter form, shielding Kup in turn. His shadow left an irregular outline across the blackened, pitted expanse of Kup’s dorsal armor.   
  
“Slag, Mul,” Kup whispered, tossing his ubiquitous rusty pipe aside. Flack helped him drag the copter to his feet. If Kup knew Macabre, he’d be sending ground and air troops out to pick off any survivors. “We got fifty klicks to run and no roads to roll on. Won’t get any shorter standing around.”   
  
…  
  
Guzzle’s team was coming in. Under heavy fire, as usual. Springer grinned and ordered the  _Xantium_ ’s foreguns brought to bear. He leapt to a pinnacle, adjusting his optics. What the frag? It looked like Guzzle had picked a fight with an entire army this time. A dull-hued, crimson-opticked army. And was it his imagination or did all those Cons look pretty much alike? He transformed briefly to chopper mode, flipped to bipedal to land nearby as Guzzle came abreast of the narrow mouth of the canyon where the  _Xantium_  lay hidden. “What the frag, Guzz?”  
  
“ _Trion_ ’s been nuked!” Guzzle shouted, mowing down another line of pursuers. Whatever they were. Springer didn’t like this closer view. They moved with greater purpose than drones. He added his firepower to Guzzle’s   
  
“There’s a valley full of these things between us and Kup’s people,” Guzzle continued. “Gonna have a hard time getting to us.”  
  
“Get everyone aboard, we’re dusting off.” Springer backed slowly, guns hot already. Whatever platform Shockwave was using to launch the nukes, the Wreckers were equally at risk on the ground or in the air, and Springer liked having room to maneuver.   
  
…  
  
Well, Kup thought, they’d almost made it. More of the strange dull-iron and dun mechs were filtering behind them now. Tap-Out, Beacon and Groundspike were trying to cut a wedge through the forces massed in the valley, but they were badly outnumbered. Tumult had died five klicks back. They’d had to leave his body.   
  
A flash of white caught Kup’s attention, though it didn’t distract him from the Con in his sights. The Con went down and Drift leapt over him, slashing into the ranks behind, cutting an arc that led him back to Kup and Flack. Drift stilled for a moment beside them, energon and other fluids dripping from his swords. Kup didn’t like the bleak expression that settled over Drift’s face.  
  
“Kid,” Kup said, still firing. Drift flicked the twin blades clean and sheathed them.   
  
“Ah, don’t…” Kup whispered, baring his denta. The Great Sword’s jewel glowed as Drift drew the blade from its housing.   
  
…  
  
Galaxies away, Prime fled the press conference as soon as he could politely do so. He touched his chest, head bowed.  **Mazerunner,**  he tight-beamed to Jazz, Ironhide, Ratchet, Ultra Magnus and Prowl.  **Revo. Freewheel. Hubcap. Crumble. Lodestar. Roadrage. Powerflash…**  
  
 _Oh Primus,_  Ratchet said.  _We’ve lost the_ Trion _, haven’t we._  
  
 **Highjump. Tumult. Carillon...**  
  
 _And the Wreckers are trying to help,_  Prowl agreed.   
  
…  
  
Just what they needed, Springer thought, diving for the ground as his intakes were fouled. The volcano to the south had decided to spew. To his right, the _Xantium_  was carving itself a landing space close to the biggest knot of Kup’s embattled troops. The strange Cons didn’t back off when the ship’s guns mowed them down rank after rank. They kept coming, hurling themselves into the beams as if eager to die; yet if they managed to reach an Autobot, they tore him apart with equal zeal.   
  
There. The  _Xantium_  was down, landing ramp extending, Roadbuster leading the charge.  
  
“WRECKERS!” Springer roared through the ashfall, jumping from jagged peak to pinnacle to join them. “TO THE GRAVEYARD!” Howls and roars of unholy glee answered. If they died, they’d have Prime respark them as Graveyard Legion.   
  
…  
  
 _Drift!_  Kup put as much power behind the tight-beamed transmission as he dared. He was running low on juice.  _Get your aft over here! We got Nornir inbound!_  A dun Con that would have blown Drift’s head off from behind fell to Flack’s sharpshooting. The air suddenly crackled with lightning, ionized both by the volcanic eruption and the weapons of the triplet sister interceptors roaring across the seething valley.   
  
These Cons were silent, Kup realized, as Drift cut a path toward him. The subsonic rumble of the volcano underscored the clamor of weaponsfire and metal fists and blades on metal, but the shouts of the Wreckers grew clearer beyond those of the  _Trion_ 's surviving crew. Kup blasted three more Cons, peering closely at the heads. Did they even have mouths?   
  
Drift lunged beside him, optics dim. Two Cons fell in halves, but Drift staggered and Flack reached out to steady him.   
  
“Don’t touch the Sword, Flack,” Kup warned, shooing the two younger mechs on. They’d meet Springer’s group in the middle of the valley. By the look of the volcano, that valley was about to become a lava field. Best get a move on.   
  
…  
  
 **Maserblade. Incendiary. Farcaster…**  
  
…  
  
Macabre and Skyquake watched satellite feeds of the battle from Skyquake’s office. The new troops Galvatron had kindled were not as effective individually as Macabre would like, but Skyquake looked satisfied enough. Galvatron had pulled six hundred at a time from Chaar’s metal ore and rock; in two events more than doubling the Decepticon numbers. Most of the individual kindlings had been such failures, Macabre had no idea why these were so different. If they were, really.  
  
“Not very smart,” he remarked, watching ranks of them march steadily into the  _Xantium_ ’s covering fire.   
  
Skyquake shrugged. “They don’t have to be. By numbers alone they’ll crush the stragglers.”   
  
Macabre altered the zoom on the image of the Wreckers’ ship. Autobots were climbing aboard and on top of the ship, clamping themselves to the hull. They must have picked up survivors from Kup’s battalion. Macabre allowed himself a small smile. The loss of the  _Trion_  was a serious blow. The Autobots were running out of spaceworthy ships. This war would be over soon.  
  
…  
  
“Don’t touch ‘im.” Kup dragged Flack away, pushing him and Springer up the corridor. Drift had fallen into recharge there in the loading bay, the Great Sword safely stowed on his back – but the jewel still gleamed. Kup had the feeling the thing would protect the vulnerable mech. Urthr came in behind them, carrying her sisters, all of them charred and sparking.  
  
“Roadbuster, set a rendezvous course with the  _Sparkreaver_ ,” Springer said. The Wreckers were down to seventeen out of twenty. He’d think about replacements, if any, later. “Whisper, get a burst sent off to Optimus and Magnus.” Prime would know there had been trouble. Half of Kup’s 300 were dead, caught by the thermonuclear blast or chewed up by the masses of new Cons.   
  
The  _Xantium_  heaved and shuddered its way up through Chaar’s acidic, soot-laden atmosphere, shields set on a modulation scheme that would hide them as long as they kept to the high cloud layer. They’d put a little more distance between themselves and the origin of the nuclear missiles, then make a break for space.   
  
Meanwhile, they were going to have to squeeze a hundred and sixty-six mechs into a ship designed for a crew of fifty. Springer reached the bridge, glad Kup was relatively unhurt and by his side.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2042 - December  
  
Lilac-pewter clouds obscured all but a pale pink band of sky along the western horizon, shading the desert peaks in eerie twilight. Sam looked up at Prowl, who stood at ease with him in the northern lookout. Keeping watch, but also simply watching the sunset.   
  
Fishing around in his internal directory, Sam found the private channel for the Protectobots. They were in Argentina, doing the usual; repairing bridges, breaking up ice on rivers that usually didn’t get iced, finding people lost in blizzards. It was summer there, but that hadn’t mattered this year. It wasn’t really summer anywhere.   
  
 _Hey, Spot,_  Sam transmitted. That never got old, calling the big fire truck “Spot”.  _Any chance you guys could knock off the hero business for a week and come home for the holidays?_  
  
 _Hello, Sam,_  Hot Spot answered right away. Sam had expected a subroutine, but this sounded like a big chunk of the mech’s attention. And Sam wasn’t sure how he knew that. Weird.  _Aid’s been talking about that. If nothing comes up we’ll be there by the 20th._  
  
 _Awesome! See ya then._  
  
 _Will do._  
  
Mikaela would be really pleased. She had a soft spot for the Pbots about the size of Jupiter.  
  
…  
  
Snowball fights among the Autobots were an interesting exercise. The relative fragility of balls of actual snow – as opposed to ice, which was accounted cheating, and also too dangerous with humans around – meant they couldn’t throw with their full strength. Their main advantage, therefore, was that they had such big damn hands.   
  
Even Bumblebee’s arsenal – who had opted for quantity rather than size – consisted of snowballs as big as Sam’s head. Jazz beside them had much larger spheres, which he was gouging a series of divots into, like golf balls, in order to make them fly farther. Bee and Jazz also had the best snow fort, so Sam and Mikaela had holed up with them for the duration of this particular round.  
  
“Okay, now Prime’s gonna try to cut through here in order to flank the Twins,” Jazz said. “We just gotta sit tight and wait for our moment.”  
  
“Um, Jazz?” said Bee weakly, looking up. Sam was busy making his own snowballs as perfectly round and compact as possible. A smaller missile, Sam had found, could nail a bot between armor plates, making them jump around in entertaining ways from the cold hitting their more sensitive bits. Sam had a pretty good arm.   
  
“I am disinclined to acquiesce to your ambush,” said a deep voice above them. Sam looked around to find he was the last to realize their position had been compromised. Prime had climbed the ridge behind them.  
  
And was holding aloft in one hand what was possibly the largest snowball ever created on this planet.   
  
“You wouldn’t,” Sam whispered. Mikaela slapped his arm and glared at him as the sunlight dimmed in their vicinity. Bee and Jazz dove over the humans, shielding them with their bodies. Optimus let the giant snowball of doom tip gently from his fingertips.   
  
For such an enormous quantity of snow, it had been packed lightly. It sifted between Bee and Jazz and got down every piece of clothing Sam had on. Laughing, Bee and Jazz burrowed themselves and the humans out from the new drift and salvaged their arsenals, ready for retaliation. Optimus was already sprinting away but Jazz pegged him with a fast double-throw, Bee following up with a rapid-fire barrage. Everyone was giggling by the time Optimus was out of range.   
  
…  
  
Later that evening.   
  
Sam paced the mezzanine, deep in a conference call with a handful of very concerned officials who were upset by recent Decepticon attacks on their solar power stations. “I understand the loss of that many panels has a considerable monetary value attached, but I’d like to point out that the latest solar films are half the cost and twice as efficient…” He quirked a smile at Optimus as the Prime walked by. Optimus stopped and leaned closer, rather shamelessly listening in. Perfect.   
  
The conference table was often littered with cups and mugs and even coolers or thermoses of various human comestibles. Sam scooped something out of a cooler and lobbed it at Prime in a single smooth motion. Prime’s faceplate came up just that fast, though, and the snowball smashed itself to flakes against its prow. Sam was disappointed for half a second, until some of the pieces fell down into the mechanisms surrounding Prime’s neck.  
  
“Aaagh!” Optimus swiped ineffectually at the already melting chunks, knocking a few in deeper and hopping around as the cold got down into his workings.   
  
Still listening to an earnest, if pleasantly accented, tirade, Sam did a victory jog around the table with arms uplifted.   
  
…  
  
Their annual ritual complete, Optimus lowered Mikaela to the hangar floor. The mistletoe sprig wasn’t exactly in the center of the domed ceiling – they’d need Skyfire’s help for that – but it was far enough from any of the archways or doors to be a surprise. Last year it had been about halfway down the stem corridor, which meant it got put to a great deal of use, but said use was not as public and on display as Mikaela and Prime liked.   
  
Breakaway was the first to get caught beneath it; by Jazz, who, it must be said, could be trusted to lay in wait for every opportunity. Jazz tied the traditional green and white ribbon around Breakaway’s right audial so the young jet could proudly strut around for the rest of the season and get extra smooches.   
  
Scattershot almost lost an arm for grabbing Afterburner, but pointed upward just in time. Not even Afterburner could bring himself to refuse with Mikaela standing right there, watching. It was strange the way the heat of hostility between the two of them transmuted to something else when they were kissing.   
  
“So this is one of the devices the humans employ to absolve them of the responsibility of initiating courtship?” Elita gazed up at the sprig curiously. Prime scratched his cheek guard.  
  
“It’s just an excuse to snog,” Ironhide said, dragging Chromia and Elita properly under for a three-way kiss that lasted almost an hour.   
  
…  
  
“What are you…? Ah.” Ratchet joined Maggie at the big TV, watching a video feed from the Canadian side of Lake Huron. Borealis, Polaris and Blueshift were learning to ice skate. Maggie was bent double, laughing, as Borealis took a particularly spectacular spinning fall, arms and legs and wings everywhere.   
  
“I think they get more points for wipeouts than staying on their feet,” Maggie explained. “But it doesn’t pay to make it look too fake.”  
  
“I see.”  _What’s your score?_  Ratchet tight-beamed Borealis.  
  
 _Oh, were we keeping track?_  she laughed.  _I don’t know, ask Shifty._  
  
 _Lissi’s ahead by ten,_  Blueshift provided.  _I’m dead last, but that means I’m the most graceful._  
  
…  
  
Watching the Protectobots arrive at the embassy was like watching family come home in every mushy holiday TV movie ever inspired by Norman Rockwell paintings or Hallmark cards. Except no-one was carrying plates of steaming food or packages of gifts. Groove had a knitted scarf, though. Glen hadn’t known yarn even came in that many colors. He wondered how Groove had kept it from getting tangled up in his bike mode.  
  
Even the alpha Seekers got into it; rubbing Breakaway’s helm, and accepting hugs from Hot Spot and First Aid. No one escaped hugs from First Aid. Bluestreak had even come from Metroplex for the week. He had told Glen at length how he felt bad for leaving Plexie and Ultra Magnus all alone, but the humans stationed there were having parties too and appreciated the decorations Plexie had contrived for the plazas and main thoroughfares. Glen had agreed that probably Ultra Magnus was content anyway, as long as he was with Metroplex; and that this was very cute.   
  
Groove wrapped himself around Smokescreen, looking like he wasn’t going to be dislodged any time soon. Streetwise had dragged Tracks off beneath the mistletoe first thing, with Tracks laughing and hugging him with unabashed happiness. Elita leaned close to Spandrel and Hot Spot, deep in conversation.  
  
There was Prowl, holding Blades' hands, their arms double-cabled, looking into each other's optics, Blades standing tall, at attention, as if giving a report. Maybe he was. Prowl was taking it seriously. Their little conference ended, Blades put his arm around Prowl's shoulders, unconsciously careful of the door-wings, as Streetwise and Tracks joined them. Streets snuggled into Prowl, cheek to cheek, optics bright and just a little mischievous.   
  
Perceptor and Wheeljack came in from the tower, laughing and shaking snow onto each other, immediately folded into the warmth of the hangar and the gathered mechs. Glen sipped his cocoa. No one was watching the Constructicons, he thought, letting the notion flit across his mind and linger. They mostly kept to themselves, as far as he knew. He wasn’t sure how he felt about them being in the vicinity, even after five years. Robot business, he supposed. Prime was okay with them, so who was Glen to argue?   
  
Speaking of. There went Prime, striding through the hangar and outside. Glen raised his eyebrows at Maggie as she joined him on the mezzanine. “What’s up?”  
  
“Yeah, that looked purposeful, didn’t it,” she agreed. About half the other mechs in the hangar were following Prime out.   
  
 _Autobots incoming,_  Hound explained. His tone was hard to read. Glen thought he sounded happy, but…not entirely.   
  
 _Kup’s group?_  Maggie asked.  
  
Oh yeah. They’d taken heavy losses earlier that year.   
  
 _Yes,_  said Hound.  _Oops. Ah, there they are. Had a bad second there with the EDF satellite net._  Humans tended to consider approaching spaceships on a shoot and ask for IFF codes at the same time basis these days. Prime requested calm before the cloud mind could get rowdy.   
  
Ten minutes later, the incipient party acquired a somber note as the survivors from Chaar were finally able to get out of the cramped quarters aboard the _Xantium_  and stretch their limbs. Ratchet scanned everyone, grim-faced, though most repairs had been made during the journey.   
  
Smiles returned to everyone’s faces, though, as Kup came in, practically dragging Hot Rod, who had clamped himself to his progenitor with typically uncurbed enthusiasm.   
  
“Get off,” Kup scolded, prying at the arms around his torso. “Get off, lemme look at ya!”   
  
Laughing, Hot Rod finally let go and stood back for a moment, turning slowly to show off his latest color scheme to the fullest. Kup crossed his arms, tilting his head to one side.   
  
“One more time round,” he said, tilting his head to the other side. “Huh. Isn’t that combination kinda subdued? You sure you don’t want to add something a little brighter? You might be mistaken for a tropical sunset as you are…”   
  
Hot Rod rolled his optics and struck a dramatically sulky pose as guffaws and laughter spread around them. Kup glomped him, lifting him off the floor and spinning around, setting him down hasty and embarrassed but not letting go. They pressed forehelms and stayed that way for a long time.   
  
 _Tell me a story,_  Hot Rod tight-beamed.  
  
 _I’ll tell you every story I know,_  Kup promised. No matter how long it took. The party skirled and surged around them where they stood and nobody minded.   
  
Drift paused at the hangar entrance.   
  
 _A white hart!_  Maggie tight-beamed, biting her lips.  
  
He did look a little staglike, even without antlers, Glen agreed. Harry Potter’s Patronus in super-advanced alloy. Something about those pointy feet maybe, or the way he moved.   
  
“Afterburner?” Drift peered around the crowded hangar. The Technobots were in a clump near the stem corridor. To a mech, they pointed at their brother, receiving glares and private-channel curses which they ignored. As Drift approached, Afterburner settled his armor in what he hoped was an inconspicuous fashion. Scattershot snickered. He’d get punched for that later.   
  
Prowl, Nightbeat and Blades appeared out of nowhere. Looking around, Afterburner saw Mikaela and Dani watching from the mezzanine, next to Maggie and Glen. Great. An audience. At least most of the other mechs in the room weren’t overtly paying them much attention.   
  
“Hi,” Afterburner said. First salvo.   
  
“Hello.” Drift’s smile came on slow. Wry and small at first, shaded with regret, broadening as their fields bumped; anxious, tentative, curious. Afterburner turned a little sideways, holding one arm slightly away from his body, optics focused despite his unsettled expression. Drift beamed, unleashing full wattage it would take a far stronger mech to resist, and slid into the proffered embrace.   
  
 _That was so cute!_  Blades tight-beamed to Prowl.   
  
Prowl gave Blades’ waist a squeeze, then leaned in to nuzzle Afterburner’s cheek. And kiss Drift.  
  
…  
  
Strake and Thundercracker looked at each other, optic ridges and sensory vanes canted at mutually curious angles. They almost didn’t need comms. The newsparks Prime had kindled were interesting, yes. Youngsters were always fun. But there were some weird reactions going on among the older mechs. Kup and Drift especially, who seemed to have particular fondnesses for mechs they couldn’t have ever met. What was that about?  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Are you making snow angels or setting up a snowmobile mogul course?”  
  
“Hm!” said Groove, lifting his head to blink at Sam. “Both?”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2043 - February  
  
She wanted the searing luminescence of sparks merged. She wanted a tall crystalline tank full of glittering nanomachines. She wanted to build her children and watch them stride forth awake and aware, full-formed from her brow.   
  
“I was born about a hundred years too soon,” she groaned to Roddy as she embraced the porcelain throne. There was no sign from the outside yet of the changes in her body. Dani could feel things, though, besides the nausea. Or so she told herself. She pestered Ratchet every few days for new scans, translated to holo, both of them watching cell division and tissue formation and neural tube closure with equal fascination.   
  
She wished her daughter could open her eyes on her birth day and tell her her name. She wished her daughter could spend the next seven months watching and listening and learning things from the nets and the cloud mind. She wished the color of her daughter’s skin could be changed as easily as chameleon mesh.   
  
Her daughter would be darker than her mother, who, like  _her_  mother, tanned easily; but she would be lighter than the anonymous sperm donor father. Dani had chosen physical traits as deliberately as mental. The man had multiple PhDs in both technical fields and humanities. Nightbeat had double-checked. This mythical paragon did indeed exist. Happily married for years; he’d probably paid for one or two textbooks at university with the sperm bank fee.   
  
There were thus things her daughter would have to deal with that were outside Dani’s experience; at least in detail. Dani was angry, wanted to make a point. There were parameters humanity needed to grow beyond.   
  
“I gotta say, dry heaves really look like they suck,” Hot Rod said helpfully. He’d held her hair, at least, since he could get one arm into the tiny bathroom.   
  
Her parents had had mixed emotions at her revelation. They didn’t feel old enough to be grandparents already. Dani didn’t even have a boyfriend right now. She was popular at the lab where she worked, but the men who thought they could compete with Roddy for her time and attention really couldn’t. And the kinder, shyer men who knew they couldn’t didn’t try. Her mother in particular made certain Dani understood how difficult single parenthood would be, even if her financial situation was stable. Dani’s response that her village included more than enough robot nannies had been true but did not go over all that well with a Mikaela set on a lecture.   
  
“Dry heaves definitely suck,” Roddy said softly. Dani spat once more into the bowl and curled up on the cool tile as he flushed the toilet for her and rubbed her back.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2043 – March  
  
The culture of the war had changed over the eons. Sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly. In the beginning, when the Decepticons had considered themselves warriors bound by a strict code of honor, medics on or off the field of battle had been invalid targets. Later, because a competent medic could get a lightly wounded mech back online and into the fight in less than a breem, the medics were hit first. Tactics changed back and forth, leaning more and more toward the desperate, the strictly practical as the war ground on.   
  
Ratchet had long ago ceased being a non-combatant. He was well armored and powerfully shielded. Secondary internal systems could become primary, redundant parts could be shifted to provide working structures as mains were damaged. He could – and had, and did – stand pat and take concentrated fire from one or two average mechs over several minutes. Long enough to get critical repairs done, or hold his part of a line until help arrived. Predaking, however, wasn’t the average mech.  
  
Mikaela knew this feeling. Keeping rage and fear at bay with the concentration required by the task at hand. She worked her waldoes from the safe room behind med-bay in silence. Chasing failure after failure, patching and reconnecting and soldering; mirroring and augmenting Perceptor’s movements elbow-deep in Ratchet’s chassis. The spark readouts didn’t look good.   
  
She felt it when Perceptor laid a hand on one of her servos, stilling it, stilling her. Perceptor bowed his helm.   
  
“No,” Mikaela growled. “Goddammit. No.”  
  
Outside med-bay, Skyfire paced alongside Borealis, watching her closely, prepared to catch. She stopped, optics pale, body utterly still for a moment.  
  
Perceptor’s hand left Mikaela’s servo. Prime was there. Perceptor gave way as Optimus bent over Ratchet’s body, spark chamber open.   
  
 **Ratchet! Dear friend, tell me what you want.**  
  
Seconds passed, suspended between worlds. Optimus’ hands gripped the edges of the repair table. A single glyph transmitted weakly, a signal that would have been lost had Optimus not been mere centimeters away.   
  
 _…Entangled..._  
  
They were fairly certain the entanglement of sparks would not cause related sparks to extinguish. When Bumblebee had been shot, Atrandom had been on the highway, spinning out onto the shoulder of the road; Blurr had been basking on the mesa top; Blaster’s jam session broadcast had cut off abruptly; and Swerve had lived up to his name on the iced-over St. Lawrence River, hitting a tree but doing only minor damage. All had lost consciousness briefly, all had recovered. Breakaway had been in the growth tank at Evac’s death and therefore more or less on spark-support. They were fairly certain related sparks would not extinguish, but not  _completely_  certain.   
  
Ratchet knew this. For Borealis’ sake, if Prime could draw him back from death, he wanted him to try. Prime yanked his chest wider, unleashing the blue lightning within.   
  
Optics wide and bright, sensory vanes whirling, Perceptor dove back into repairs, tugging on Mikaela’s remote servo, jarring her into action as Prime held the energies of Ratchet’s spark together.  
  
…  
  
He wasn’t dead. He was in stasis, floating there in the CR tank. The readouts were steady. She knew she should trust them. Mikaela sat on her gantry, watching him. She had never seen him like this. Optics dark, mouth slack, hands limp at his sides. He was going to be fine. There was nothing further she was needed for.   
  
People died in wars. Hadn’t they seen that from the beginning, with Jazz? She still felt closest to Prime’s little team, that first five she and Sam had met when they were kids. People died in wars, but the robots could be raised again if they wanted. Respawned, like it was some big first-person shooter. How could you do that? Watch someone you loved die, and die again, and even knowing it didn’t have to be a permanent good-bye didn’t make the pain less. Resurrection wasn’t guaranteed, though, even for robots. Would Ratchet have come back, given the choice?   
  
Not for her sake, Mikaela felt sure, accepting the needle-stick of jealousy. For Prime maybe, and Ironhide and Wheeljack. Maybe like the Legion he’d come back to see things through, to help end the war. She could ask him when he came out of stasis. She probably wouldn’t.  
  
A large fingertip touched her foot. She jumped a little, grinning wryly at herself. She hadn’t heard Prime come in. A blue dot appeared briefly on her contact lens HUD as he gave her a cursory scan. She liked having the indicator. It gave her an understanding of how much the robots kept track of each other, always reaching out with scans and fields, always connected.   
  
“Hey, Optimus.”  
  
“Evening, Mikaela.”   
  
She patted his finger. “How ya doing?”  
  
He leaned toward her, touching the angular tip of his mid-helm buttress to her cheek. An interspecies nuzzle. “I am well enough,” he said, straightening, turning to regard Ratchet’s form in the tank.   
  
Well enough. Of course he was. And what point would there be in asking if he ever got tired of being well enough? Of course he did. And then he would dismiss the feeling as being irrelevant and unhelpful. Bee said they could reroute things like that. Shelve their cognitive and emotional processes and reactions until later, when it would be easier or more convenient – or less dangerous – to deal with them. But deal with them they must. Or risk programming that would fritz itself over the long spans of time they existed by.   
  
Ratchet’s optics lit, dim and watery through the CR medium and curved plex tank wall. His hands twitched. The little blue dot came up in Mikaela’s HUD again.   
  
The med-bay doors whooshed as First Aid came hauling in, sensory fins in a spiky crown around his helm. Prime scooted out of the line of fire, the big chicken.   
  
“Ratchet!” Aid growled, stabbing at the tank’s control panel with an I/O spike. “Quit overriding my overrides!”   
  
Bee and Sam appeared in the doorway, having seen Aid’s little sprint. Sam climbed up beside Mikaela and put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, suddenly tired. Growing into adulthood amid the robots taught a person things. Work your ass off while you can. Accept kisses from everyone. Sleep when you’re exhausted, or someone will come after you and nag until you do.   
  
As First Aid and Prime warbled and cajoled and rumbled and pled with Ratchet, and the CMO at last relented and shut himself down with promises to stay offline until his repairs were truly completed, Bee gathered up his humans and carried them to their room.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Every thirty-one breems a transmission pinged his receivers, slowly increasing in volume until finally impinging on Razorclaw’s attention. He considered not replying, but now that he was aware of the ping it would annoy him. Prime could have nothing useful to say, but it might be fun.  
  
 **Razorclaw.**  
  
 _What do you want, Prime?_  
  
 **Please stop. This war is destroying us. If you must hunt, hunt me.**  
  
Razorclaw laughed.  _We’ll hunt_  you  _last. Shockwave, I think, would be interested in testing this theory that you can’t be killed._  
  
 **You and your brothers were the best pre-contact xenobiology team in the Empire. What happened? Are you really happy with a life spent murdering your own people?**  
  
 _Ha! Now we call it murder do we? What would Bonecrusher say, oh merciful Prime?_  
  
 **If I relayed his answer, would you listen?**  
  
 _Nice try. Keep your malformed spark to yourself. Those flighty Seekers might have been easy to turn, but the rest of us have principles. Slag off._  He cut the connection. Prime did not ping him again.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Hullo, Hoist,” Wheeljack said, extending a hand as Hoist joined him in front of Ratchet’s CR tank. “What brings you south?”  
  
“Architectural conference in Vegas. Grapple wanted to go, and of course he couldn’t drive so far alone.” Hoist squeezed the proffered hand and leaned down to nuzzle Wheeljack’s helm. “And I wanted to see for myself how Perceptor’s doing. Can’t trust him to self-report accurately on recharge cycles.”  
  
“Heh. No.” Wheeljack redistributed his weight as Hoist moved behind and wrapped his arms around him, resting his helm on Wheeljack’s central crest. He liked the feel of Hoist’s arms around him, liked the lingering scent of gypsum doughnut ingredients that lingered on his armor. Hoist had been making a lot of really large batches of those lately. As one had to when delta Seekers kept swooping down to eat the omega’s share. “Scavenger’s been taking pretty good care of that, believe it or not.”  
  
“Really? Interesting.”   
  
“Yeah. Kinda out of left field. Sca’s a cute kid, I admit.”  
  
“Oh, that’s right. He’s younger than the others. They reconfigured to add him and Longhaul, didn’t they.”  
  
“Just before the war formally broke out.” Wheeljack wondered if Hook or Scrapper had seen what was coming and bulked up their gestalt with that in mind. There had been plenty of signs, in retrospect, but the simple fact that Cybertron had never before suffered an all-out civil war had blinded more than the complacent masses. He leaned into Hoist’s comforting warmth, an idea taking shape.  _We got an empty tank in the next room. Several, actually, but I wasn’t thinking that many._  
  
 _Speaking of Perceptor, hm?_  Hoist squeezed him, venting warm against Wheeljack’s headfins.   
  
 _What’s he and Comber got going up there, the fourth batch of twenty?_  Wheeljack turned in Hoist’s embrace, settling his hands on Hoist’s legs.   
  
 _Perceptor and Seaspray, actually. Beachcomber and Miles are in Nepal._  
  
 _Wow. So real fishies among the Water Babies this time?_  
  
 _I think so. Well. It’s impossible to tell their preferences this early. Coding indicates there are a handful of_ ke _s in this batch in addition to the usual_ de _s,_ je _s and_ ae _s. I don’t think the genders are, erm, breeding true, so to speak._  
  
 _They didn’t used to breed, so that makes sense. Specially if you’re using mostly Prime’s mass._  That was one of the distinctions of a Prime that had never had a satisfactory explanation. Protomass from a Prime could be retrofitted very easily to any forging. Wheeljack had thought it was an atavism from the days of the Firstforged and the ancient foci-Primes; and so it was, but the sparkmerge method had shed new light on why.   
  
 _Between that and building Metroplex at least we’re keeping Prime to a manageable size._  Hoist caressed Wheeljack’s head-fins.  _I really should accompany Grapple to the conference. I know it’s not that far, but…_  He looked at Ratchet’s body in the tank. Attacking a group of Autobots so close to Nellis and the embassy had been a deliberate affront. The Predacons evidently felt they could evade human counterstrikes indefinitely, taking up guerilla tactics that had heretofore been employed mostly by the outnumbered, outgunned Autobots.   
  
 _Mmmm. Vector’s way doesn’t knock you on your aft for that long. Or Atrandom and the Lambos can go with._  
  
Hoist clacked, amused.  _I suppose you think Atrandom will keep the twins in line?_  
  
 _Other way around, actually,_  Wheeljack chuckled. He wandered his hands down the backs of Hoist’s thighs. Not quite reaching the knees. Hoist’s engine revved.  _The twins do go on their best behavior if they think they’re on newspark-watch; but Dom was third kid out, so she thinks she’s big sib to everyone but Lissi. And even her sometimes, since “everyone” knows how silly jets are._  
  
 _Oh dear._  Hoist shivered. Wheeljack’s hands were doing such nice things.  _Well, in any case, Wheeljack, I gladly…mmmm…accept._  Carefully selected levels of the cloud mind rang with joy and laughter and pre-congratulatory glyphs.   
  
“Hot diggetty!” Wheeljack enthused. He got no further spoken words out, though. Hoist knelt and curled around him, spark chamber seals already disengaging, thoracic cables hot and limber, caressing him. They shuffled toward the growth tank chamber, taking three steps and pausing, distracted by each other, their minds folding together. Hoist whose existence was dedicated to helping others, whether it was assisting Grapple with the physical manifestations of his designs, or hauling vehicles (or vehicle modes) out of various kinds of sticky situations. Wheeljack, whose function was just as practical, just as punctuated by the fanciful, who had also been compelled by war to become both a soldier and a repairer of broken bodies.  
  
Eventually, the heavy door to the growth tank chamber closed and locked. Within his CR tank Ratchet’s optics didn’t light, but he smiled.   
  
…  
  
The light came into being between their hands, rising, brightening, spinning in love and happiness – and then  _split_. Twinned, because such joy could not be contained within a single spark. Hoist blinked and Wheeljack subsided, laughing, to the table. A few of Beachcomber and Perceptor’s spark-children had twinned, it wasn’t that unusual, Hoist told himself, delivering the pair into the magnetic embrace of the tank. They burrowed into the protomass – he would have to add more very soon – dividing the mass in even coils between them, snuggling even before they had started assembling proper bodies, let alone limbs.   
  
 _What did you expect them to do?_  Ratchet tight-beamed, amused.  _With you two as progenitors? They’re going to be the most maddeningly amenable and bewilderingly kind people ever kindled. Primus help us all._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
We are the silent. Nameless, we lie in our stone graves until he calls. We can hear but not answer. We obey. In battle the pain of these bodies is less. Our sparks writhe in our chests. We are the taken.   
  
The language files I have been given are small and simple. I don’t remember what my language files were like before, when I was alive the first time, but I feel that they were big, and not simple. I can’t send this feeling to the others, but I sometimes wonder if they feel the missingness too. Mostly I am thirsty. The sunlight is not strong here. The air is in the way. Things in the air I don’t have words for any more are in the way of the sunlight. The stone graves are hot. I don’t know the words for the things that make the stone hot. Hot should feel good, I think, and don’t know why. The pain makes everything harder, even the good hot makes us want to move, to get away, to fight.   
  
Being dead was good. It was better. I don’t remember it, but I think it was better than now. Dead is better. Everyone should be dead. We wait until he calls, and then we can make everyone dead.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2043 – March  
  
She was outbound again for another long pull, ferrying a load of space-bridge emitters to Cybertron. Orris had elected to go with her this time. He would be the first of the minicons to see their homeworld since the minicons had emigrated. He knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, but he was curious – as much about what his own reaction would be as what the planet actually looked like to his bare sensors.   
  
For her part, Borealis liked these seven-month jaunts. She was in space! Usually by herself! Like an ADULT! Navigating pulsar by pulsar, running her sensortips along the feathery edges of graviton waves. So many signals rode the non-Euclidean surfaces of the deeps; networks of civilizations she was not a part of and had little contact with. Not yet, anyway. She was a member of a pariah species, for now. That was okay. Just knowing others were out there was enough to make up for a lot.   
  
For Ixchel it had made up for everything, really.   
  
Orris was in light stasis, and would be for another few weeks. He wasn’t as fond of stretches of solitude, even ones so brief. Borealis didn’t mind. She had plenty of things to think about.  
  
She unfolded the pale, still moment when Ratchet’s spark had faltered. Helpless was a state she thought she’d left behind, but she’d been terrified, pacing outside the med-bay, grasping after but not finding a way to cope with the knowledge that she would feel the moment of his death. She felt adrift and mortal. Twenty-eight years as a Cybertronian was far too short a span – Ixchel had been fifty-one when she’d died – though she should be grateful for even that much. She  _was_ …she had experienced so many wonders already…but she didn’t want it to end yet. She didn’t want Ratchet or any of the others to die either, no matter how much older they were. People died in wars. Most of Cybertron already had. And most of the dead wanted to stay that way.  
  
Voice wouldn’t carry in the void, and she didn’t want to disturb Orris. She flared her fields wide in sorrow and worry and fear and anger, striking out across the EM spectrum.   
  
After several hours of field-lashing, however, she began to feel vaguely ridiculous. Go cry in a corner, emo kid. She sleeked herself down and flew on.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2043 - April  
  
He folded his legs beneath him. Not as neatly as the digitigrade Seekers could, but it served as a mindful pose Prime could hold in meditation without engaging his articulation locks; balancing his torso and all its parts just so. He thought about how breathing and heartbeat informed so much of what humans did and thought and how they stilled their minds, and how different that was from the spin of a spark and the constant  _shusssh_  of energon and coolant pumps, of which, because his body was large, he had many. Spin and flow, tideless, constant, steady. There were oscillations in Cybertronian bodies, but of different kinds than the oceanic changes humans took for granted.   
  
He settled his mind into calm and quiet. No active scans, only receiving. Even here on the mesa top, dulling his outward senses entirely would be a foolish risk. The Allspark had sent out its homing cry once every thousand years when it had been separated from the planet and the people it had created. Optimus considered that he ought to therefore be prepared to observe it on that time scale. He would never again be able to slip away from his entourage, into the Simfur temple at night and press himself against the cube to feel its comforting warmth and presence.   
  
He thought about Prowl’s request of the Allspark; about embodying it and what his responsibilities therefore had grown to encompass. A soul of souls. His consciousness expanded, contracted, slipped between to that strange multiplicity of planes where most of the Allspark resided. It had become easier, though not yet a journey to be lightly undertaken.   
  
Voices, patterns, names rose and coalesced out of the glimmering undark to greet him. The Matrix – separate but connected – resonated with him/them; seven of the sixteen Primes bestirring themselves to observe and comment upon what the youngest member of their cadre was up to this time. Optimus did not have to travel this path alone.   
  
Ahead (Optimus had the odd sensation that he was beginning to think of the Allspark as having a bipedal shape. Or a Cybertronian landscape on the surface of a bipedal Cybertronian shape – as Sam had once said, if you were a car, then life really was a highway) lay a bruised and disconnected region. The very substance/energy felt thinned, fractured. Galvatron’s moiety. Was the power of the Allspark truly infinite or merely staggeringly immense? Could Galvatron drain it? Was he trying to? It could heal itself, rebuild itself, given time. Could Optimus really aid it? Vector Prime seemed to think so. Healer of sparks. All sparks – all sparks are one, all are linked, all come from this, return to this, the ultimate mother-pattern.   
  
Mother. Spark-merge. He’d already done that, in a way. But maybe not in the right way? The old way. Vector’s way! Oh Primus! The field of stars/sparks opened around him as he dropped deep, opening himself wide and wild, surrendering to first principles, choosing the direction and speed – the vector – of kindness and care; to heal, to make whole again, to join the sundered pieces.   
  
 **Told you…**  Volant laughed.   
  
The intent, the choosing, was only the beginning. Energy, life, had to come from somewhere, could be redirected. Would the entire life-energy of a single spark be enough? The Primes in the Matrix reared up in alarm.  **Not so hasty, young one!**  
  
 **He didn’t get those self-sacrificial instincts from _me_ …**  
  
 **Obviously not.**  The vast sarcasm of a Prime dead for seven billion years is vast indeed.   
  
 **Little steps, Optimus,**  said Galena Prime gently.  **Have patience. The healing can be as well accomplished over time.**  
  
How much time? Optimus wondered how much the deceased Primes understood linear, chronological time any more. How much time did he have? Galvatron’s moiety grew with each miskindling.   
  
 **Oh Primus, here comes old Brightaft,**  said Zeta.   
  
 **Flight,**  intoned Effulgent Prime, using the glyph for flight-of-the-body rather than flight-within-another's-body or flight-of-spark.  **The branching path. Distance is all, distance is nothing. Find the answer in the wheel, though wings will follow.**  The Prime's pattern trembled, caught between the tines of hope and anxiety.   
  
 **There, there, Gen,**  Palladium, who had been Prime before Volant, murmured, sweeping his pattern through Effulgent's.   
  
 **Worlds eating worlds,**  Effulgent whispered, calm, resigned.  **You are the laser, I am the shield.**    
  
Optimus reeled with overwhelming fondness for the ancient, often incomprehensible Prime. Effulgent had been the third, after Nova and Guardian, and he rarely spoke any more. Optimus loved them all so much, these dear, unquiet dead; his inner companions since soon after his kindling. They'd kept him sane through the war. He had sometimes wondered if the Lord Protector shouldn't have had a Matrix of his own. Perhaps. Or perhaps each Lord Protector needed their own singularity, needed that swiftness of thought and resolve. They weren't supposed to be identical twins, they were supposed to balance. And yet, would not Megatron have taken comfort and wisdom from the presence of earlier Protectors?   
  
Of course now it was too late. To force such a thing upon Galvatron might only drive him more mad.   
  
 **All will become dark and quiet,**  Effulgent said, pulsing in an absently affectionate way through Palladium.   
  
 **I will pass you on to the next Prime long before then,**  Optimus assured them. His spark would never join with theirs in the Matrix in any case. His Primacy would be a gap within that artifact's memory, a sore place that could never heal.   
  
 **Not entirely,**  Volant said.  **There will be an echo of you, through us. We'll remember you, kiddo.**    
  
That was a comfort. Everything he had learned would not be entirely lost. Still, he would have to face the long dark more completely alone than he'd ever been. The best he could hope for was eternal stasis. The thought of being conscious and aware as the last black holes evaporated, the last neutron stars stopped spinning, and as proton decay unraveled matter itself horrified him beyond rationality.  
  
 **Optimus…speak with Perceptor of your fears,**  said Plenum thoughtfully. Plenum had had a talent for forecasting not unlike Effulgent’s and Prowl’s.   
  
 **Yes!**  Optimus felt hope rush through his mind and body.  **If anyone can figure out how to kill me, it will be Perceptor.**  
  
 **That’s not what he meant!**  Volant shouted. Bastion, Lustral and Maximal figuratively threw their hands in the air, and Zeta laughed at everyone.   
  
Optimus wanted to ask for further clarification, but suddenly felt the pinch, and the rending of another mass kindling of Galvatron’s new legion. This time he followed the cold, cruel, iron bands of Galvatron’s will; saw in one incandescent glance the imperatives by which the warlord coerced the Allspark to produce the forms he desired to entrap the unwilling sparks of the fallen.   
  
Not this time.  
  
 **Did you really forget, brother? All life matters to me. All Cybertronians are my people.**    
  
The kindling struck clear and true,  _new_  sparks coalescing from the infinite possibilities. The backlash knocked Galvatron off his feet and into stasis.   
  
…  
  
Arcee walked around him slowly. She wasn’t certain she should interrupt whatever he was doing. The feathery patterns of ice crystals were growing up his arms and legs, almost to his torso. She rested a hand on his forearm, then rubbed it gently, brushing the frost away.  
  
 _Prime._  She rubbed harder.  _Optimus?_  
  
 **Mm? Hello, Arcee.**  His optics flickered on.  
  
 _Come inside. You’re going to get your aft frozen to the rock up here._  
  
He looked down at her hand on his arm. At the frost muting his colors. Turning his arm over, he spread the fingers of that hand, watching the shimmer of moonlight on the crystals. Arcee jerked her hand away as heat rushed beneath it, melting the frost in seconds, wisping the remaining moisture away as steam. She blinked up at him.  
  
“Neat trick.”  
  
“It is the same as Ratchet or Perceptor channeling warmth to their hands.”  
  
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you could do that too.”  
  
“Neither did I.” He rose to his feet. “Arcee?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Please don’t tell Sam.”  
  
She laughed and headed for the “ladder” down. “You just don’t want to get put on the popcorn duty roster.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2043 - August  
  
“So, anyway, Rutile says he and Umbel want to make a greenhouse of Earth plants on Cybertron.” Trailbreaker waved his hands in broad circles. “Big arboretum kind of thing. And then Grapple gets wind of it, and already he’s got domes the size of the second moon planned.”  
  
“Just domes?” Groove asked, grinning. “Last I heard, Grapple was having raptures about Art Nouveau and wanted to complete the Sagrada Familia as a warm-up before starting something  _really_  big.”  
  
“Mmmmmm,” said Beachcomber. “Gaudi.”  
  
“It’s pretty,” Trailbreaker agreed. “But if he puts up any more wrought iron in your base I don’t think you’ll be able to move.”  
  
“Most of the non-structural stuff is recycled plastic, not iron,” Beachcomber said absently.  
  
“Okay, whatever,” Trailbreaker shrugged. “But first you guys hollowed out the entry so Skyfire could come in out of the rain and then Grapple installs so many lacy beams and trusses poor ‘Fire daren’t move once he’s in for fear of tangling his wings.”  
  
“It’s not that bad,” said Miles. “Skyfire only had to duck that one time, and then Grapple moved that piece.”  
  
Hound pretended to ignore them, (though he was actually keenly interested, or had been, while they were talking botany), reading early-21st-century Thundercats porn. Tygra was hot. Hound had also read a late 20th-century science fiction novel wherein a Siberian Tiger had represented Earth in an intergalactic beauty pageant. Hound had to agree it was a logical choice. He’d wheedled Perceptor into doing a genetic survey on the surviving big cats shortly after Perceptor’s team had arrived on Earth. Not that it had taken much wheedling, really. Perceptor was just as eager, taking the status of endangered species kind of personally, as the Autobots all rather tended to do these days, despite Vector’s assurances.   
  
Trailbreaker threw another rock at him. Beachcomber had managed to work himself into a startlingly lazy sort of headstand against the sloping canyon wall, with Miles balanced on one of his feet. The inclusion of the human in the nature-mechs’ gatherings had become a more and more frequent occurrence over the years. No one minded, and it wasn’t that much more trouble to be careful about trajectories and ricochets when throwing the traditional rocks. Groove bounced one off Trailbreaker’s thigh plate, making a satisfying  _clongg!_  which caused Hound to look up from his porn for a minute and snicker.   
  
(Miles had deduced fairly quickly that this rock throwing business was remarkably akin to a farting or burping contest. It had taken him slightly longer to learn to appreciate the subtleties of the various sounds thus produced, and the scoring system – admittedly this changed rapidly and unpredictably – for direct or indirect hits on various bits of anatomy.)  
  
“Aren’t the Russians and the Build Team commissioning him to make a lot of new gingerbread for the tube stations they’re rebuilding in Moscow?” Hound asked. The Russian capital had been a bright spot in Eastern Europe and had therefore been one of the  _Vivisector_ ’s targets. The city and kilometers of the surrounding suburbs had been cut in half. Like the inhabitants of most such cities, the Muscovites were already rebuilding over most of the slagged canyon, but were leaving a section to remember by and building a memorial park around it dedicated to the thousands killed.  
  
“Yeah,” said Groove. “He’s basing a lot of it on stuff from St. Petersburg.” Another bright spot, but fortunately the older parts of the city had been spared. The Russians in general had endured these past four long, grinding winters with aplomb. Snow made their country more beautiful and they’d had experience with famine.   
  
Hound got a dreamy expression on his face. “So if Grapple gets involved with Rutile’s arboretum project, we could have spires of glass and tri-luminum filled with green. And humans could come and live in them.” It would be nice to have more places on Cybertron friendly to breathing things, instead of just Embassy Row in Iacon and the Well Market in Polyhex.   
  
Miles looked at him. Maybe becoming a centenarian wouldn’t be enough. He’d need another decade or three. Living in a glassed-in habitat might strike some as uncomfortably close to living in a zoo, but Miles thought it would be a pretty interesting zoo.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
One thing both humans and Cybertronians appreciated was a good long soak after a hard day. Blades was no rebel in this respect. Only his tipped-back head kept him from sliding completely under the oil at the middle-deep end of the bathing pool. His rotors were fanned out, waving gently – the only part of his body in motion at the moment. So warm, so good, soaking all the way through every hinge and bearing and gimbal and rotator assembly.   
  
He vaguely heard someone walking down the ramp. Nothing wrong with his hearing, he just wasn’t paying that much attention. And it didn’t really matter who it was, did it, as long as it wasn’t Slingshot. Didn’t sound like his gait, so that was as far as Blades got, cognition-wise. He felt the waves through the oil as the other mech waded in, came closer, immersed, spent some time scrubbing, immersed again. In silence. Even the mech’s fields were held close so as not to disturb Blades. There was a familiar feel to the silence, as there had been a familiar feel to the footsteps, but Blades had done his one little bit of processing and then let it drop.   
  
Blades’ awareness shimmered, half slipping into recharge, dipping in and out of consciousness. A hand touched him high on his back, beneath the rotors, steadying him before he dropped entirely into the oil. Not that he would drown or anything, but hitting the bottom from that angle would jar his rotors some and that wouldn’t be a fun way to wake up. He lit his optics.  
  
“’Lo, Prowl,” he murmured. His spark gave a happy little whirl. Prowl’s optics brightened at him, which was one species of Prowl-smile. Without thinking, Blades curled an arm around his progenitor, rolling on his side to meet him.  
  
Once Blades kissed Prowl, he found he didn’t want to stop. “Mm. Mmmmm… Prowl… Prrrrwl…” Prowl’s name, spoken aloud between kisses made for a wonderful purr. He cupped Prowl’s helm, thumb tracking half-circles over an audial, and pressed his body against his progenitor’s, revving engine, spinning spark, his other hand stroking that lean, deadly body. Prowl’s armor overlapped more than most Autobots’, making it more difficult – but oh so worth it – to get at the sensitive places. Prowl’s beautiful silver hands settled on Blades’ waist; Prowl moved his entire torso against Blades’, flexing his fields and deepening their kiss. Blades clutched at him, gasping as Prowl’s cables thunked into Blades’ ports, the link like fire and thundering wind, the weightlessness at the peak of a parabolic arc. Blades arched his back, mouth open wide, oh Primus, hot as re-entry on a ship’s hull; he shook, chest parting under Prowl’s hands and mouth, corona blazing, reaching its pale amber arms for the blinding silver of its parent star.   
  
Their shields keeping the oil from boiling away, they collided in midair, gravity swinging them around, bodies like planetary cores coalescing; a molten, singing dynamo. The wings of their radiation brushed the limits of the cavern and beyond, arcing and overlapping, enveloping them in incandescent coils. Blue lightning rang like solar flares striking the Earth’s magnetosphere.  
  
Blades’ last coherent sensation was of Prowl easing him to the bottom of the pool, making sure his rotors lay smoothly along his back.  
  
…  
  
Big engine rumbling warm. Motion; a lifting, a little bounce to settle the load, long swing and sway of footsteps. Hot Spot kissed their helms and left them entwined on a table in the recharge bay.   
  
…  
  
To awaken from recharge to the feel of Prowl’s body pressed to his made Blades’ core temperature rise slow and contented. To online his optics to find that Prowl was himself only just coming out of recharge as well made Blades’ spark spin with happiness. Prowl had let himself sleep! In Blades’ arms!

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2044 – March  
  
“Succinate, Fumarate, Malate,” Perceptor sang, “with water and Fumarase, dear Malate dehydrogenase / Back we go, fast not slow, to Oxaloacetate!”  
  
From her workstation, Dani watched him rock little ‘Lissa. She felt a strange kind of déjà vu; the voice, the tune, those hands, the warmth of living metal; she knew these things, had known them from her earliest days. Perceptor had sung the Krebs Cycle lullaby to  _her_  when she’d been a baby, and a toddler. It was part of her innermost comfort systems. She hadn’t understood why everyone else seemed to find the melody unpleasant until her early teens, when she’d had a couple of talks with Oratorio regarding musical theory. The main problem, she’d learned, was that the two interwoven harmonies were in ranges inaudible to unaugmented human hearing; and that it was a song usually sung by Cybertronians who’d had too much high-grade and was therefore tailored to the fluctuations of a slightly unstable vocoder.   
  
Little Melissa watched the waving, curling sensory fins and vanes on Perceptor’s head with the same fascination Dani had at the same age. Perceptor sent Dani a feed, complete with three overlays of microbiological, metabolic and infrared data. Dani knew he’d removed at least another dozen layers, but was pleased he’d left the most pertinent three. Some of the other Bots pared their feeds down to audio and vid only when sharing with humans, but to Dani those feeds felt flat and bare. She liked having access to the swirl of data, liked being able to choose for herself which bits to ignore and which to enhance.   
  
“Sure you don’t mind?” she asked Perceptor. She was supposed to make certain, not just assume and toss the kid off to somebot else whenever she felt like it. Dani’s cheeks reddened at the recollection of her mother’s lecture. As if Dani and Nate hadn’t been more than half raised that way. She had work to do. She was supporting herself and her daughter. Everyone else used some kind of daycare facility, yet she wasn’t allowed to without elaborate and useless rituals of conciliation because her daycare providers happened to be…what? Aliens? Whose primary function wasn’t daycare, certainly, but if they volunteered to help out where was the harm? Besides, they weren’t really aliens as far as Dani was concerned. They’d been on the planet longer than she had.   
  
Perceptor cocked an accessory optic at her. Of course he didn’t mind, why in the world was she asking? He’d happily spend the entire morning watching cells divide. He needed to get out of the tower every now and then anyway. He’d had another row with Scrapper – more a continuation of the row they’d been having since they’d met, really – and even Scavenger was miffed at him at the moment. Perceptor wouldn’t allow any of the Constructicons within line-of-sight of the baby, snarling at Scavenger that he and his brothers had collectively taken enough fragile human lives, and that Perceptor wasn’t convinced the Structies even truly considered the humans sapient. Scavenger had actually yelled back for once. Then Ratchet and Hook had yelled, and Perceptor had stalked off in high dudgeon. Dani wondered what low dudgeon would be like. She approved of Perceptor’s protectiveness, but at the same time felt bad. Scavenger at least didn’t act like a sociopath, and he’d been keeping Perceptor company in a way that seemed to have been doing them both good. Hopefully they’d make up soon.   
  
Hook and Ratchet. That had been an interesting thing. Dani replayed her own vid of their meeting outside Wheeljack’s tower. The two medical officers had engaged a long, mutually considering look. And then without so much as a flinch exchanged wrist cables to compare files or something. Everyone had expected commentary at least from Ratchet. At that point, though, the only one snarling had been Ironhide.   
  
The code she was debugging wasn’t going to unsnarl itself. Dani resented having this kind of scutwork piled into her inbox, but she also hated inelegant code and felt the need to root it out and destroy it utterly. With the introduction of Cybertronian-influenced programming languages there was no excuse for this kind of garbage. Certainly not in any project Dani was involved with. The rest of her team might think they were punishing her for being the golden child – an understandable jealousy, as Roddy of all people had pointed out. It was irritating, but she was determined to not only not let it get to her, but to pull success and innovation through the others’ resistance.   
  
Besides, it would be mortally embarrassing to let this program go out to beta with crunky code. Teletraan would read it!  
  
...  
  
Day to night. That’s what it felt like, driving into the cool, dim embassy hangar from the noontime desert outside. Well. Nate wasn’t old enough to drive officially, but since Arcee was in charge of that department, and as long as they stayed more or less on embassy grounds…or weren’t spotted by Highway Patrol…no one fussed too much.   
  
He dismounted and peeled off his helmet – not even Arcee would let him bend that rule – and waved as Arcee transformed and strode off to the niche beside the med-bay for a quick refuel. Nate ran his fingers through his hair. This year he was trying out a longer style – fortunately he’d inherited his mother’s looser curls so was in no danger of resembling Weird Al or Carrot Top. He thought he looked rakish and daring. It was also possible he needed a few more years to grow into parts of his face, but there was nothing he could do about that. Until then, longer hair covered The Forehead.   
  
Perceptor was singing. Some kind of Too-Ra-Loo-Ra thing, thank god. Nate glanced around the human scaled area. Yep, non-Witwicky humans about. Hence the melodious baritone rather than the more usual caterwauling. Nate regarded the caterwauling with just as much fondness as his big sister, but was not currently at a stage to be willing to admit it. Perceptor had a nice voice when he was singing human songs, though, rocking baby Melissa in one hand and typing across several keyboards in Glen’s Nest with the other. The bank of mist screens above were going nuts, but to Perceptor’s optics it probably was just a leisurely trawl. Channel-surfing with the robots was the worst. Nate found his sister in her usual VR-lensed hunch at her workstation.  
  
“Dad still in the meeting?”  
  
“Hey, Nate. Yep. Did you get your homework done?”  
  
“Yeee-eees. Last night in fact, so shut up.”  
  
“Okay, okay, just checking. Wanna grab a couple sodas and meet me in the lounge? Tel’s got the preview cut from Joss Whedon’s new movie in the queue.”  
  
“Whoa, severe! Isn’t that pirate?”  
  
“Mr. Whedon himself sent the file to me,” Teletraan said.   
  
Was it possible for an AI to sound sniffy? Nate grinned. “The Jossman makes a robot movie and wants some C&C from you guys, right?”  
  
“Correct.”  
  
“You getting those sodas or what?” Dani pulled the jack from her occipital port and stretched.   
  
“On it!” Nate did not scamper. He sauntered with great deliberationosity and dignification.   
  
Dani snorted, then looked up. “Perceptor…?”  
  
“Go on,” he said, in no hurry to relinquish the baby. “I’ve seen it.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2044 – May  
  
Sunlight unfiltered by atmosphere felt good on his wings. Thundercracker arched high, pushing rather the limits of his parole. Except he carried one of Prime’s battle gnats in a cache. From above the ecliptic he caught the first glimmer and flash of IFF and sensor-flick. A delta, coming in from the Cybertron run. Mmm. One of the young ones. Emplaced with a minicon this time, if Thundercracker’s recall was accurate. Prime and the others had run interference for the minicons for years, until Pulse had stalked up to Thundercracker and punched him hard in mid-tarsal. His traditional greeting. Thundercracker had yelped and called Pulse all the traditional names.   
  
More and more people wanted this war over. Were sick of factions. Wanted their old friends back.   
  
The dark blue deep-Seeker flattened his…no, wait, this was the one they were supposed to call “her” for some reason. Whatever. Flattened her insertion trajectory. Ah. Some of them did like to surf down the long way, getting their heavily armored hulls nice and hot. Perfect vector for the Nevada embassy. He decided to follow her down.   
  
 _Landing on wheels? Really?_  he jibed as she lined herself up with the road. She hadn’t read like she was carrying much cargo.   
  
With an irritated flick of wingtips, Borealis jinked to port and flared, dumping speed as she transformed and skidded, dragging two long trenches with her feet in the dirt just off the road. Thundercracker landed lightly on the road surface, flipping nose-over-aft in transformation and touching down with hardly a sound, his talons leaving no mark on the easily scratched asphalt.   
  
She strode toward him, head held low and forward, wings rutched high. He grinned.   
  
Her foot came up and pressed him into the road, pinning him; one rearward-pointing toe between his legs, the rest fanned out around him with talons sunk into the pavement. It hadn’t been so much a kick as a shove. She wasn’t leaning her entire weight on him, either.  
  
“Mmmm,” he purred, stroking her lateral toes, drawing his claws along the metal with just the right amount of pressure to elicit a low singing thrum. Borealis shivered. “Delta-type foreplay.”  
  
She goggled at him. “…What?”   
  
He laughed. “When a delta wants to clang someone who isn’t also a delta. Or isn’t someone bigger, I guess. Sure way to get someone’s attention, and Seeker feet are sensitive.”  
  
Borealis yanked her foot off him and backed away. “You…you suck! I’ll never be able to step on Slingshot again!”  
  
“I’ll step on him for you if it’ll help.”  
  
“Gah!”  
  
This wasn’t going how he’d planned. She’d been revved up, at least somewhat, and now she was stalking off toward the embassy, wing segments angled down and back. Huh. She’d stopped. Ah, the minicon, Orris, was out on her helm, talking to her. She looked back over her portside shoulder at Thundercracker. He crossed his arms over his chest, spreading his wings in a rather fetching array. Flirting with deltas could be tricky, but it was worth it. He remembered Starscream’s consternation when Skyfire—   
  
Bad thought. Never mind, never mind, never mind!   
  
 _What’s your problem?_  came a lazy thought from Strake. He and Prowl were patrolling the Eastern Seaboard, looking for traces of Lockdown. The two alphas really liked it when Prowl was in hunter mode. Although that didn’t stop Strake from complaining about drag with Prowl sleeked on his dorsal hull.   
  
 _Get slagged,_  Thundercracker replied.  _I’m coming up. Taking the western side of the Atlantic._  He transformed and winged for the stratosphere.   
  
“What fresh hell?” said Borealis. Orris was barely clinging to her helm, laughing his aft off. She ignored him. Shrugging, she resumed her stomp into the embassy to report to Prime.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2055 – September  
  
When did 70 get to be six years away? How did that even happen? He didn’t feel a day over forty.  
  
Sam wasn’t sure whether he’d retire when he reached 70, or not. He technically worked for the government of the United States in an unofficial capacity these days. More of a consultant. Younger people had taken up the mantle of US Ambassador to Cybertron. He could retire now if he wanted. He’d let Smokey make a few choice investments for him – it was still a gamble, but Prowl had vetted them as well, and put a pretty high percentage on returns, so Sam had felt confident about it. His portfolio was diverse enough now that things were rolling along almost of their own impetus. Dani and Nate and the grandkids would be taken care of if it was money they needed.   
  
The Autobots themselves would handle anything else. Bee especially. Sam leaned back in the driver’s seat, not even pretending to drive. Mid-life crisis? What mid-life crisis? He’d always had a hot car.   
  
 _Sam?_  
  
 _Yeah?_  
  
 _Do you remember what I asked you, twenty years ago?_  
  
Twenty years ago? Sam couldn’t remember what he’d had for breakfast four hours ago. Bee’s tone was unusually solemn, though.   
  
 _You said 44 wasn’t so bad. To ask you again in twenty years. And it’s been._  
  
 _Forty…what…? Oh! Oh. I did say that, didn’t I._  
  
 _Yes, Sam._  
  
 _And you’re deliberately asking me now when Mikaela’s not around._  
  
 _Yes, Sam._  Bee wanted Sam’s answer for himself.   
  
And you think I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, Sam thought. And twenty years is a long time. But Sam had spent a long time not thinking about it. It wasn’t a more comfortable thing to think of now, his own death. Now it was much closer. He knew he was on the downward slope and picking up speed. He didn’t like to think about that. Live in the now!  
  
He was pretty darn healthy for a sixty-something, though. The Baby Boomers had thought they had it good. He was thankful Miles had proven an amenable and sturdy guinea pig. Not that Perceptor didn’t run thousands of sims first, checking for emergent properties of anything they wanted to try in a living human system. So far Miles had proven allergic to only two or three of the modifications, and each reaction had been milder than the one before as Perceptor fine-tuned his understanding of Miles’ physiology. The rest of the Autobots’ circle of human family benefitted most directly, and then Perceptor tended to set the data free. Big Pharma might snatch it up, but then they still had to go through years of R & D and government approval before marketing anything. Meanwhile the Protectobots put their weight behind Medecins Sans Frontieres (the Pbots were the literal poster children for MSF) and anyone else working on bringing innovations to the poorest. Developing countries didn’t have to follow in the superpowers’ wasteful, meandering path – they could (and did) bootstrap themselves fast forward, past generations of the worst mistakes to use better methods, including more advanced technology, but sometimes simpler answers were better. The “rising billion” were a market force to be reckoned with.   
  
 _Okay, but Mikaela being or not being here right now doesn’t matter. If she finds out I gave you the go-ahead I’ll spend the next thirty years sleeping on the couch._  
  
 _Sam…_  
  
 _And it’s not just that, okay? I’m not as whipped as you seem to think, thank you very much. I liked Daveed’s answer, all right? It’s enough that you’ll remember me when the sun goes red giant and incinerates the Earth. I’m good with that._  
  
 _Is that your final answer?_  Levity aside, Sam could tell Bee would accept it if it was.   
  
 _No. I’m not dumb. I could change my mind at the last minute. I’ll let you know, okay?_  
  
 _Okay. Hailing frequencies are always open for you, Sam._  
  
Sam snorted.  _Thanks, Uhura._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2056 - February  
  
"Mmmmmmm! Oh, Hoist, what are you baking?"   
  
Hoist looked up from the muffin tin he was loading with festive paper cups. Yasmina had appeared at the mouse-like hole in the kitchen wall at Hoist’s optic-height. In the Oregon base, the human passages wended their way through the walls as often as not. It was no place for a claustrophobe. This passage led to a small balcony with a decorative wrought-iron railing designed by Grapple and constructed by Hoist. Hoist had made the rest of his kitchen as well: all the appliances as well as the metal or glass "hardware". Much of the latter was in two scales.   
  
"Hello, Yasmina. I was feeling nostalgic, so I decided to make pizza with asiago, provolone, jack, white garlic sauce, and artichoke hearts." Alton Brown - Hoist's culinary hero and guru - had passed away a year ago to the day.   
  
“It smells divine,” Yasmina said.   
  
“Three more minutes,” Hoist told her. “Cupcakes – obviously – for dessert.”  
  
“I’m pinging Marcus now. How many are we serving?”  
  
“There are ten humans in residence at the moment.” Hoist spun the wooden pizza peel in his fingers like a gunslinger spinning a pistol. He’d given in to the temptation to name it Emma. “I believe Juan and Dr. Okenedo are setting the dining room table as we speak.”  
  
Yasmina had been a little jealous of Dr. Semele Okenedo at first. Thirty-seven years ago, Yasmina had been the young prodigy winning her chance to study with newly arrived alien robots. But Dr. Okenedo upon arrival had unabashedly and unreservedly fallen in love with Perceptor and Beachcomber and Seaspray, and it was difficult to maintain a petty grudge against someone like that.   
  
The base alarms went off – flashing lights and whooping sirens covering the range of human hearing as the general lighting changed to crimson in critical areas.   
  
“Predacons in the hangar,” Event Horizon announced. “Predacons in the hangar. Base lockdown engaging now. Travertine, Axon, shut that off and get to the perimeter, this isn’t a drill.”   
  
“Go, Yasmina!” Hoist said, flicking a thought at the oven to shut it off and waving a hand at the human. Yasmina was already running down the passage to the nearest bolt-hole. Buried in solid granite and shielded, even if the Preds found the entry passages they were far too big to fit through, and a heavy door protected those within. Perceptor had created the encryption on the door locks, so hacking the mechanism was unlikely, and even a battleship-grade hull-cutter would take about half an hour to cut through, assuming one could be maneuvered into such a small space. The bolt-holes had been built to withstand a direct nuclear strike on the mountain.   
  
Hoist ran from the kitchen when he knew she was safely on her way. Warpath was incoming, eager as usual to mix it up with the Cons, any Cons. For once, Hoist was glad most of the Water Babies were out assisting various human organizations with rebuilding cities and disassembling the no longer needed winter mitigation projects. Their numbers might have helped, but he didn’t like seeing them fight. Leave it to the old veterans, let them bear the brunt of this dying conflict until it was over. The Water Babies were builders, makers, askers of questions, seekers of answers. Hope and salvation with inquisitive fingers.  
  
By the time Hoist arrived, the hangar resembled an industrial blender on puree. The blinding noise and tumultuous motion, spraying fluids from cut fuel lines, enraged roars, the reek of burning metal and plasma ionization. Hoist hated this; hated the violation of their secluded base and peaceful evening, hated fighting, hated watching Grapple come unglued as one of the Predacons yanked a length of wrought-iron railing out of its moorings and bashed Gears with it.  
  
Hoist tucked his head deeper in his armor and barreled into the maelstrom. The five Predacons fought like twenty, and Warpath in a confined space was never a fantastic idea. Event Horizon had control of the crashed ship’s belly turret, but the AI rarely had a clean shot. At least she was keeping Divebomb busy.   
  
Seaspray – who was no more fond than Warpath of maneuvers in close spaces, but was a canny, smart fighter despite – moved to Hoist’s side, barring the passage leading to the rest of the base. Grateful for the support, Hoist was thus able to focus on Razorclaw, pinpointing the gestalt leader amid the whirling barrage by his distinctive silhouette. Razorclaw’s optics were similarly focused on Hoist.  _Oh slag._  
  
The world exploded.  
  
Hoist collapsed, smoke and embers dripping from his helm. Across the hangar, Grapple – out of solid ordnance and rapidly draining his energy supply – screamed. Seaspray tried to cover the architect as he lunged toward his friend, but fire from Tantrum and Rampage knocked them both out.   
  
Razorclaw smiled as he swung around, already calculating new firing angles. His guns fell into six pieces a moment before heavy plasma fire lit up his torso. He staggered back, snarling.  
  
Skyfire had arrived, carrying Perceptor.   
  
“Leave now or I’ll disassemble you and your team,” Perceptor said quietly.   
  
Predacons do not surrender. Predacons do not give up a hunt once begun. Predacons are not defeated in battle. Razorclaw weighed a number of options. The light cannon on Perceptor’s shoulder whined, bits of armor flicked away from Tantrum, Divebomb, and Headstrong, leaving glowing orange lines of former attachment. Predacons are not stupid.   
  
“Enjoy your respite, Seekerbane,” Razorclaw sneered. He signaled his team to pull out. They would wait. They would watch. The Autobots were careless, they always had been. Perceptor could be caught alone up on the mountain’s peak, stargazing. Skyfire could be taken by their gestalt form on open ground; he was slow at the bottom of gravity wells. The rest would be easy to pick off. They had all the time in the world, now that Bludgeon was busy squaring off with Starscream; and both of them, perhaps unknowingly, squirmed beneath the quiet hand of Soundwave.  
  
The Predacons did not flee. They made a strategic withdrawal.   
  
Perceptor leapt from Skyfire’s shoulder – scanning everyone. “Huffer, Cascade, check the entire base for Divebomb’s little surprises.” Triage list in place, he ran to Hoist first, plugging in to stabilize the mech’s systems and more fully assess the damage.   
  
"Nice of you to join us, finally," Brawn growled. The pain of a severed leg made him testier than usual. Beneath his grump, he was glad and relieved to see both Perceptor and Skyfire. Their timing had been pretty good, considering the distance.   
  
"I'm getting too old for this slag," said Gears. One of his knees had been dislocated, but Ryder had banged on it for him and gotten it back into proper alignment.  
  
Warpath laughed and picked some of Headstrong’s teeth out of his arm. “Well,” he said. “At least it wasn’t boring!”  
  
…  
  
“Hoist!” Once Ven gave the all-clear, Yasmina sprinted out to the hangar mezzanine, Marcus right behind. Ryder and Warpath were carrying Hoist toward the repair bay. Yasmina followed.   
  
“He’ll be okay,” Goldfish said, waving one of Hoist’s arms at her. Yasmina gulped. She wasn’t worried about the arm. It was the gaping, sparking hole in Hoist’s helm that bothered her. Brawn and Seaspray looked concerned, too. And Yasmina caught a glimpse of Perceptor’s face as Hoist was settled onto a repair table.   
  
His optics paled to white for a moment, and the lionfish sensor array flattened against his helm. Then Skyfire moved to the other side of the table to assist, and his bulk blocked her view. She withdrew to the kitchen. The pizza was cold, and when she reset the oven to finish baking it the edges burned.  
  
…  
  
“Yasmina?”  
  
She started from the doze she’d fallen into and Marcus reached out to steady her. Perceptor was there in the kitchen beside the human dining mezzanine.  
  
“Hoist’s injuries were the most grave,” he said, “but I have completed what repairs can be done for now. I apologize if my mien earlier alarmed you. I’m afraid I know now how Beachcomber must have felt after I suffered a similar injury some time ago. In my case, the worst damage was to my memory core. In Hoist’s case, fortunately, his CPU has sustained the most serious damage.”  
  
Marcus frowned. “What do you mean ‘fortunately’?”  
  
“Oh dear, I was not impugning our worthy chef’s computational prowess! I meant only that as I have the specifications of Hoist’s CPU I can replicate or repair it completely. Loss of parts of a memory core cannot, by very definition, be recalled unless they have been backed up immediately prior to the injury.” He did not elaborate that they did not have the exact parts needed. He would have to nanoassemble some of them himself. A process he had in fact already begun. “The repairs may take some time, but I am confident that Hoist will be as he was once they are completed.”  
  
“Thank God,” Yasmina breathed, and squeezed Marcus’ hand.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Hoist would be kept in medical stasis, Perceptor estimated, for about six months. Until then, Perceptor returned to Nevada to continue work on the space bridge emitters.  
  
 _Perceptor,_  said Hook, in his slow, deep, rumbly way.  _I have specs for that kind of CPU. I can do the fabrication if you like._    
  
Perceptor bit off a reflexively sharp retort.  _...Thank you, Hook. I've already begun the fabrication myself._    
  
 _Oh. All right then._    
  
Hook cupped a hand over the spot high on Perceptor's right side, where the nanoassembly of the CPU component was taking place. Perceptor felt the light scan, forced himself not to recoil. Hook shuffled closer, tipping his big, blunt head to one side.   
  
"I believe," he murmured, "I have wanted to do this for 4.00056 million years."  
  
“Only that long?”  
  
“I didn’t like you either, at first. When we were young.” Hook smiled. Perceptor, one must never forget, knew perfectly well how attractive he was. He was so absorbed in his work that he simply didn’t consider the matter most of the time; and he did not, on the whole, consider it important. He was aware, but intrinsically not vain. Perceptor’s lovely mouth felt even lovelier against Hook’s lip components; fine and sensitive, responding with a half-exhausted, fevered anxiety. Hook pulled him close, meshing fields and thermal ripples. “You have been kind to Scavenger.”  
  
“Wheeljack has been far kinder,” Perceptor said, shuddering. “To all of you.”  
  
“Yes. But for him this is not difficult.” Hook blinked at him ponderously. “He is more interested in the work. You are…you are one who remembers too much.”  
  
Perceptor jerked as though he’d been struck. No, he thought. No. I’m not. I’m not! I don’t remember anything of my own but running and hiding and killing and so many people dying, so many and I can’t stop  _counting_  them… He couldn’t say anything. Hook would tell Scrapper, all his brothers. The Constructicons couldn’t be allowed to know what Perceptor had given up, nor what he had saved. He covered his optics with his fine-hands.  
  
 _What is it?_  Hook tightened his grip but forebore to shake him.  _What’s wrong?_  
  
 **Hook?**  
  
 _Prime?_  Finding oneself the focus of a significant portion of the Prime’s attention was…well it certainly served to focus one’s own attention.  
  
 **Do you think you are able to comfort him without full knowledge of the source of his distress?**  
  
 _Palliative?_  
  
 **…Yes.**  
  
 _Very well._  
  
 **Thank you, Hook.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2056 – May  
  
A hot wind billowed through the hangar as Skyfire came in, armor glowing from reentry, bringing with him the tang of hot metal, the sharp scent of sunlight on pines, and a faint zing of ozone. He'd come in on anti-gravitics; the only sound was the rushing of air getting out of his way. Yasmina levered herself out of her working couch and stretched, wandering over to the edge of the mezzanine to watch as Perceptor came down from one of the high ship-labs to meet the deep-Seeker.   
  
Skyfire knelt, producing two small rods of something from a wrist cache.  
  
“You didn’t fly all the way to Maderan for that?” Perceptor asked, optics wide. Skyfire chuckled.  
  
“No. The Vega system has—” He stopped abruptly, giving Yasmina a pointed look. “Resources.”  
  
“Tease,” Yasmina said, crossing her arms at him. She thought it was silly for the Autobots to still be so cagey about the other civilizations inhabiting the Milky Way galaxy. It wasn’t their call to make, according to the injunctions Prime had relayed, but she nevertheless felt that coyness at this point was ridiculous.  
  
Skyfire elaborately ignored her. The first rod he fed directly to Perceptor, tipping Perceptor's chin up with a forefinger in what Yasmina could only interpret as a tender gesture. The second rod Skyfire ate himself as Perceptor chewed. The robots rarely ate in front of humans. It wasn't only because their teeth were quite terrible, designed as they were for ripping metal and mineral. Under normal, non-combat circumstances, the robots only had to eat four or five times a century. They ate more often when they were replacing ammo and mending damaged parts.   
  
After some minutes, Skyfire removed the second rod – now glowing a dull orange – from his mouth and fed this as well to Perceptor. Mama bird, baby bird.  
  
“Larger engine,” Perceptor explained, once he’d swallowed, glancing at Yasmina’s wide-eyed grin. “He can heat the sample more quickly and evenly.”  
  
“So the cortex layers will form larger bubbles,” Yasmina said, remembering her lessons. Skyfire lifted an orbital ridge at her, then turned a rather more stern look on Perceptor. Clearly he thought humans shouldn’t know so much about how Cybertronian brains were made. “I’ll have one of my own eventually,” she said. Skyfire made a low chuffing sound. She wasn’t certain if it was a laugh or a disgusted snort.   
  
“I suppose you have a frame type and alt mode picked out?” Skyfire asked. Whatever archness he might have spun into his tone was subtle.   
  
“No,” Yasmina said. “I don’t know what that person will want or need to be.”   
  
“Ephemerals are not entirely without wisdom,” Perceptor said, grinning. Skyfire flared a bit of helm architecture at him but didn’t rise.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2056 – August  
  
Cybertronian brains (usually) were roughly spherical, structured within somewhat like a pomegranate. Each jewel-like “seed” was capable of two to four hundred times as many operations per second as the average human brain. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of “seeds”, all linked via a hyperconductive support matrix. Instead of a handful of cranial nerves and a single spinal cord, each CPU was linked via a network of cables to a mech’s memory core, body and spark.   
  
Yasmina, Marcus and Semele Okenedo watched from the observation level above the clean-room aboard the crashed ship as Perceptor installed the new component of Hoist’s CPU. Beside the humans’ gantry, Prime had driven up from Nevada (alone, to general consternation, but no one had taken so much as an idle pot-shot at him) and stood behind Grapple, hands resting comfortingly on his shoulders. Various and Sundry – the spark-twins generated by the merge 13 years ago between Hoist and Wheeljack – held hands and watched anxiously from the humans’ other side.   
  
“Our beautiful friend likes having four hands,” Dr. Okenedo said, her perennial grin widening as Perceptor completed the delicate procedure with an unnecessary but graceful flourish. Hoist’s helm put itself back together under Perceptor’s intimately-cabled direction, and after another handful of minutes, Hoist’s optics lit.  
  
“That’s it?” Dr. Okenedo looked up at Prime and Grapple. Grapple was already heading for the door. Hoist rose from the repair table, working his limbs to get energon and coolants moving, but seemed otherwise unfazed by six months spent in stasis. He and Perceptor exited the clean-room.  
  
“The quantum-level Series 79 diagnostic takes approximately 539 seconds,” Sundry explained.   
  
“If they’re not in a hurry,” said Marcus. Various snickered.  
  
“I have done this before,” Perceptor said. “Many times, alas.”   
  
“Good as new,” Hoist said cheerfully. He and Grapple embraced with a gentle clang, soon joined by Various and Sundry, the entire group engulfed by Huggimus Prime.   
  
Accepting a lift in Grapple’s offered hands, Yasmina and Marcus wrapped their arms around Hoist's head, hugging him and laughing. Perceptor felt an odd stab of...something. Jealousy? Yasmina had been his particular human friend, hadn't she? How many years ago? Perceptor had spent most of his time for the past 19 years in Nevada, keeping an optic and cannon sight on the Constructicons. It hadn't felt like very long to him, but Yasmina had streaks of silver in her hair, and she moved up and down the ladders and stairs with a mindfulness unlike the youthful exuberance and haste he remembered. So fast, so fleeting! Perceptor took the shock of it in the spark. He felt cold and a little unsteady. He wished Beachcomber was nearby, but he and Tideline and Miles were taking a grand tour of China’s geological wonders.  
  
Large, warm arms came around him, and he buried his face gratefully in Prime’s chest.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2057 – November  
  
“Come on, Bee. Air shows are boring.” Sam had seen the Autobots in action for real. In space. Watching a bunch of human pilots crank around in ancient aircraft didn’t sound appealing.  
  
“This one won’t be boring,” Bee assured him.   
  
Sam leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Who’s setting this up; Jazz or Sideswipe?”  
  
“Jazz.”  
  
“Is Ironhide involved?”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” protested Ironhide from across the hangar. Sam grinned at him.   
  
“No,” said Bee, optics twinkling at Ironhide.  
  
“All right, fine. I’ll go.”  
  
Bee leaned down and nuzzled Sam’s chest. Sam squawked but patted his helm, then pushed him away. “Gah, do you mind? Not in front of the Prime Minister!”  
  
…  
  
The ads had said something about “special guests” but didn’t mention the Autobots specifically. Sam had identified quite a few supposed cars out in the parking lot as he and Mikaela had left Bee. Everyone’s chameleon mesh was sporting new “paintjobs” as well. The recent Predacon attacks had provoked a return to a level of disguise the Autobots hadn’t needed for a long time. Not to hide from humans this time, though.   
  
Sam and Mikaela found Dani and her daughter, Melissa, and Nate and his girlfriend, Sierra, already in place on the VIP platform. Mikaela sat down next to Melissa after getting the requisite granny-hug. Even at fourteen, Melissa was a sucker for granny-hugs. Of course Mikaela was a kickass grandma.   
  
 _What’s Hot Rod’s alt now?_  Mikaela tight-beamed her daughter.  
  
 _He’s trying out the new Lamborghini, actually,_  Dani replied.  _In fuchsia. With aquamarine stripes. Someone shoot me. But I don’t think he’ll stay with it for long. He likes the Koenigseggs, Pagani Zondas and even some of the flashier concepts Mazda puts out better._  
  
 _He’s so disco,_  Mikaela smirked. Dani laughed. She couldn’t disagree. “How’s the show been?” She and Sam had gotten there late, as Bee had insisted they needn’t watch the entire antique exhibition if they didn’t want to. Mikaela was consulting with a European cybernetics company and had appreciated some extra time before heading out.   
  
“The old P-51s are still kicking over,” Dani said. “They had a B2 do a low flyover; that was pretty polar. They’re a lot quieter than I thought.”  
  
Mikaela nodded. “Spy planes. They had specially designed engines to make them quieter. Any idea yet who the special guests are?”  
  
Sam leaned closer to hear. The crowd was roaring over something or other. Blue Angels? No, those jets were blue, Sam knew that much. Thunderbirds? Who knew?   
  
“Nope. I tried to corner Jazz about it earlier, but you know how well that works if he doesn’t want to be cornered.”   
  
“Does Epps still have his pilot’s license?” Sam wondered. He’d had the thought that the guests might include some of the astronauts from the Mars and Lunar bases. Not all of humanity’s heroes had titanium torsion bars.   
  
“I don’t think so,” Mikaela said. “Speaking of…”  
  
Bobby and Theresa Epps climbed the stands toward them, followed by Sarah and Will Lennox. And was that Miles? With Maggie and Glen. It was. Sam stood to shake hands with the new arrivals. “Starting to look like old home week,” he said.   
  
“Starting to look like we been set up,” the former Secretary of Defense (recently retired) said. Epps’ eyes unfocused as he spoke through his comm, not as quick as the younger set at fishing for channels. “This better be good, Mirage…”   
  
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Bobby,” Sarah said, patting his arm as they settled into their seats.   
  
“Yeah,” said Will. “Ironhide, the Twins and Wheeljack are all in the audience, not hiding somewhere.”  
  
“Is Prime here?” Dani asked.   
  
Maggie shook her head. “No, we left him at the embassy. Tel’ll have feeds set up for him, I’m sure.”  
  
“And now,” exclaimed the announcer, “in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Autobots’ arrival here on Earth; the Aviation Nation air show here at Nellis Air Force Base is honored and proud to present our special guests!” Piped in music swelled – Harold Faltermeyer’s  _Top Gun Anthem_  – garnering laughter from many in the audience, especially those old enough to remember the movie.   
  
“Oh my god,” said Mikaela, pointing. A little red aerobatic plane was doing literal cartwheels fifty feet above the near runway. Sam burst out laughing. Prime had been forbidding Powerglide from entering air races for years. The gung-ho little jet-glider was finally getting his chance to show off for an appreciative audience.   
  
And show off he did. Digitally precise twelve-point rolls. Snap rolls that would have snapped a human pilot’s neck. Ridiculously tight Kulbits. Eight-sided loops that would have made Euclid cry. Rolling turns and Cuban Eights in three perpendicular planes. Then he moved on to Cybertronian maneuvers that would break human aircraft, let alone human pilots. More like dancing than simply flying, Powerglide hopped and skipped and spun; yawing at vertical attitudes in weird, complex ways. Big screens set up at the foot and sides of the stands showed a video feed that must be coming from one of the Autobots in the parking lot, because Sam doubted even the newer TV cameras on computer-guided gyros could have followed Powerglide’s antics.  
  
“Squirt’s good,” Epps murmured, with a level of understatement that would make an Aerialbot proud.   
  
Powerglide pirouetted above the runway with one more flourish before ceding the show to the next performers.   
  
From out of a cloud-bank to the north came the Aerialbots with the low, eerie screaming roar of Cybertronian engines. If Powerglide was the virtuoso of solo aerobatics, the Aerials were prodigies of formation flying. The human record was sixteen inches from wingtip to canopy. The Aerialbots, being alive, _feeling_  every length of wingtip and canopy, flew the same maneuvers in full physical contact.  
  
“Laws of inertia still apply,” Epps muttered. “They screw something up at that speed, they’ll bust themselves in a million pieces.” Next to her mother, Melissa sat up straighter and watched the screens with renewed attention.   
  
Wings stroked tails, tails brushed canopies. Before things got too racy, another set of jets dove from out of the troposphere to join them. The Technobots were also air-frames, though Afterburner and Nosecone were triple-changers with ground forms as well. The doubled formation spun in looping arabesques, then broke apart, agile as seals, into a complicated three-dimensional pattern involving what Sam thought were an awful lot of near-misses. The two gestalts peeled off to opposite ends of the sky.   
  
They returned, 200 feet from the ground, and commenced to dogfight in ultra-slow-motion, weaponsfire meshing the air with incandescent rain, punctuated now and then with actual lightning thrown from Silverbolt’s wings. “Slow so us squishies can follow what they’re doing,” Epps laughed. He wondered how the top secret drone pilot training program that the Aerials were helping with was going. He wasn’t in that loop any more. Wishful thoughts of humanity engaged in beyond Top Gun flying were driven from his mind as the dogfight sped up. Faster and faster the jets swooped and dove, until they reached “normal” Cybertronian combat speeds; a glittering snarl of deadly intent no longer visible to the unaided human eye as individual aircraft.  _This part scripted or are they just brawling at this point?_  
  
 _Umm…_  said Bumblebee.  
  
“Are they…using live ammo?” Glen asked, looking nervous.  
  
Lennox pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. They are.”   
  
Giving the robots due credit, though, none of the ordnance was getting anywhere near the stands. OSHA might have collective apoplexy, and the mechs involved would get a talking-to. In fact Lennox could well imagine the I Am Disappoint sighing from Prime that was probably going on via private tight-beam. Yep, there went Silverbolt, running an interference pattern between his team and Scattershot’s.   
  
Eventually the ten jets settled down and vacated the local airspace; the older (sneakier) Aerials herding the much younger – and vociferously complaining – Technos.   
  
Three Seekers streaked through the air from behind the stands. Not a few in the audience ducked. Two alphas and one zeta, in full Cybertronian ceremonial polish. All three had once had Earth alt modes, but far be it for the alphas in particular to disguise themselves as outmoded vehicles. Instead of keeping up with the optic-blink pace of human innovation, Thundercracker and Strake had simply reverted to their native forms. Breakaway, smaller and even more maneuverable, had taken on a mode similar to Skydive and Fireflight, benefiting from their experience and upgrades.   
  
“Oh my god,” Maggie said, following them with her lenses on telephoto. “Is that Blue?”  
  
Bluestreak stood on Breakaway’s dorsal hull, looking more like a surfer than a wingwalker. From the speakers rolled the theme to “Hawaii Five-O” by the Ventures. Laughter rippled through the audience, mingled with oh’s and ah’s as Bluestreak leaped and dove from Seeker to Seeker in an air-dance the denizens of the embassy had often been treated to via Teletraan’s satellites. Prowl keeping his Cons amused. Or bonding with his trine, if one believed the rumor-mill.   
  
 _Why Blue and not Prowl?_  Sam asked Bee.  
  
 _Prowl’s upstairs in the Ark,_  Bee replied.  _Watching our backs._  
  
Sam nodded, suddenly feeling both a lot better about the situation and disquieted all over again. Still at war, dammit. And he was willing to bet the rest of the Autobot fliers weren’t hanging around acting like targets once their part in the show was over.   
  
Whether because the music in its original cut was only a couple of minutes long, or the authorities weren’t keen on having a pair of Decepticons – even former Decepticons – buzzing around so close to so many unarmed humans, the wing-dance was over far too soon.   
  
Mikaela clasped her hands together in front of her mouth. “I hope they let Blades come. He’ll be so sad if they left him out just because he’s a helicopter.”  
  
Sam blinked. “Yeah, but…helicopters don’t do fancy flying stuff like this, do they?”  
  
“Oh yes they do,” Epps snickered.   
  
Mikaela stood up, shouting and waving her arms. “GO, BLADES! YOU SHOW ‘EM!” The sturdy rescue copter had indeed appeared, scooting low from around a far hangar, travelling at a hundred miles an hour one foot off the ground. He came around for a second pass. Inverted. Epps joined in the shouting.   
  
“No way, man! No way! You crazy-ass mech!”   
  
Blades came to a dead stop, still inverted, then rose straight up about fifty feet. Turning on his side, he stayed that way as Groove skated out with a section of concrete pipe. Setting his burden on the tarmac of the far runway, Groove scooted well out of the way, shaking his head.  
  
“Oh no,” said Epps.  
  
“Oh yes!” crowed Glen.  
  
Blades dropped until the tips of his rotors struck sparks from the tarmac. Epps crossed his legs and hunched forward, muffling a groan with a hand clapped over his lower face. With a smoothness belying the precarious altitude and angle, Blades darted toward the concrete pipe, and along it, his rotors cutting it neatly in half longitudinally. The two half circle pieces fell aside and rocked jauntily as Blades righted himself and lifted. Groove jogged back out and nested the two pieces, carrying them off the runway.   
  
“That probably needed cutting in half anyway,” Maggie giggled. Trust a Protectobot to get a little work into his play.   
  
Mikaela laughed. “Aid’s probably beside himself.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Swooping and slithering, Blades rolled through the air, smooth as glass, waving his tail around saucily. The audience clapped in time to the music, provoking an even livelier display from the copter. As the samba ended, Blades performed a last pirouette not unlike Powerglide’s, bowed and exited vertically to make room for the finale.   
  
Sam felt Mikaela catch her breath. The hair on the back of his neck rose in a delicious shiver.  
  
Their approach was silent. Gliding in from the desert on their AG drives, six deltas swirled into a radial formation three meters above the runway. Noses pointing inward, they rolled on their longitudinal axes, wingtips nearly touching, the entire circle rotating as well, sunlight glittering on their complex surfaces and alien curves. After an initial gasp, the audience was silent, too. Even the music had become quieter, something haunting and choral at a volume audible only because there was no engine noise. A video feed – probably from Blades – showed the formation from above as the circle of starships lifted another six meters and widened, opening out like a flower to give them more room.   
  
Pitching now on their lateral axes, they flexed and extended their wings, deploying sensor fins and solar sails meant for deep space use, fluttering slightly in the air. Every motion slow and graceful, as though underwater; surreal nine meters off the ground, involving beings larger than any but the largest blue whales. Lifting their noses skyward, standing still and straight on their tails, they hovered motionless for a moment, their bodies reconfiguring slightly, armor shifting, rainbows throwing from their shields. Then the transformation began, slower than Sam had ever seen it, a leisurely dance of sliding, whirling metal as starships became bipedal robots, feet never touching the ground. They turned in the circle, facing outward, hands touching, and began to rotate the circle again. Tilting their heads upward, with a sudden shout of engines and blue columns of fire they shot into the stratosphere.   
  
The feed from Blades shifted as they spiraled past him, curving outward in a vertical break, looping back down and crossing six ways, to loop again before transforming and heading toward the ground. They resumed AG drives, eerily silent, halting dead three meters from the runway. Their stillness lasted only a second – not enough time for the watching humans to catch their breath – before they streaked heavenward again, toward their natural habitat.   
  
They wove their trails in a braided column that curved only as it approached the limits of sight from the ground. Blades’ feed followed them farther, where the sky grew dark and the stars came out. Sliding into the triangular delta formation, they engaged their interstellar engines, computing for interplanetary speeds. Bending their way around the planet took them only a few minutes. They slowed for reentry and came down hot, displaying the glow of their hulls for a final pass before splitting off in a fleur-de-lis and disappearing over the horizon.   
  
The audience surged to its collective feet, cheering wildly – the Autobot-accustomed humans in the VIP box no exception.  
  
“They’re so beautiful,” Maggie said, eyes bright.   
  
 _How the hell did they convince Skyfire to join in?_  Mikaela wondered on the private local channel Maggie had established for the enabled humans and nearby Autobots. She could see Borealis and the other youngsters going for it. Maybe Silverbolt, if it was put to him as a morale-building exercise for the Cybertron-Earth alliance. But Skyfire?  
  
 _You can ask Jazz,_  said Hound,  _but only if you’re sure you want to know the answer._  
  
“Oh god,” Sam muttered. Randy robots.   
  
…  
  
On the far side of the moon, dancing in starlight, six ships drew their circle in. Hands, wings, sleek helms, dark blue optics, shoulders touching.   
  
They embraced Skyfire’s longing, the edges of his tolerance. A knowledge each of them would journey to in their turn. The wide reaches and warps of spacetimelove sang to them, sirens in the deeps. Excepting Silverbolt, they would go. One by one, they would answer.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2057 - September  
  
 **Is it an incomplete twinning?**  Prime asked, via tight-beam. The protoform in the big tank had pinched about a third of its mass off into a not-quite-separate entity, nestled against the belly of what seemed to be the primary body. The spark had also formed a smaller orb, connected by a tendril of sparkmatter through the, for lack of a better term, umbilical.  
  
 _Slag if I know,_  Ratchet sighed.  _I don’t suppose you know what Powerglide was thinking when you two…?_  
  
Prime scratched an imaginary itch on his cheek guard.  **Hmm. Well. You know Powerglide. He was very…enthusiastic.**    
  
 _Fear not!_  the protoform declaimed. Ratchet hadn’t been certain its communications systems were fully online yet. Apparently they were.  _My excellent chosen form may be unusual, but I can assure you that I will be of the greatest service to the Autobot cause once I decant._  
  
“Er, thank you,” Prime said. “I’m glad to meet you…?”  
  
 _I have been contemplating appropriate designations, Optimus Prime, and in the interests of elegant simplicity – my further reasoning shall become elucidated once I take on my alt modes – I have decided that my nom de guerre shall be Sky-Lynx._  
  
“Very nice,” Prime said, smiling. “Pleased to meet you, Sky-Lynx.”


	77. Heartlines I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Will Lennox dies, but not alone; Sarah drops a bomb on Ironhide; Ironhide gives in; a new mech decants; and Prime takes a walk in the rain. ;D  
> Jhiaxus has a plan; ships meet in space and Sentinel learns some things; Mirage, Hound, and TB take a bath; Tracks is hurt and Smokey has a sad; humans react to Ranger; Ranger goes through integration; Soundwave attacks and is captured; and Ranger and Sarah have another talk.  
> Tracks and Sunny do more than snuggle, Ranger goes to the Moon, Mez meets the new kids, Borealis comes home tired, Countermeasure comes home at last, Shockwave has a new project, and Jhiaxus stretches his new wings.

2061 - September  
  
Sinnertwin chewed, twisting his head to yank out another chunk of protoform from Ironhide’s midsection. Rippersnapper and Cutthroat kept his arms and cannons pinned, but they were going to be in for a surprise when Ironhide autodetonated his ordnance. He had to wait, though, just a little longer. He had to hold out until Will cleared the area.  
  
The United Technologies Corporation convention for which Lennox and Ironhide had been asked to give a presentation on Human/Cybertronian TacOps had been an enjoyable foray out of the realm of retirement for Lennox. Their talk had been more a themed string of anecdotes than an organized lecture, but people laughed at the right places. Lennox had told them about the time Ironhide had crashed into a storage tank of fire retardant and come out bright slimy orange; and Ironhide, pretending to be more embarrassed than he was, had retaliated with the details of the incident wherein Lennox had carried on a lengthy conversation with an ordinary Army jeep. The food had been decent, the beer excellent. Then the Terrorcons had shown up.  
  
 _Everyone’s out, Hide!_  Lennox tight-beamed. But Ironhide knew  _he_  wasn’t.  
  
Not fair, that they should be so fast. Things that big were supposed to be slow. Elephants didn’t gallop, everyone knew that. The enormous hand reached for him and he couldn’t, he could not evade it. It closed around him, lifting him thirty feet up with no effort at all. God, this was the place he’d told his men over and over you never wanted to be. The place you wanted to avoid at all costs.   
  
And yet, he’d also told them not to give up, even in a situation like this. Jhiaxus had closed his fingers around Lennox’s body, leaving his arms free. A mistake.   
  
Jhiaxus crackled and rumbled at him in Cybertronian. No doubt detailing the dissection and torture to come.  
  
Lennox kept a little device in his shirt pocket. Sarah and Ironhide knew he had it, but he didn’t mention it to anyone else. Well, Wheeljack knew about it – he’d made the thing for him – and any Autobot who bothered to scan him knew it was there. It was a simple thing, the trigger was mechanical. Nothing that could be jammed or hacked. Jhiaxus drew him up close to study him. Better and better.   
  
He flipped the cap, pressed the button and pitched the little tube deep into the structures of Jhiaxus’ neck. Roaring, Jhiaxus threw his prize down, clawing at himself, digging around with fine manipulators. The tip of one claw connected with the cylinder just as the explosive went off.   
  
…  
  
 _Ironhide!_  Lennox couldn’t see him from where he’d fallen, even if he hadn’t been blinded by smoke and debris. The sounds of battle had increased then faded.  
  
 _I’m fine,_  Ironhide lied.  _Silverbolt brought Rail Racer._    
  
 _Did I get him?_  
  
 **Yes, Will.**  Prime was borrowing Ironhide’s sensory feed, as were Ratchet and First Aid. There was nothing they could do. An ambulance had been summoned, but they would arrive too late. The fall as Jhiaxus had thrown him had damaged too much of Lennox’s 78-year-old body. Ironhide could start CPR, had even learned to give the precise kind of shock to start a heart; but his aorta had ruptured and there simply wasn’t enough of Lennox’s blood left inside his circulatory system. He gave no outward sign of consciousness, heartbeat and breathing faltering, slowing.   
  
 _Took his head off. Cleaner than he deserved,_  Ironhide told him, harmonics steady now as they wouldn’t be later.  _Chain explosions got the spark. As good a kill as I’ve ever seen._  
  
 _Thanks…Hide…_  He couldn’t see, but he wasn’t cold any more. He felt warm, weightless. Nothing hurt. He knew where this was going.  _Love you, Sarah. Love all of you…_  Somehow he felt the contacts with Ironhide, with Sarah and Anna, with Prime all at once, in parallel, and could give equal attention to each. The human brain could do funny things with the perception of time.  _I love you._  Only Ironhide was there with his physical body, yet he felt all of them near him.   
  
 _Daddy, please, Daddy, don’t go!_  
  
 _Busted up, baby-girl. Annabelle. Anna Bella Button. I love you, Button. You be good, be strong Warrior Princess. I got that bastard… don’t tell your mom I said that…_  
  
 _I won’t, Dad. I love you!_  
  
 _Love you, love you, love you, I tell you three times…_  Wasn’t he supposed to float up, look down on his body? Watch the silver cord snap? The voices in his head were patterns of light and color, vague figures moving in a fog. Some stood close, human-sized; some he felt as much as saw/heard, hovering near, above, with fainter echoes from far away. The multitudes in the cloud mind, translated now to clouds, and strange-eyed angels.  
  
 _Nineteen guns, Hide?_    
  
 _Yes, Will. I promise._  
  
 _I love you,_  Sarah told him, knowing the finality from Sideswipe’s bowed head outside the kitchen window. She’d been an Army wife for over fifty years. Her tears didn’t color the facsimile of her voice over the comms.  _Always you. Only you, Will._  
  
 _Sarah. Love you, Sarah. Sarah…Sarah…… Sarah………Sarah…………_   
  
His signal was lost.  
  
…  
  
Ironhide dragged himself across the parking lot to the rear of the conference hall, leaving bits and pieces behind. Jhiaxus had blown a hole in the building. Arms mostly intact, Ironhide hauled the ruins of himself over the ruins of the wall. His legs and one hip assembly didn’t make the transit, but he couldn’t feel it. Too much was missing between his CPU and the lower half of his torso. Ratchet was yelling over tight-beam, already en route…via Thundercracker? Huh. All the deltas but ‘Bolt were off-planet. Ironhide switched off the little vitals transmitter Ratchet had installed in him vorns ago. Ratchet’s swearing grew in diversity and volume, but Ironhide ignored him. He could see Will’s body now.  
  
After only a couple of wary glances at Ironhide, the paramedics and the telepresence doctor on call pronounced General Lennox dead at the scene, moving on to find and treat others who had been injured. Ratchet dropped from Thundercracker’s hull ten meters up and sprinted to Ironhide’s side.  
  
Rail Racer stood motionless and silent at the edge of the parking lot. The bullet train combiner’s armor bore a few dents and scorch marks, but the Terrorcons had retreated after only a cursory exchange of blows once Jhiaxus had died. Silverbolt was tracking them, following their flight to the  _Torment_ , keeping his distance but making little effort to prevent them from knowing he was there. The battleship would relocate beyond Silverbolt’s scanner range as soon as the gestalt was inside anyway.   
  
Swearing quietly, Ratchet moved swiftly over Ironhide’s chassis; capping energon and coolant lines, shutting down sparking components, cabling via neck cables not just to assess Ironhide’s physical condition, but to envelop him in shared grief and anger. To offer what solace he could, as he had done for three million years, more often than either of them wanted to think about.  
  
Ironhide covered Will’s body with his hands, refusing to relinquish it until the coroner’s ambulance arrived. Not because he was himself particularly attached to the arrangement of atoms that had once been his friend but now most assuredly no longer contained that person, that...spark. But because he knew Sarah would want to know that he had been there, that he had watched over her husband's shell with due care.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
She had slept alone in that bed for months at a time. But not lately. Not lately. His lean, old body had been better than any pillow. Gone. Gone, she had to keep reminding herself. She had needed to see the body. She’d seen his face, unmarked aside from a deep cut on the right temple. It was better than a lot of military spouses got, she knew that. They hadn’t brought her just a finger bone or dog-tags. DNA sample off a smear on a wall.  
  
A hand larger than her torso curled around her, an enormous arm reaching through the bedroom window. Heavy, but pressing lightly on the blanket. Through the quilt it was harder to tell those warm fingers were metal, not flesh. Living, either way. The hand did not withdraw even after her sobs eased. Waiting for her to go to sleep. He’d refused to leave her vicinity since bringing Will’s body back. Ratchet had completed his repairs there on the farm. Seeing that, any anger she might have felt at his failure to guard her husband had evaporated. Ironhide hadn’t been able to save Will because the Terrorcons had been eating him; sawing bites out of non-vital structures first, keeping him alive for as long as possible.  
  
She shuddered and the hand closed tighter around her; a precisely calculated squeeze. She patted his thumb. Ratchet was still outside with him, too. Or at least she hadn’t heard him drive away.  
  
She knew Will had died keeping others safe. She knew he’d taken out a major bad guy. It hadn’t been a senseless, meaningless death. He’d gone the way he’d have wanted to, given a choice. He’d been spared a lingering slide into weakness and senility. None of that helped now, but it would later. She wondered how Prime felt. A member of her species had sent another member of his to the afterlife. How many more times would their races exchange roles as slayer and slain?  
  
 _Optimus?_  
  
 **Sarah.**  
  
As always, his voice seemed to overflow her head, warming her entire being.  _How…how are you doing?_  
  
 **I am…well enough.**  
  
That little pause. As though it would have taken him so long to think of an appropriate response; to understand that she was asking more than just his immediate physical condition, to respect her need for communication and comfort and to focus on someone other than herself. To refrain from meaningless platitudes. He understood human language to contain as part and parcel such pauses, in addition to subtleties of tone and phrasing and body posture. Such things were important in his native language as well. She so loved talking with him.   
  
 _I heard Ratchet muttering,_  Sarah confessed. Ratchet was so …Ratchetty. She’d wanted to laugh even as Ironhide’s injuries made her want to throw up.  _It sounded like something went wrong, like before, when Galvatron…made the Allspark create life …wrongly?_  She couldn’t remember the word she’d heard Sam use. A 76-year-old brain wasn’t what it used to be, wifi chip or no. She remembered Prime in pain, though. And the distress of the Autobots around him, unable to help except by their love and presence.   
  
There were worse things, she reminded herself, than simple death. (So what if there are? another part of herself shouted. Will was dead! Gone! She would never feel his wiry but strong hands again. Never kiss his thin but tender lips again. It wasn’t fair! They were retired! His hands, his shoulders, the silver ruffle of his short hair…) Her head ached with crying, but she didn’t care. It was nothing to the pain in her heart.  _You felt Jhiaxus die, right? Autobot or Decepticon, you feel them all die._  
  
 **Yes.**  Jhiaxus had not followed Barricade’s path of individual dissociation – as close to oblivion as a Cybertronian could hope for, it seemed. (Barricade’s choice continued to trouble Optimus. Why had he rejected the bliss of oneness? Was everything that Barricade was truly lost? Had nothing he’d learned been shared?) A monumental struggle had exploded through the Allspark at the moment of Jhiaxus’ sparkdeath. A screaming, clawing attempt to subsume the other patterns into his, to make them merely subsystems within himself. The sheer weight of those gone before was greater than Jhiaxus could overcome, and he had slunk, sulking, to Galvatron’s moiety, where Galvatron had stamped him into submission. In all likelihood, Jhiaxus’ particular brand of amorality had been ignored for millennia because his successes were undeniable. There had been rumors about things that went on at his facility for just as long. Megatron, once his own reprogramming had taken the most ruthless turn, had given him free rein. It was doubtful that Jhiaxus would ever have chosen to return to a more restrained state, but Optimus had hoped that given enough time the scientist’s brilliance could once again have been turned to Cybertron’s good.  **Jhiaxus was a brilliant xenobiologist, theoretician and evolutionary designer. If we could have healed him it would have added greatly to our hope for the future as a species. His death is…another tragic loss.**    
  
Among staggering losses, Sarah thought.  _How do you bear it?_  Prime had been asked that many times, she was sure, and she might have asked before, herself. But she wanted to hear his voice, reassuring in her head, telling her things would get better no matter how soggy her pillow was becoming. Between Ironhide’s presence and Optimus’ voice, she could get through the worst all right.   
  
 **Only with a great deal of help. And time.**  He could speak with many of the dead in the Allspark and Matrix, but Sarah could not. He knew his people’s sparks were as safe as they could be…he wouldn’t allow Galvatron to force them again.   
  
Sarah gradually became aware of a big engine approaching.  _How many speeding tickets, Prime?_  He’d been at the embassy at the beginning of their conversation, she thought.   
  
 **None. Thundercracker and Strake dropped me off at the highway. Thundercracker complained of drag the entire distance, but I do not think they minded. Seekers are one of the only groups of Cybertronians to have elaborate grieving and funerary rituals.**  Explorers and military frames, they were less likely than most Cybertronians to have their sparks gently fade and grow dim and extinguish.  
  
 _They’re…they mourn him, too?_  She sat up, squirming out from under Ironhide’s hand, and peered past the bulk of his arm. Yes, there was Ratchet, blinking from his nap against Ironhide’s side.   
  
 **Yes. As both a former honorable adversary and as someone who had become a valuable ally.**  Slow, heavy footsteps. Even getting out of bed and craning her neck, the eaves blocked her view of Optimus’ face, but he knelt beside his Weapons Specialist and his Chief Medical Officer and embraced them both. Sarah climbed out the window and was lifted – she wasn’t sure by whom – to Prime’s shoulder. Ironhide leaned his helm against Prime’s chest, where Sarah could reach.   
  
…  
  
In the morning, Sarah found that Prime, Ironhide and Ratchet had been joined by Jazz and Bumblebee – the First Five, as Sam called them, taking a none too subtle swipe at Sector Seven’s self-aggrandizing. Sarah herself had been placed in her bed when she had at last fallen asleep, but the window was left open, the robots’ engines keeping the nighttime chill at bay.  
  
Soon the house would fill with their human family and friends. Anna and Nick and their youngest two were already there. Unaware as yet of the robots, or Jinny and Bryce would have been out there climbing them. Sarah welcomed the distraction. She had a lot to do before the funeral.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Nineteen guns for the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and CenCom of NEST, the Honor Guard crisp in their dark uniforms. That wasn’t counting Ironhide’s two cannons. The Autobots ringing the field kept their snickers to tight-beam and fired their volleys with proper decorum.   
  
Thundercracker, Strake, Breakaway and a human pilot in an F-22 performed the missing man formation, while Optimus Prime gave the eulogy. It was a duty he knew he would be performing frequently for the next several decades, but at least he  _could_. So many had died without rites or words, and so few were left to remember.  
  
…  
  
The clacking and clatter of the gathered crows at the memorial surrounded her with their empty condolences and trite phrases. She wanted it to be over. She wanted to go home. But she was an Army wife, she had duties to uphold, facades to build strong and impenetrable. The robots stayed nearby, silent. Ironhide, Sideswipe, Ratchet and Prime. The cloud mind hovered, subdued but attentive, at the edge of her awareness. They didn’t need to say anything. They understood.   
  
Slowly days and nights passed and the house emptied of Sarah’s younger brother and Will’s older sister, and the handful of cousins, and the older grandkids. Everyone filing away to their own lives. Soon the house was quiet but for Sarah and the dogs. Silence and absence like a punch in the chest every time she came in the door. There was too much food in the fridge. His clothes were in the closet, military neat, like his tools in the barn and garage. She knew some women got rid of their husbands’ stuff the moment they got the official notice. Others kept everything enshrined. She hadn’t decided yet, but she didn’t think she would keep everything.   
  
Anna and Nick would help, whatever she decided to do. She did not want to sell the farm, though she would probably sell the last of the animals, except a couple of chickens, and let most of the vegetable plots go fallow. The house held memories, but they weren’t memories she was afraid of.   
  
There were the Witwickies, the Madsen-Whitmanns and the Eppses as well, though poor Nick’s family had disowned him when he’d married Anna. They did not like the robots and they really did not like augmenting humans. It was unnatural. Sarah didn’t think it was a specifically religious objection, but kind of a general American, Puritanical distaste.  
  
Spiral had expedited most of the paperwork – not that it was paper any more, and not because Sarah couldn’t have done it herself. Spiral and Prowl liked to help with irritating and unthinking bureaucracy, taking what Sarah suspected was a somewhat predatory delight in outmaneuvering even the most arcane and convoluted regulations, and flummoxing stubborn bureaucrats. Want that in triplicate? Oh, we made five extra copies. Did you know that Section 12.5, subsection 16 of the Nevada State Probate code requires Form C as well as Form T? No? Well, we have both anyway. Have a nice afternoon.   
  
They were kind of scary.  
  
As for everything else, Sarah did what needed doing, like she always had.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Two months later.  
  
“We could wait to bundle his engrams until you join him,” Ratchet said, watching Sarah water the geraniums that grew in enthusiastic variety around the foundation of the house. “I’m certain the two of you discussed this, but your wishes are paramount at this time.”  
  
Sarah refilled the can and continued on her route. “We did discuss it,” she said. “We decided it would best be left up to the survivor. I don’t want you to wait.” She stopped and smiled up at Ratchet, including Ironhide in the brightness of her regard. “I want to see him decant.”  
  
“Hmm,” said Ratchet.  
  
“Go ahead and talk to Smokey if you think you must. We’ve been thinking about this for years. It’s not going to be a shock.”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
“Sarah Lennox,” Ironhide said, chuckling, “the last thing anyone could accuse you of is emotional fragility.”  
  
Sarah’s smile turned mischievous. Ironhide felt an inexplicable urge to transform and run for the hills. “You do know, don’t you, Ironhide, what his stipulation is for the body he wants?”  
  
“Oh Primus,” Ratchet murmured, guessing, starting to laugh.  
  
“He wants a spark of your spark, Hide.” The slip in tense wasn’t a slip. As far as Sarah was concerned, something vital, something integral to Will was still alive in the flickering code of the crystal memory shard Perceptor had shown her.   
  
“WHAAAT?!?!”  
  
 **I believe you’ve been outflanked,**  Prime contributed helpfully from the embassy.  
  
“THAT PUNY, STUNTED, MALFUNCTIONING, MISBEGOTTEN…!”  
  
“Ha!” Ratchet shoved him, smacking his chest armor for good measure. “You’ll have to give in now! Last request!”  
  
“…BOTTOM-DWELLING, MUD-SUCKING, ANENCEPHALIC AUSTRALOPITHECINE…!” A low growl started deep in Ironhide’s engine, building to a looming rumble, and then a roar. The cannons spun out of his arms as he clenched and unclenched his fists, and Ratchet laughed.  _Prime! You fish that Pitspawn Jhiaxus’ spark out and embody him so I CAN KILL HIM AGAIN!_  
  
 **Now, now…**  
  
Sarah kept on around the geranium beds, giggling.   
  
“Fine!” Ironhide snarled. He retracted his cannons, then grabbed Ratchet around the waist fast as a striking snake. “You’re my merge partner!”  
  
“What! Nonsense! Our honored friend deserves the tribute of Prime at least! Or better yet, Chromia! That ought to satisfy his peculiar sense of propriety.”  
  
“Ohhh no! You promised! When you shared the datafile on your and Prime’s merge, you said for  _me_  you’d be willing to go through that again!”  
  
 **He’s got you there.**  
  
“Shut up, Optimus! I only said that because I knew you’d never want to! Stop being childish!”  
  
“Who exactly is being childish?”  
  
The argument continued for some time, the robots tussling and throwing each other around out in the back fields. Sarah went inside and had lunch, had a nap and even had time to tidy the place up a bit before Anna and Nick and the kids arrived for the weekend.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“You’re certain you have the new protocols installed properly?”  
  
“Of course I do.”  
  
“Ratchet, I gave them to him myself,” Perceptor said, crossing his fine-arms over his chest.   
  
“You’re stalling,” Ironhide smirked.   
  
“It’s really not that bad,” Perceptor insisted. “Nothing like what you and Prime went through. The worst part is choosing.”  
  
“For you, maybe. The tank hasn’t completed its filling cycle, Ironhide. I know it’s difficult and I am irresistible but try to exhibit a little patience.”  
  
“I’ll make certain the tank is ready when you are,” Perceptor sniffed.  
  
“Whose side are you on?” Ratchet accused, waving his arms in defeat and allowing himself within Ironhide’s grabbing distance. “Table, you barbarian. Table!”   
  
“What difference does it make?” Ironhide asked, yanking Ratchet to his chest with a resounding clang.   
  
“None, really,” Perceptor said.   
  
 **Do I need to come in and mediate?**  Prime offered.  
  
 _Oh, they’re fine,_  Perceptor assured him.  _Ratchet is clattering in his armor with cold feet and Ironhide is, as per usual, not helping._  
  
“Perceptor!” both of the above worthy mechs growled.   
  
 _Or, by “mediate” did you mean participate?_  Perceptor nibbled on a fine-finger as he watched Ratchet drag Ironhide up onto the table. Ironhide nipped at Ratchet’s jaw spars and chest armor, biting his hands, too, when Ratchet tried to shove his face away for a moment so he could get them situated comfortably.   
  
 **Just a thought.**  Although by the sound of it, Perceptor would want in on the action, and Prime wasn’t comfortable with the idea of merging with Perceptor until he could be certain the Allspark wouldn’t swallow him whole. Much to Perceptor’s frustration, but that was a difficulty for another day.  
  
 _No offense,_  Ratchet said, somewhat alarmed,  _but let’s not complicate this._  
  
 _Very well, Nervous Nellie. The tank is ready, by the way._  With a tender – if mildly exasperated – glyph, Perceptor left them to it, closing and locking the door behind him. Ratchet hoped he’d be able to unlock it when they were done. Perceptor’s idea of encryption gave him a processor-ache.  
  
“Quit stalling,” Ironhide rumbled, yanking Ratchet close, settling his arms around Ratchet’s body. He opened his thoracic ports, rearranged his heavy chest armor to gain easier access.   
  
Ratchet stroked his audials.  _Suddenly eager?_  Their mouths were too busy for talking.  
  
 _With you, yes._  Ironhide’s cable tips caressed Ratchet’s ports, circling slowly before seating, clicking home, their favorite complement and container.  _You and Prime got it right first try. Everyone else since is just riding your bumpers._  No better housing could Ironhide think of for his friend’s ghost. What else to call it, when it was patterns the Allspark collected, too? They meant to re-embody Will, as far as Ironhide was concerned. Not much different from the Graveyard Legion, once he’d thought about it.   
  
 _Show me that unbowed spark,_  Ratchet hummed, doing some rearranging of his own, narrowing the imaginary distance between them. Their horizons converged.   
  
Their love was old and stubborn and deep and abiding and through the metal and blades and guns and too sharpened wit that made them up, they pulled each other close, closer, closest, allowing a connection deeper than any Ironhide had before attempted. Their love was old and stubborn, and once set upon this course they refused to give up, refused though their pleasure in each other’s sparks warmed them so, felt so good, so hot. They set themselves the task and would see it through, and slag what the Twins had said about radioactive craters.   
  
 _I will go with you my friend. I will go with you beside me down this road, even though I find it strange and uncomfortable and I do not like the risk it places on our sparks. I do not like the weapon it places in our enemies’ hands. But for you my friend, for our other friend, I will do this thing. And we’ll show them how it’s done.  
  
I do love you, rusty aft. I knew you’d kindle strong and true once you turned your spark to the task._  
  
Celadon green, bright and hot the new sun spun between them. Calm, with a palpable awareness and intent.   
  
…  
  
“Hmm!” Optimus had felt something. A subtle…not a surge exactly, but a shifting of energies within the Allspark, noticed only because he’d been watching for something of the kind. Lennox had had brief physical contact with the Cube. Optimus hadn’t been paying attention at the exact moment of Lennox’s death; now he wished he had been.  
  
…  
  
Ratchet staggered up, thankful for the Vector protocols, and fed the spark into the tank, watching it nestle and sink quietly into the waiting protomass, solemnly purposeful, focused on its task. Keying the download sequence from the crystal memory shard that held Lennox’s last preserved mindstate, Ratchet wobbled back to Ironhide on the recharge table and accepted the hand Ironhide extended to help him up. The two of them leaned on each other, limbs shaking, shutdown imminent, but they watched the tank and the new life within.  
  
The spark busied itself, ignoring them. They fell offline, only faintly scarred but steaming, propped up against each other like bookends. Perceptor came in to check on them and was tempted to arrange them more comfortably. But he supposed they’d recharged together often enough like this, or under much worse conditions. They’d be fine.  
  
…  
  
Two hundred kilometers above the north pole, Borealis flew aerobatics, dancing with the aurora from which she’d taken her name.   
  
She didn’t need any further rationale or justification for her existence, she really didn’t. She was happy as she was. But Mikaela’s angry words of 26 years before had stuck with her. She was secure in the love and regard of the Autobots, but the experiment that was her had not been repeated. Until now.   
  
Soon there would be a Son of Ironhide! Was the universe ready?  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2063 – June  
  
The protoform of the tall, slender mech who stepped down from the growth tank was plated with a thin layer of nickel-iron, marked by intricate, angular Widmanstätten patterns, like and unlike glyphs. Patterns found on meteorites, and a natural alloy found plentifully on Earth, including making up most of its core.   
  
Sarah stood on a movable gantry that had been raised to sixteen feet, putting her at about the twenty-foot-tall mech’s head height. Her hands were buried in her skirt, balled in the fabric, but she wasn’t trembling. She searched inside herself for revulsion, for terror, and found only curiosity and a half-unconscious exhilaration she dared not yet give name or full rein to. The protoform did not look like Will.  
  
“Sarah.”  
  
He didn’t sound like Will. She had wondered if he would. She couldn’t remember what Dr. Chase’s voice had sounded like; she’d only met her once or twice, almost fifty years before. Borealis’ voice suited her Cybertronian body – as did the new mech’s.   
  
“Hello,” she said, lifting her hands to clasp the railing. Ratchet and the others spoke quietly, processed their scans. The new mech embraced his progenitors, seeming surprised to look them optic to optic. He flattened his hand on the top of his helm, moved that hand across to Ironhide’s helm, striking it at about optic-level. Ironhide bared denta and the others laughed. Sarah snickered. He could at least take some consolation in being a little taller than Ratchet, she thought. He examined his own hands and limbs; stretching arms and back, curling and uncurling his fingers, touching his chest. He still had to look up to meet Prime’s gaze, but not quite so far. His optics returned to her again and again, drawn like deep-Seekers to novel stellar phenomena, watching her as she watched him.   
  
He crossed the chamber, four sets of glowing blue optics following his movement, watching, waiting. There was no sound, no sign, no posture of alarm in any of them. They had prepared for this, all of them. They had learned from Borealis’ experience. Will had known what was coming. They were being careful.   
  
“Hello, Sarah,” he said. “Your designation is Sarah.”  
  
“Yes. Have you…have you chosen a name yet?”  
  
“Ranger.”  
  
Oh, Will, Sarah thought but didn’t say. “That’s a good name.”   
  
“Noted and logged,” Prime said, and Ranger felt ten meters taller in the warmth of his regard.   
  
Ranger stood to attention.  _“Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment.  
  
Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.  
  
Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one-hundred-percent and then some.  
  
Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.  
  
Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.  
  
Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.”_ Ranger relaxed and extended a hand to Sarah and she clasped his fingertip. His hands were more like Prime’s than Ironhide’s or Ratchet’s. More human. The forming robot-bodies were influenced by the spark, by the chosen programming, but also influenced these things in turn. It was a complicated process.   
  
Borealis shifted position, in essence moving closer to Sarah and Ranger, though she was sphynxed down in a crouch to take up as little room as possible. She took Ranger’s other hand and turned it over, tracing a seam between plates on the palm. Even the arrangement of these mimicked that of a human hand – in more detail than Prime’s hands did. Heart Line, Head Line, Life, Fate. Borealis displayed her own palm. Tessellated with a myriad of smaller plates, whorled with gripping ridges and input pits for the array of sensors in her hands. They resembled human hands only superficially. Borealis had explained, as they were preparing for this eventuality, that she had always liked Ratchet’s hands – two thumbs struck her as practical and strong, and the spatulate end of the middlemost finger made flipping the bird an eye-catching display.  
  
Sarah smiled up at the deep-Seeker. Borealis meant to reassure. The new mech was another step along the bridge. More human, for now. Until he changed, either by choice or mishap. No doubt Ironhide would take up his programming and training as soon as possible. No one better. It made her feel proud.   
  
She’d had two years to mourn the loss of her husband. To be torn by the knowledge that some part of him would survive – would indeed survive forever, in the spark-pattern that would, perhaps billions of years from now, eventually rejoin the Allspark. The same ultimate fate awaited her. Anna, too, and Nick, and however many more generations if they so chose.   
  
And yet, Smokescreen had warned her that, confronted with the reality, her physical and emotional reactions might be more extreme than she anticipated. That was to be expected. They were treading new ground. There was no one who could tell them how to feel, what was normal. They’d have to learn to adapt and cope on their own. Ixchel Chase had been a far more solitary person, and Borealis’ origin had been kept secret for almost twenty years. She hadn’t been married, she’d had no children. The ripples of her personal decisions had not gone as far. No, that wasn’t fair. Dr. Chase had been extraordinary, had been more than the disease that confined her to a wheelchair.   
  
“We should probably,” said Prime, “open the door and go out before the Twins and Atrandom start duct taping people to walls. Or each other.”  
  
“And before Wheeljack drinks all the high-grade,” Borealis agreed.  
  
“And no, Ranger,” Ratchet said, “you can’t have any high-grade yet. It would fritz your systems!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
My husband, the Range Rover, Sarah thought, watching a mist screen broadcast of Ranger and Ironhide doing donuts over at White Sands. They’d be flying over to Croatia to clear minefields in a few days, and Ironhide had wanted Ranger to get in some practice. Ranger didn’t have Ironhide’s heavy frame-type, nor Ratchet’s mass, though he was proportioned somewhat more like Ratchet. Gender  _he_ , but a different class than Ironhide. Sarah figured she’d remember it better when she was a robot, too, and it would matter more. It still seemed odd to her that Ratchet, Skyfire and Thundercracker were all the same gender, though it made a little more sense that Skyfire and Thundercracker were the same class, if vastly different sub-classes.   
  
Well, the Range Rover was practical. Shiny black, he looked good parked next to Ironhide in the driveway. She could fit a month’s worth of groceries – for herself, any guests, and the dogs – inside him. That particular phrasing hadn’t been weird for decades. And she’d never have to take him through a car-wash. Or worry about tire pressure or plugging in (the world was being dragged, kicking and screaming, but steadily, into a post-petroleum infrastructure. Most personal cars these days were either entirely electric, hybrid, or some kind of fuel cell. Certain innovations in battery technology had definitely helped…) or checking fluid levels. Or changing the wiper blades. She hated that. No matter how often she checked she always seemed to get them on backwards the first try. Will had harassed her about it with devoted but merciless glee.   
  
 _So,_  Sideswipe tight-beamed. He lounged near where she stood on the mezzanine. He would be, as he had been for years, her stand-in vehicle while Ranger and Ironhide were overseas.  _Is he weird to you, or what?_  
  
 _Or what,_  Sarah replied, keeping a straight face. Sides snerked. He had the best face for it.  _Is this weird to_ you _, Sides?_  She’d never heard him or his twin make any comment about the human engrams either way. As far as she knew, neither had ever participated in a spark merge.  
  
 _Me?_  He widened his optics. What  _he_  thought? He was a frontliner; he wasn’t here for thinking. Except. He considered the last time he had interfaced with Prime. Not that long ago. Mm. (Nothing like Sentinel. Sides wasn’t stricken by that comparison, not the way Prowl too often was. To Sideswipe it was just an interesting contrast.) Most of the Autobots had been something other than soldiers before the war. Optimus encouraged even those who had been sparked as military to consider what they might want to  _become_. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were warframes, with aggressive sparks, but maybe Prime was right, maybe that didn’t have to be all they were.  _I don’t… I don’t know, I guess? We adapt. It’s just a thing we’re doing right now._  
  
 _Not knowing is okay, too,_  Sarah said.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“I see you’ve been self-overloading properly.” Ratchet closed the medical link and retracted his cervical cable. Only two, maybe three small adjustments to Ranger’s sensory inputs and emotional algorithms would be necessary to bring him up to Cybertronian standard. He was progressing months faster than Borealis had; but Ranger had been kindled locked and loaded, so to speak.   
  
The relative openness regarding Ranger’s origin, compared with Borealis’, was a relief as well. They wouldn’t be forthcoming to the general human populace – not even to the embassy staff – but they weren’t keeping him hidden.  
  
“Yes,” Ranger said. “Every other day or so.” It was a pleasant enough little rush of energy and buzz of excess charge across his armor. The effect on his CPU had felt weird at first, but everything ran so much smoother afterward, he didn’t mind the brief blackouts.  
  
“Have you given any thought to interfacing partners, post-integration?”  
  
His prior self would have been uncomfortable with the question, but Ranger found himself regarding it as just another medical concern. He’d been watching the others, all of them. To his Cybertronian mind, the differences in gender shone starkly beautiful and obvious. He was amused at his former self’s confusion. Will had given up on the complexities of Cybertronian notions of gender and dismissed it as unimportant to the ways in which he interacted with the robots. And he’d been correct, really. Gender for the robots, like with humans, did come with a certain set of assumptions. But maybe because the robots had more than two – or three – they were a lot more flexible about those assumptions, and did not hold them as graven in titanium if further data proved them incorrect for a given individual. The fact that Ratchet and the others accepted the new forgings among the Water Babies with little fanfare aside from figuring out pronouns and parameters, was telling.   
  
And they were all beautiful and attractive in different ways. The robots’ promiscuity was making more and more sense to him the more he thought about it, the more he watched everyone. The more he felt the things in his body that he felt, looking at them. They were built to touch each other, fields overlapping, minds overlapping; built with good hands and lovely fingers and such a variety of mouths and so many places under the armor that showed warm in infrared when they weren’t shielding for it.   
  
“Borealis told me how she dove into the intimate side of life, once Bumblebee introduced her to the basics. And then Rutile waited three years before he interfaced with anyone. Mostly because he was shy about approaching Prowl and Silverbolt.” Ranger didn’t blame him. Prowl and Silverbolt were… Not scary. That wasn’t it at all, though Ranger was certain from both sides of his nature that both  _could_  be scary as hell if they wanted to be. There was an intensity about them. “Is what Rutile did considered abnormal?”  
  
Ratchet shrugged. “Not abnormal, no. Unusual, certainly. As Borealis put it; weird is okay. As long as someone isn’t hurting themselves or others – and yes I know that can be a tricky definition; believe me we have entire libraries of definitions – then whatever they want to do in that wise is fine.”  
  
“Then I want to wait, too. Whatever she and I decide to do after, we’ll deal with it then. But I’ll wait until Sarah…crosses over too.”  
  
“Very well. Better put that up on the cloud mind, though, or you’ll have half the population trying to seduce you once you’re through integration.” Ratchet waggled his optical crests at him. “And some of them can be unspeakably hard to resist when they put their minds to it.”  
  
“I bet!” Rio had whistled at him just this morning.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Another summer storm rolled in and Prime rolled out to meet it. Fleeing Autobots dodged around him, making for the safety of the hangar, sheltering against the horrors of dreaded hydrogen monoxide. Ranger snickered at them and followed Prime out into the deluge. The grin left his face and he stumbled a little when Ironhide chirped him an image of the remains of a mech who’d been caught shieldless in the acid rain back on Cybertron. He’d known before that it wasn’t funny, exactly, but no one had actually  _shown_  him why. Unless you could get under cover and neutralize the acid, Ironhide assured him, it was a slow, excruciatingly painful way to die.   
  
 _All right, all right, I get it,_  Ranger said.  _You don’t have to get graphic. And why have you let humans laugh at you all this time? Why didn’t you show us? Them?_    
  
 **We have illustrated the consequences to those few humans who asked,**  Prime said.  **If the humans understand that we too are vulnerable in some ways, then perhaps we seem less frightening. But there is otherwise little to be gained in sharing such gruesome reminders. And it doesn’t hurt us for there to be things humans may tease us about.**  
  
 _Like families do,_  Ranger said.  
  
 **Indeed.**  
  
“Fair enough.” Ranger continued in Prime’s wake, out into the desert. Rain drummed against his shields and he dropped them, curious. It felt good, striking his armor, running down inside, along his protoform. The musical ringing of the water against metal was echoed nearby as Prime dropped his shields as well. It felt really nice. He wasn’t cold, he wasn’t getting soggy, it wasn’t dripping into his eyes, his clothes weren’t getting heavy and sticking to him.  
  
He stretched out his arms, leaning back to expose his chest plates better. It felt better than nice. The rain turned to hail, the musical, ringing sound vibrating through him; making his engine rev, his core temperature creep upward.  
  
From twenty meters away, Prime’s field brushed then enveloped him, wrapping him in a kind of warmth that wasn’t so much physical as emotional. Happiness, contentment. Simple enjoyment of a simple joy. It was making him feel even nicer. In fact…  
  
The nanosecond that thought began to form, Prime withdrew his field. The feeling of loss was nothing more than a soap bubble, swiftly popped, leaving no trace. Ranger nevertheless noted it.   
  
Ratchet hadn’t been kidding when he’d said some mechs were going to be hard to resist. Prime hadn’t even been trying.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2061 - September  
  
Jhiaxus' pattern curdled and roiled sullenly, hemmed on three sides by other patterns baring remembered denta at him, guarding weaker, more diffuse patterns from his predation. There was another avenue open to him, he thought. The apostate Prime had offered him "healing" – Jhiaxus knew well what that meant; he had enacted a great deal of it himself upon others – but Galvatron...   
  
Galvatron, if one was careful, could be manipulated.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2063 – July  
  
“Two warp signatures confirmed, sir.”  
  
Highbeam stood at his lieutenant’s starboard shoulder, watching the screens. After a moment the readings resolved enough to be consistent with a pair of heavily-laden subclass delta Seekers approaching Cybertronian orbit. As they came in range, Skyfire chirped his IFF, and the youngster he was with did the same. Highbeam did not entirely approve of the spark merging business, but he accepted anyone who made themselves useful, regardless of origin.  
  
“Skyfire and Azimuth on approach for delivery,” the lieutenant said. The pallets of space bridge components were secreted in various places on the planet and both moons, but lately also among the faint rings of debris, visible only at certain angles, and if the current level of starlight was sufficient. Ships and parts of ships and the remains of the myriad space stations and construction platforms, and a few bodies that had never been retrieved by either side.  
  
 _Hello, Sparkreaver and crew!_  Azimuth transmitted. Skyfire had long given up reminding Azimuth that while the  _Sparkreaver_  had an AI running most of its systems, it was not a sparked ship. Azimuth didn’t care, it just seemed polite to address the ship itself upon initial hail. Didn’t they do that on Star Trek? Come in,  _Enterprise_! Besides, he agreed with Borealis; the  _Sparkreaver_  was a goddamn ugly ship, and one had to do something to lighten the mood whenever one looked at it.   
  
 _Greetings, Skyfire and Azimuth. How fares the Prime?_  Highbeam was, in his way, no less devoted to Optimus than Ultra Magnus. The data packets the deltas transmitted in return included not just Prime’s status but all the news from Earth, which pleased the crew. Most of said crew – and if pressed, Highbeam would admit himself no exception – had an almost proprietary fondness for the humans, mad as the tiny things were. The humans had stood up under concerted Decepticon attack better than most primitive species had. The Autobots’ last remaining allies.   
  
The Nornir, flying perimeter, danced complex figures at the news of Prime and Elita having kindled a batch of twenty newsparks.  _Little sisters!_  they sang, whirling.   
  
A tick and a tug pulled at Azimuth’s long-range sensors. Someone had just exited the nearest wormhole. (For certain values of “nearest”, which were not, given Cybertron’s trajectory and velocity, all that near any more.) Good-sized mass; ship.   
  
 _Is that…?_  
  
 _Yes. Azimuth, stay on mission._  Skyfire continued to adhere his pallet to the inside curve of a pitted and warped hull remnant. Noting the laden fragment’s relative position, orbital path, and speed, he tapped a minute locator tag on the edge of the pallet. It would return a blip only to a coded frequency ping.  
  
 _But they’re, like, rogues or something. He’s the one who…!_  
  
 _Damaged Prowl, yes I know. We have work to do._  
  
 _But…!_  
  
 _Azimuth, stay on mission. I’ve already alerted Highbeam. Let him handle them._  Sentinel’s ship would be coming into the Nornir’s and then the _Sparkreaver_ ’s sensor ranges in a few seconds, but it wouldn’t hurt to give the commander a heads-up.   
  
 _Thank you, Skyfire,_  Highbeam said. Yes, there it was. Older code, but the IFF was correct.  _Sentinel, commander of the_ Rapacious _, this is Highbeam, commander of the_ Sparkreaver.  
  
 _Highbeam, huh? Congratulations. What happened to Magnus?_  
  
 _He is the City Commander at Metroplex on Earth._  
  
There was a pause.  _So. Prime really has moved in on that dirtball._    
  
Highbeam bared the tips of his denta. As the commander of a battalion, there were things Sentinel was entitled to know. But specific instructions had been given regarding this particular battalion and its leader. Not to let a single one of them within ten kilometers of ship or crew, for starters. Highbeam transmitted a slightly edited data packet.  
  
A longer pause, as Sentinel evidently perused the packet’s contents. There was a lot to digest. Sentinel had been out on his own recognizance for quite some time.   
  
…  
  
Traitors. Lockdown and Swindle were a blow. Sentinel had liked them. They were suitably ruthless. They knew what was at stake, what had to be done to win a war like this. Sentinel ground his denta. The arm of his command chair crumpled in his grip. They would be dealt with.  
  
The branched-spark twins, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. Well, they’d always been wild cards. Insubordinate afts, as much as they could get away with. Sentinel felt he’d been uniquely capable of controlling them, hence their assignment to his battalion. He wished Prime all joy in dealing with them and thereby purged his own irritation at their defection. And obviously Sentinel would not waste any more personnel in the attempt to retrieve his tactician. Silverlance was doing well enough as a replacement for Prowl. Prowl had always been iffy, in retrospect. Dedicated to the Autobots, certainly, but a little squeamish. He’d needed persuasion now and then, though Prowl was smart enough to require only a minimum of rough handling. (Sentinel remembered with visceral satisfaction the one time he had struck Prowl, a blow that had sent the lighter mech flying across the bridge. Prowl had always been weirdly nimble in midair, though, and had landed neatly on his pedes.)  
  
Moving Cybertron. It was just a planet, why bother? They could as easily rebuild on some other world. There were billions of suitable planets in their own galaxy, why even relocate to this “Milky Way”? (Sentinel had just enough xenobiology basics to be quite certain that he did not want to know what “milk” was.)   
  
Metroplex. The building of a cityformer bespoke a certain degree of infrastructure, or at least access to materiel. Prime was making this “Earth” his last stand. Desperate or desperately foolish.   
  
Prime. Salvaging a sliver of the Allspark made sense. Putting that sliver inside his spark chamber? Madness. Along with this disgustingly organic idea of spark-merging, it was clear the Prime had lost his senses. Sentinel had cordially disagreed with many of his policies for eons, but this was…insane. Their leader was insane. Mad as his twin at last.   
  
Sentinel would have to think about this.   
  
The Graveyard Legion. Weird that Prime could still have a stroke of brilliance amid the morass of deviant ideas.  
  
Galvatron and his new legions. Interesting. Looked like a trip to Chaar might be worthwhile.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It was a dry, dusty day. Sunlight slanted in the hangar door, casting a hot white oval on the polished stone floor. Hound and Trailbreaker came in, filthy from six days on and off road. They caught Mirage coming out of the recharge bay, hugging him, patting his shoulders and back, telling him all about their adventures...and getting him almost as filthy as they were. Mirage made what Ranger thought were rather feeble attempts to fend them off, but he wasn't serious about it. Instead he warbled at them in Cybertronian (of which Ranger bemusedly understood the words, though some of the context was clearly lost on him), and dragged them both down the corridor toward the oil bath.   
  
They'd put in a door since Dani's toddling stage, which a person had to activate via transmitted command. A determined human might still get in, but it would take a certain degree of hacking and hardware skill. Ranger didn't think anyone had ever tried it, not even Maggie. The oil bath was a place there was bound to he roughhousing.   
  
Or something. Ranger interrupted people in the middle of doing things other than bathing almost every time he went down there. He'd taken to keeping his shields up at low level all the time, and he was good at the repeller field shiver.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Dancing along rooftops was tricky, but Tracks was light. He kept up a steady stream of fire. Starscream wasn't taking him seriously yet, evading in rather lazy rolls and yaws, but Tracks had his shoulder missiles up and charged, and in a handful of seconds Starscream and Skywarp would be in perfect range.   
  
Skywarp disappeared. Tracks lost his lock.   
  
Starscream turned abruptly, and Tracks knew he was now the focus of a crossfire. His vantage now a kill-box. Skywarp was behind him. He kept firing, and launched a volley of missiles. Being dead wasn't so bad, Raze and the others said. (Though they admitted that often the  _process_  of dying sucked major exhaust.) They were so close, they hoped, to the end of the war. Shame to get scrapped now. And Tracks wasn't certain what he'd...do, there in the Allspark. He wasn't sure he wouldn't take Barricade's option. There was too much he'd worked too hard to forget; too much in him kept locked away, unexamined.   
  
Slag.   
  
…  
  
Smokescreen left the medbay, pausing at the entrance to the stem corridor. He didn't know where he was headed. The magnetic field of this planet was so powerful tiny birds and other creatures could navigate it with even tinier bits of cellular iron. Sometimes Smokescreen felt he would lose himself in it, scoured down to bare frame, memory and CPU wiped. Sometimes he thought that might not be such a bad thing. Tracks had deliberately run himself out under Seeker-fire, drawing them away from humans and a small pod of Water-Babies. He was going to recover, but he'd be in CR for weeks, maybe a couple of months. There was nowhere Smokescreen needed to be, nothing he could do to help right now.   
  
Fields touched him first, then hands. Jazz. An arm around his waist, giving him somewhere to go. Down the corridor, down the new ramp, into the lower levels, what Sam liked to call the dungeons, but were nothing like. Cool spaces belowground, a small subterranean pond, a second bunkhouse; spaces people could go to for privacy, meditation. Or shagging.   
  
Side by side they went, taking the short, curving hall to the mossary, where the little pond was. A bright disk in the center of the arched ceiling stood in for the sun or moon. No one was there at the moment. Jazz and Smokescreen skirted the whorled patterns of different mosses and delicate river-worn stone mosaics, climbing onto the low stone platform cut into the far curve of the room.   
  
Jazz held him for a long time; lips resting against his cheek spar, hands drifting only slowly on his body, fields like the water of the pond – mirrorlike and still.   
  
 _I liked the lines of him right off, first time I saw him,_  Smokescreen said at last, turning his head to kiss Jazz.  _That compact, tapering torso. Couldn’t ID his exact frame type…Towers custom jobs, you know._  
  
 _Ohhh yeah._  
  
 _I didn’t think much of his chances in our platoon, but he was pretty. Nice armor, if a bit light. Nice color. Until I found out that shade of indigo was the color of mourning in the Towers, or had been for about ten or twelve vorns._  
  
 _That’s a pretty good run, in terms of Towers fads,_  Jazz chuckled.   
  
 _Three million years, now._  Smokescreen held Jazz tighter.  _Nobody wanted to talk to him at first. Nobody knew what to say, I think. Even after we saw how he could fly. And fight._  Tracks had fought like a tunnel-snake when pressed.  
  
 _Nobody but you, huh?_  
  
 _Oh, I don’t…I can’t take much credit. My job. He beat me at triplex, our first game. Slagger._  
  
 _But not since?_  Grinning, Jazz pushed and Smokescreen pulled, and they lay side by side, hands moving purposefully, fields rising, caressing.   
  
 _Mmm. Couple times since. I wasn’t paying attention._  His harmonics made it clear what Smokescreen  _had_  been paying attention to.  
  
Jazz laughed and sank cables into him, enjoying the courteous way Smokey welcomed him into the link. Smokey had nice lines, too, and Jazz set out to enjoy every one of them.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Mikaela at 72 was not so very different from Mikaela at 44. Like Sophia Loren, Sam thought. Dark hair, good bones. Watching her walk, (especially from behind,) still put the hum in his motor. Besides, 72 wasn't that old. He didn't feel much different than 50, and that was just hitting mature adulthood, right? Bee was the elder partner in their little ménage, anyway, at 3.3 million years old. 72? Small beans.   
  
A tall, black-armored mech Sam didn’t recognize stood next to Ironhide, joining in the noisy hugs as Bumblebee transformed. The batches of new kids had gotten so big and frequent these days Sam didn’t try to keep track. His implant automatically updated his HUD, so he knew the new mech’s name was Ranger.   
  
Waitaminit. Ranger. Lennox had died in 2061, two years ago, so this was…  _Ranger_. Cute.   
  
Also. Aaaaaawkward! Sam glanced sidelong at Mikaela. Her HUD would have been similarly updated. Mikaela sailed on, smiling at the clump of robots, serene, guns holstered. Sam did not make the mistake of actually sighing in relief. He was good at this stuff.   
  
 _Sam,_  Mikaela tight-beamed,  _the thought of them erasing one of their kids to fill it with a human mindstate makes me sick to my stomach. But I know – believe me, Ratchet was very thorough – I know they don’t think of it like that at all. And anyway, it isn’t Ranger’s fault. Thanks so much for thinking I was going to create a scene._  
  
 _What? I didn’t even…! Did I say anything? I totally did not say anything!_  
  
 _You were thinking it._  
  
 _I was not. I was admiring your ass._  Not that Mikaela was easily divertable, but it couldn’t hurt. Besides being true.   
  
 _Uh huh. Right up until you spotted Ranger and realized who he was._  She climbed the stair to the mezzanine, throwing her hips around more than usual, Sam thought, and turned on her high-wattage smile. “Hello, Optimus,” she said aloud, as Prime leaned in so she could hug his cheek.  
  
“Greetings, Mikaela,” said Prime. “I have approved the Stanford-MIT telescope for courier. Blueshift can take it up as soon as it’s ready.”   
  
“Thank you!” Mikaela said, giving him an extra squeeze. If Optimus Prime liked your idea – and anyone was welcome to submit proposals, as long as you could actually build the thing yourself – one of the space-capable Autobots would pop it into orbit for you at a tiny fraction of the cost of a conventional launch. Or sometimes for free. Getting on Smokescreen’s good side was a bonus. There were lots of extra-atmospheric telescopes aloft now, and primary or secondary school experiments, and fleets of clever “space junk” collectors. Mikaela hadn’t been a part of the MIT team, but she’d put in a good word for her alma mater. The newest telescope merited launch on its own; it would look out upon the cosmos in ways humankind had only recently conceived of.   
  
Perceptor had seen what they’d done there and was gleeful.  
  
…  
  
Epps put his feet up on the dash, pleased that he could still do it at his age without a lot of grunting and groaning. Probably that was why Ranger let him. Epps had tried it riding in Prime once and had gotten a slow, crawling tingle of electric charge, which hint he had taken before his calf muscles cramped.   
  
“So is it weird or what, having people ride inside you?” Epps had asked this before, of Mirage, of Ironhide, but they had thought the question itself strange. Physically larger people carried physically smaller people – the world had always been thus. (Except when certain kinds of smaller people, like Huffer or Brawn, were physically much stronger than even larger people. Often this meant towing rather than carrying. Epps had held up his hands in surrender because Mirage would go on and on describing every permutation and exception for  _hours_.) He figured Ranger might have a different perspective.  
  
“I guess it’s not that different from being pregnant,” Ranger said, with every appearance of seriousness. Quite a lot of emotional information could be conveyed by the color and brightness of dashboard lights and dials.   
  
“What!?” Epps squawked.  
  
“Or having a tapeworm.”  
  
“Ugh! Man, you are full of shit!”  
  
Ranger snickered. “Honestly, hadn’t really thought about it.” He bounced on his tires a little. “But now that you mention it, it’s kind of freaking me out! AAAAAAAAA!” He swerved sharply back and forth across the – fortunately empty – road with an ostentatious screech of tires.  
  
“Hey!” Epps protested, clutching at the ohshit bars and yanking his feet down off the dash. “I’m too old for this shit!”  
  
“Now who’s full of it?” Ranger laughed, evening out.   
  
“No, but seriously, this is kinda weird,” Epps felt as though he’d gotten his friend  _back_ , that Will had just been “away” for a couple of years and now he’d come home. He just happened to be a twenty-foot-tall robot now. “Guess the next question is, when did they do your last backup?”  
  
“Do I remember what dying is like, you mean?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Last backup was the day before I died.” Ranger’s dash lights dimmed slightly as he thought. “But I…I remember Jhiaxus. And falling…and losing signal…how can I…? Ironhide. I remember because he does. I was… _Lennox_  was hooked into the cloud mind…” He tried to call up his earliest tank-memories. As Ranger, he couldn’t remember anything from before he had a memory core and CPU to remember with, could he? The spark knew things, though. Could he remember being kindled?   
  
Deep in the center of core programming. A muddle of impressions – all inputs had felt the same; sight, sound, touch, chemo, field, emotion, undifferentiated and hazy. A sense of purpose had been the strongest. The compulsion to burrow into the protomass and seat in what would become his chest. Before that…there would have been a few moments after Ironhide and Ratchet had chosen, before his spark had been carried to the tank. Motion, maybe? Cold? It was so vague, so tangled now in everything he’d experienced since. Overwritten? That wasn’t how Cybertronian memory worked, on a normal basis. They added layers, they didn’t need to erase the old ones until they got very, very old, like Kup. Or unless they wanted to, like Megatron.  
  
Ranger was curious, now. His experience, his point of view, like Borealis’, had made a transition from human to Cybertronian. For Borealis, there was an appreciable jump between the time her brain had been scanned and when she had become aware in-tank.   
  
Things had gotten tangled and weird, but Ranger thought the transition for him had been continuous. As his human body had died, there had been a dizzy kind of…sideways…slip. And the moment his mind fastened on that concept of “sideways” Ranger felt something shift, the memories – nebulous as they were –  _changing_  to reinforce his chosen impression. The Allspark hadn’t been involved in his kindling except at a remove, because it had created Ironhide and Ratchet’s sparks. Why did Ranger suddenly feel like his pattern had nevertheless come from the Allspark as well?  
  
The Allspark, Ranger decided, was a slippery bastard and it was a major wonder that Prime had made any progress in using the thing at all.   
  
“Guess nothing really changes,” Epps said. He put his feet back up on the dash. “Guess we just have to find out for ourselves.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2063 - August  
  
A low boom sounded through stone and air, focused by the skylight. Ranger regarded the latest summer thunderstorm with distrust. He knew it was beautiful out there, smelled wonderful, clouds glowing with late afternoon rainbows.   
  
“Ratchet?”  
  
“Hmm?” Ratchet was running a routine diagnostic – a mid-level housekeeping sort of program that Ranger would be able to run on himself after this.  
  
“Could you…trigger me into integration? Like Metroplex?”   
  
Ratchet refocused his optics, hoisted a single optic ridge. He didn’t say anything for a moment, his fields calm and unruffled. Ranger suddenly felt abashed; whiny and immature. He didn’t like the uncertainty, he told himself. He could be taken out of action, in the middle of, say, a rescue operation, and there was nothing he could do about it. He would be impaired, go a little crazy; it could take weeks to come out of.   
  
“Metroplex had been aware for years,” Ratchet said gently. “And cityformers are unusual. Blaster integrated in-tank as well, but he has symbionts.”  
  
“Oh.” Ranger didn’t want to imagine what a host going through integration would do to symbionts. He supposed they had had ways of dealing with it before the Allspark had been jettisoned, when they’d done the building and ensparking the other way around. Maybe they’d kept the symbionts in stasis. It couldn’t have been pleasant.  
  
“We let it come when it may for a reason. It’s adaptive; the emotional pathways are more stable that way. Triggering doesn’t always work, and it can go wrong.”  
  
Ranger’s optics spiraled very wide. “Okay.”  
  
Optimus came in, Ratchet gestured him to a large table. Diverting first to pat Ranger's shoulder, Optimus wandered toward the indicated table as Ratchet finished with Ranger.   
  
"We're going to see if we can delay Prime's growth a little more," Ratchet said at the flare of curiosity in Ranger's fields. "There. You're done. The command string is  _here_." The string highlighted in Ranger's head. "Run that once a month or so, more often if you start to feel any kind of motor lag."   
  
"Yes, Ratchet." Ranger slid from the table, lingered, looked at Prime. The process of donating protomass was something he'd been aware of for years, but had never seen. They had Wells now, but it was something he conceivably might have to do someday. Like giving blood, it seemed like something he should be prepared to do. "May I stay?"   
  
"It's not pleasant," Ratchet warned. Prime nodded, though, and Ranger moved to the next table over, out of the way.   
  
Prime lay ventral side down, limbs spread, fingers and pedal flanges hooked around the edges of the table. Ranger sternly curbed his revving engine.   
  
Ratchet was tempted to stroke the back of Optimus' thigh, just to watch Ranger's fields go wobbly. Instead, he extended the nanoprobe from his left wrist and slipped it between plates of Prime's armor, down to the protoform. Prime gripped the table harder as the revert command seethed through him, and Ratchet began to pull a heavy ribbon of mass into a skein.   
  
 _Does it hurt?_  Ranger tight-beamed. Prime's optics were shuttered, and though he made no sound, the lines of tension in his body, and the occasional knives of jagged static stabbing through his closely-held fields were making Ranger's armor stand up. Blue crackles of Allspark energy rippled over Prime's frame; as Ratchet kept pulling, Prime grew visibly smaller, all over, all at once, not entirely smoothly.   
  
 **Yes and no,**  Prime replied.  **Borealis has described the sensation as akin to stretching very sore muscles.**    
  
 _Ah._  Ranger hunched his spaulders down into their proper arrangement. Uncomfortable, but not unbearable.   
  
Ratchet snipped off the first ribbon, pressing the end into the completed, metric ton skein, and began another. By the time they were finished there were three skeins, and Optimus was back down to 30 feet tall. Ironhide and Inferno came in to heft two of the skeins – Prime himself took the third - and haul them down to the storage vault.   
  
 _Should he be doing that?_    
  
Ratchet smiled as he heated the nanoprobe to a dull orange to sterilize it. "He's done this so often, as disquieting as it is he recovers immediately." He patted Ranger's back. "He's three tons lighter; he'll be bouncing around the embassy all week and we'll be looking for excuses to shoo him outside, trust me."   
  
…  
  
“I’m not saying we won’t do it, or we’re unwilling,” Alexis Thi Dang, the new Director of the EDF said, lifting a hand and smiling wryly. “I’m just letting you know there’s been some grumbling about cost. Elections are coming up.”  
  
Ranger's attention wandered. Across the holotable, Optimus nodded and responded to Thi Dang, Jazz and Prowl in their usual places at Prime's sides, their fields reading as a single, attentively humming field, banded now and then with bright arcs of humor from Jazz. Lennox had had the field-display app for his implant and HUD, but had usually kept it off - too much information for day-to-day. Watching them made Ranger happy, though. Happy fields. Ironhide stood between him and Jazz, so Ranger leaned around behind him, reaching out to pass his hand through the outer edges, playing with the subtle ribbons of energy. It made his hand happy. How could a hand be happy? But it was, he could feel it, all bubbly and warm, shooting little bolts of happiness up his arm to his spark. His feet were happy, too, shuffling and tapping the nice smooth cool floor. He was getting very warm, the coolness felt good, made him happier. His optics darted around, taking in every detail, everything was so bright and sharp and pretty! Optics were wonderful! He began to tremble a little, but it was mostly like a caffeine buzz, nothing alarming...oooh, Ironhide was wrapping an arm around his waist. His waist was so happy, being close to Ironhide's arm like that! His feet were jealous now, though, because they weren't very close to Ironhide...no, they were too - Ironhide had enormous feet, so Ranger's feet were pretty close to Ironhide’s feet! Feet were happy things! Feet were good to have!   
  
"Mushrooms!" Ranger caroled, giggling. "l never did mushrooms! I was in ROTC!"   
  
"Robot adolescence?" Thi Dang asked.   
  
"Yes," Prime said with a lopsided grin.   
  
"You guys get off easy."   
  
"No argument."   
  
Prowl moved to Ranger's other side as Ironhide maneuvered him out the door and toward the medbay; not touching yet, but there in case. Ranger hummed at him. That bright red chevron was interesting! How cute! Ironhide was being growly! Oops, now his fields were shot with pale yellow embarrassment. Ranger giggled again. Oh, hello, Ratchet! Yay, Ratchet! Ratchet was a funny color, too...wait, that was his armor not his fields...why was he still that color anyway? Ranger's optics were happy to see him, though. Mmm, Ratchet was hooking him up to a thing, table, monitor, whatever. Ranger's arm port was happy now! Data data data! In and out! Oh, an energon feed! Wooo! Energon was happy!   
  
…  
  
“Thetarix was south of the Rust Sea,” Ironhide whispered, his rough voice unwontedly gentle. “South of the Sonic Canyons, and the wind sent rust into our air so that each sunrise and sunset was like the sunrises and sunsets here, orange and gold, gleaming off windows and buildings and people and the streets themselves. Sometimes the sun was red through the haze all day, a bright optic watching over us.” Ranger lay sprawled in his lap on the recharge table, optics more than half shuttered, purring slightly. Ironhide kept a hand centered on Ranger’s chest. “We kept the Forges hot, building bodies for the Lord Protector’s soldiers. Even with the winds from the Canyons, even at night, it was always warm. I didn’t get to spend as much time there as I would have liked; I had a duty to my Lord, to my squadron. I know you understand that. Maybe, when we have a sun again, I’ll take you there. Won’t be much left, until we rebuild. Once we do, though, I think you’ll like it. Red sun, red Forges, warmth to keep the oil smooth…”  
  
“You’ll be a poet yet,” said Ratchet, ambling by to run a quick scan. Ranger trembled now and then, his body jerking with aborted movements, but he had not had full-blown seizures.   
  
“Shaddup,” Ironhide rumbled.   
  
…  
  
Prowl kept his firewalls solid, though Ranger did not test them, consciously or otherwise. He transmitted small data packets, mostly brief sensory clips. Floating blue crystals and haunting music. The mathematical pleasure of his first liftoff from the port where the  _Fission Blade_  had been commissioned. A field of wildflowers bluer than the sky.  
  
“Texas,” Ranger murmured.  
  
“Yes,” Prowl nodded.  
  
“Lone Star. Alamo…Santa Ana…come and take them…every one will be put to the sword…asleep in the arms of the Lord…” Ranger shook, and Prowl held him, singing low until Ranger settled again.  
  
…  
  
Lines of paint this was not, Ranger knew. Chromatophores on nanocells. Like a big, mechanical octopus. Octopus Prime. He traced the pale blue outlines between glimmering cobalt and vivid orange-red. The original had probably been done by some talented low-rider down in SoCal, for some guy who had loved his truck. Ranger loved this truck, too.   
  
Love ran through his fuel lines from his spark, through every system, through his mind; the emotion clear and strangely uncomplicated. He felt rested, restful, in no hurry to move from Prime’s embrace, and the acid-sharp burn of his fidgety, uncomfortable energy seemed to have left him.  
  
“Through already?” Ratchet asked. Ratchet’s hand on his foot felt warm.   
  
Ranger looked up into Prime’s considering optics.   
  
“I think so,” Optimus said.   
  
“Five days.” Ratchet touched Ranger’s cheek, scanned him deeply. It felt weird, but Ranger didn’t twitch. “Most people take almost two weeks. And this was two months earlier than most, three earlier than Borealis. I don’t think it means anything in particular, it’s simply unusual.”  
  
“Okay,” said Ranger.  
  
“I trust you won’t get cocky.”  
  
“No, sir.”  
  
“Released to active duty.”  
  
“Thanks, Ratchet.”  
  
“Once Prime’s done coddling you.”  
  
“Heh.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2063 - September   
  
He could lift an entire bundle of I-beams. Like Superman. This was fun! Ranger placed the bundle where the foreman indicated and straightened, orienting on the next task. The Autobots helped in the ways they were well suited for, while trying to avoid taking human jobs. Usually they weren’t in for full-time, or on any single project from start to finish. They were often simply extra help when it was crunch time.   
  
There was a blur of motion, a knifing flash of fields, a blow that sent him to his knees. Someone grabbed his shoulder, his chin roughly, hauled him upright. He felt cables forcing their way past the port covers in his neck. He couldn’t even scream as a link sliced its way through his autonomic firewalls.   
  
 _You have anomalous memory data,_  a cold, emotionless, harmonic-less voice said in his mind. There was tumult, shouting; his gyros weren’t working right. There were guns in his arms but he couldn’t remember what the command codes were to shape them. Something was eating at him inside. Virus.   
  
Soundwave yanked his cables free but held the young mech up as a shield. Ranger’s optics focused finally – now if he could just get his legs to work. Heavy booming crashed from the left. Ranger caught movement in his periphery and shifted his left optic. That was a sight he'd never seen before. Optimus Prime in full charge, running  _at_  him, battle mask up, big guns blazing. It was more than a little bit terrifying. It would have been more frightening if he couldn’t  _feel_  the blistering transmissions guiding Prime’s ordnance to strike  _around_  Ranger, hitting only Soundwave no matter how the Decepticon held him.  
  
Soundwave angled his shields, both the living and the energy, trying to deflect Optimus’ careful fire. A  _shuff_  of pedes on dusty ground gave away the position of another mech behind him.  
  
Soundwave spun to face the new threat – and met Elita’s fist. Her punch sent him flying; and when he landed she landed standing on his chest. She crouched and took firm hold of his head. Her narrow face and bared denta filled his view.  
  
“Elita! Please don’t kill him!” cried Prime. Soundwave filed the plea for later analysis.  
  
Elita twisted Soundwave’s head 315 degrees; enough to break things, not quite enough to sever the neck entirely. Soundwave’s body went limp as too many sensory and motor connections were snapped or crushed.   
  
Optimus caught Ranger before he hit the ground, cannons transforming swiftly back to arms, cradling the young mech tenderly. “Ranger? Ranger, status!”  
  
“Fffffffffffffffffff,” Ranger slurred. “Fuck. …That was f-fucked up, man.” He could turn his head now. Oh good, progress. Some part of himself was fighting back. He looked up at Prime’s distraught face. “Something in me.” Prime’s hand felt warm, reassuring on his chest. “Get’t out.”  
  
 **Ranger, under these circumstances, I must force the link.**  Prime began, cables spooling slowly out of his neck, hesitating before connecting to Ranger’s cephalic ports.  
  
“Just do it,” Ranger said, while he still could. “Hurry.” He braced for the cautery knife. Prime’s cables clicked home, the link so gentle it took Ranger a ridiculous seven nanoseconds to even realize it had initiated. There was a sense of a rising wave, bright threads, laser-edged, surgical swiftness cutting here and there, relentlessly pursuing the foreign code, hunting it down and killing it completely. There was a rising of Ranger’s self to meet Prime’s oncoming tide; where they crashed together in the middle, Soundwave’s virus would be snuffed out. It dove and dodged like a thing alive, seeking ways under or through, an escape to lie in wait, a burrowing in a backdoor trigger. But the Prime-wave roared, gathering every fragment before it, crushing everything beyond quantum possibilities, pursuing his quarry across all twenty dimensions.   
  
The Allspark made up almost a third of Prime’s body. No malevolent code, no matter how brilliant, could stand against him.   
  
…  
  
 _Soundwave captured,_  Laserbeak tight-beamed.  _Alive._  
  
Ravage sent an unadorned acknowledgement. This had only happened once before, long ago. The standing order was not to attempt rescue. Only two of them were free. Buzzsaw and Rumble had been with Soundwave. Ravage had felt nothing in his spark to indicate that they had been deactivated.   
  
 _Tracking,_  Laserbeak said.  
  
 _Yes,_  said Ravage, and loped in pursuit.  
  
…  
  
Awareness returned parcel by parcel. Domain by domain. So many pieces went together to create the emergent property of mind. Ranger could feel each of them rebooting, once there were enough of them running; could feel the layers of his self re-assembling. Beneath them all hummed his spark, steady, steadfast, a thing he could trust down to the foundations. The Lennox memories weren’t all of him, as important as they were.   
  
“Optimus?”  
  
“I’m right here.” A big hand settled on his chest, above his spark. It felt as though the hand itself was another spark, the field around it so strong and bright, sending wisps of itself down to touch him through armor and protoform and chamber wall. Ranger’s hands obeyed him without pain, closing on Prime’s hand, keeping it where it was.   
  
There was a pounding at the med-bay door. That was quite an accomplishment, as the entry from the hangar had been engineered to nuclear blast door standards. Ranger sat up. “Ironhide!”  
  
“Better let him in before he breaks something,” Ratchet grumped and opened the door. Ironhide stood poised on the other side, both cannons out and whirling, optics ablaze. Ranger crossed his arms and glared at him.   
  
“Do you mind?” Ranger said. “Trying to get some rest in here. Oof!” He returned Ironhide’s fierce hug. “I’m okay, I think.”  
  
“Where is he?” Ironhide growled at Prime, sounding like an angry Tyrannosaurus rex. “Where is that tunnel-snake slagger? Where are you keeping whatever was left after Elita was done?”  
  
“You do not need that information at this time,” Prime replied amiably.   
  
“Don’t give me that slag!”  
  
“Ironhide…” Optimus wrapped his arms around both Ironhide and Ranger.   
  
Ranger, seeing Ironhide do the same, snuggled into the Prime’s chest. He had this chance, he realized, to be a kid again, in a way. To accept simple reassurance without embarrassment.   
  
“If we kill Soundwave,” Prime continued, “even Prowl cannot foresee what Shockwave will do.”  
  
“Shockwave? “ Ironhide blinked. “What does he have to do with it?”  
  
“Shockwave and Soundwave are twins,” Prime said. Their similarities had always been more than name deep, and Optimus wondered why they had kept their connection a secret, even before the war.   
  
“They’re WHAT???”  
  
Ranger reset his audials. Ironhide was loud, at close range. Prime’s chest was warm, the embrace of his arm, and the contact with Ironhide comforting. Ranger nuzzled into Prime’s shoulder. Peripheries were shutting down but he didn’t try to override. Prime’s voice and fields soothed everyone, no shame in that.   
  
“I would prefer to avoid an escalation at this point. I know this will be difficult, but I think it would be best to release him.” Optimus didn’t blame Elita for damaging the Decepticon as she had. He was pleased at her restraint, given the circumstances. Neither side had been much for taking prisoners for half a million years. It was an expensive, risky operation, and no one had had the resources. Leave the dead. Let the wounded be evacuated by their own side if at all. He did not want to go back to that. Ratchet, bless him, had started working on Soundwave immediately without so much as a raised supraorbital crest.   
  
…  
  
Ranger came online swiftly this time. Elita had taken Ironhide’s place beside him, seated on the edge of the recharge table. She was holding one of his hands, examining it curiously.   
  
“Prime was your diversion,” Ranger said, to be thinking of something other than Elita holding his hand. All that noise and firepower. Of course the rampaging Prime looked like the biggest threat.  
  
Elita smiled. It made her so beautiful Ranger felt his spark wobble. Her helm was so…spiky. She was intimidating, and it was not in Ranger’s nature to be easily intimidated. Now, up close, he could see the remnants of glyphs and decorative etchings; almost a sheen of texture over the dark metal rather than distinct forms. He could read some of it, where the glyphs weren’t too battle-scarred, and filed the meanings away for later perusal. Poetry, seemed to be.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Comms were down. Soundwave was jamming everything.”  
  
“Yes. Optimus and I are very old friends. He knew what I was going to do the moment Soundwave grabbed you.”   
  
“You’re going to kill him. Soundwave.”  
  
“If he crosses my path on a battlefield again, yes. Right now he is a prisoner, and Autobots do not execute prisoners of war without full trial. Or we didn’t used to.” Sadness and a host of other, fleeter emotions flickered through her optics and fields.   
  
“The humans will want their own trial. And their own execution.”  
  
“That is why at the moment we are keeping him on embassy grounds. Embassy airspace, as I understand it, extends to low orbit, which is itself considered international airspace.”  
  
Ranger’s optics widened. They could get Soundwave out and never set a pede on United States sovereign soil. The world leaders would have fits, but Prime could handle them. There were complicated extradition treaties regarding human fugitives, but Prime had been adamant that Cybertronian criminals be handled by Cybertronians. For human safety, primarily, although that was becoming a trickier tack to take. The countries with the strongest alliances to them respected the fact that Cybertronians were still an endangered species, and therefore none were to be killed indiscriminately, but not all of humanity agreed.   
  
“Do you remain intent on maintaining celibacy until Sarah’s crossing?”  
  
“What? Yes, of course.”  
  
“Then…you might want to remove your hand from my chest.”  
  
Ranger jerked his hand away and scooted to the head of the table, mortified. “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Prime was going to k—. No, no he wasn’t. Where had this idea that Optimus and Elita were married come from? That was so weird.  
  
Laughing not unkindly, Elita patted his shoulder and rose. “I wish you a speedy recovery, Ranger,” she said and left him in peace.   
  
Ranger clonked his forehelm against his drawn-up knee. Where had all this static come from? Jeez. Now he really had to de-frag.  
  
…  
  
They thought they had him in medical stasis. Soundwave had firewalls that did not register as firewalls, and behind them his consciousness was fully active, observing. Thus he was awake during the repairs to his neck – not an altogether comfortable experience. Ordinary physical pain was a stimulus to be ignored.  
  
The room in which he was imprisoned was a near-featureless sphere, flattened to create a level floor. Tiny, soft, lozenge-shapes composed of woven matter and tangled organic fibers were stacked in niches near the door. Other than this, and the constellation of limited-frequency EM lights set into the ceiling, only the striations of the stone from which the chamber had been carved served as decoration. Two burly Autobots stood sentry on either side of the door, and another – a small  _je_ ; files provided a name; Spiral – clung to the ceiling, weapons out but not fully powered.  
  
He was lying on the bare floor, Ratchet muttering to himself above him, completing the last few linkages. Buzzsaw and Rumble lay quiescent within him, their small, conjugate sparks humming low and steady next to his. In stasis, lightly. Unharmed, and Ratchet had made no attempt to remove them. Strange. It would have been the first thing he would have done. Fools.   
  
The door opened to admit the Prime.  
  
Soundwave had never once in all the long war feared the Prime. For a time, when the Autobots had proved themselves difficult to eradicate, worthy adversaries, he had respected the Prime’s intelligence and wily ingenuity. Not now. The Prime had become weak on this organic-infested planet. Easily manipulated. His defeat was simply a matter of patience. Soundwave agreed with his brother; the Prime's betrayal had been illogical, bordering on incomprehensible, even though Soundwave retained his emotional heuristics, declining his brother's offer of the emotional sim programming he used in his strategic planning.   
  
Soundwave had pointed out that, being spark-twins, they were meant to be halves of a whole. Their complementary but not identical natures had served them well for thousands of vorns, and besides, Shockwave did not have symbionts. Shockwave had accepted this logic and had not pressed the matter again.   
  
Ratchet moved aside as the Prime knelt by Soundwave’s portside shoulder. The Prime drew no weapon, did not touch him.   
  
“Soundwave,” Prime said, his harmonics formal, “take your people and leave this world. Please, let there be peace between us.”  
  
“I am loyal to Galvatron. Galvatron has ordered the extermination of the parasite species infesting this planet.” This information was not new, nor important. A trifle, which would nevertheless bring pain to the Autobots.   
  
“Why?”  
  
An attempt at psychological manipulation. Soundwave ignored it.  
  
“What do you want, Soundwave?”  
  
Capitulation so soon? Within himself, Soundwave experienced the pleasure of a small triumph. He would set them an impossible task. “Give me Barricade.” A demand, no promise of truce attached, no expectation of being granted.  
  
Prime straightened.   
  
By the door, one of the sentries, Prowl, flinched and turned his head away. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Interesting. A logical surmise would be that this Autobot had been in some way responsible for Barricade’s deactivation.   
  
“His body has lain on the bottom of the Laurentian for decades,” Ratchet said. He had been somewhat surprised at the time that the US government had done as promised. The tracking buttons had indicated a suspiciously long pause at dock before the body had been loaded onto the  _USS Harry S. Truman_ ; and Ratchet was sure there had been more than strictly Navy personnel aboard for the trip out to the abyss. Prime had elected not to pursue the matter. The humans had had unlimited access to Megatron and the Cube for near a century. It was a little late to be coy. “We can get it for you if that’s what you really want, but it’ll be an unholy mess.” He wondered what bit of hardware Soundwave could be after, and why. He had done the post-mortem himself. Barricade hadn’t been carrying anything unusual.   
  
“No,” said Soundwave, looking directly at Prime. “Give me his spark. A new body.”   
  
“I cannot. His pattern did not remain whole upon passing within the Allspark.”  
  
“Try. You have done this before.”  
  
“I asked willing sparks, and willing sparks answered.”  
  
“You are the Prime, who can refuse?”  
  
Optimus laughed – a reflection of the Matrix, which was convulsed with hilarity.   
  
 **Does he want a fragging _list_?**  Zeta sneered.   
  
“Soundwave, the line between persuasion and coercion is not so blurred.” Optimus leaned fractionally closer. “What Galvatron has done, forcing once-living sparks into new bodies, has been damaging the Allspark itself. If we wish to truly destroy our source of life, then certainly let us continue in that vein. I would rather not.”  
  
“Give me Barricade,” Soundwave said again.  
  
“Why Barricade?” Trying a different track. Soundwave had trusted the old enforcer with Frenzy over a long-term and distant assignment. That was something. Then Frenzy had died (or been killed; even Maggie had trouble calling that one and she’d been in the room); on Barricade’s watch, essentially. That was another thing. Optimus decided he really wanted to know why before he would agree to look for the scattered remnants of Barricade’s pattern.  
  
Soundwave was silent.  
  
They could not force him to tell them, nor to tell the truth if he spoke – not without using tactics Optimus had sworn to himself never to employ again. Prime watched the passive face of the Decepticon, thinking.   
  
“I will look for his pattern,” Prime said, finally. “If he desires re-embodiment we will accommodate him. Whether he rejoins you and your faction will be entirely up to him.”  
  
…  
  
Ravage estimated they were beneath the embassy mesa. He had found the bolt-hole exit deep in the canyons to the north on a previous scouting foray. Breaching the electronic defenses was risky, but Ravage hoped his latest logic bore had moved through this accessory system – and all six baffle doors – without traces even the redoubtable Red Alert could detect.  _Last door,_  he tight-beamed. Laserbeak braced high, Ravage braced low, and keyed the door.  
  
It opened, revealing a tiered arcade of Autobot weapons, pointing at them.  
  
After a moment, the Autobots parted, opening a space through which walked the Prime.  
  
“Come with me,” he said, and turned to lead them away, up and then down, deeper into their stronghold. The symbionts followed. Ravage readied his contingent of drones, which could create havoc if nothing else, but could just as easily get himself and Laserbeak shot. The Autobots ranged behind them, and to each side when the corridors were wide enough. Several fell away as they went deeper, but not enough to render the odds favorable.   
  
Ravage kept his growl subsonic, expecting torture, expecting disassembly at the least. His host’s spark was whole and spinning, that was all he could tell. They were brought to a spherical chamber, deeper underground than the bolt-hole tunnel had been. Soundwave lay on the floor, suffering no further indignity than medical paralysis. The Autobots stepped aside, and Ratchet activated Soundwave’s compartment hatch to allow the symbionts to rejoin their host.   
  
 _Ravage, Laserbeak, dock,_  Soundwave ordered. He was being allowed transmission. They complied, curling within amidst their remaining two hostmates.   
  
“Are they all right?” Ratchet asked, closing him up.   
  
“Affirmative,” Soundwave was surprised enough to reply. Regard for symbionts was not something he expected from Autobots. Skorponok’s destruction had been savage, though he would not have lived long after Blackout’s deactivation in any case.   
  
Prime stood, and addressed the subclass-delta gestalt leader who had been among the symbionts’ escort, taking the delta’s hand in both of his. “Silverbolt, please take Soundwave off planet and let him go.”  
  
“Prime…I don’t…? Yes, Prime.”  
  
…  
  
Soundwave fully expected to be jettisoned into the local star. He was therefore mildly surprised when the delta carrying him headed directly for the system’s heliopause. He was released with the medical override in place, given a slight shove outward. The delta aimed a not inconsiderable array of weapons at him, then transmitted a code. A tiny device detached from Soundwave’s neck and he could move again.   
  
Without a further word, the delta backed to beyond Soundwave’s weapons range, then turned and dove in a flash for the third planet.   
  
Weakness.  
  
Soundwave hailed the  _Torment_  for pick-up.  
  
…  
  
 **Barricade...  
  
Barricade...   
  
Barricade...**  
  
He could only ask. He did not want anything that answered to be torn, poisoned by force. His query belled through the Allspark, whalesong across the deeps.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ranger lay on his stomach in the grass, head resting on folded hands, watching her knit. Sarah liked to spend as much of the year as possible eating dinner out on the porch – which in their part of Nevada meant most of the year. In December and January and February there might be cold, rainy days when it just wasn’t worth it.   
  
“Are we still married?” Ranger asked.  
  
Sarah dropped a stitch. “We talked about that before, remember?” How could he forget? Unless he was damaged, he couldn’t, could he? But maybe, now that he’d been through integration he wanted to talk about it again. “Will and I decided, under the circumstances, we’d just have to figure it out for ourselves, when the time came. He always assumed he’d die before I did.”  
  
“Human males are generally shorter lived,” Ranger agreed. Obviously it had been more than that, and the twinkle in his optics indicated he knew that. “When I…woke up, I knew you. I knew we had a connection that was called ‘married’, but whenever I looked at you or thought about you I couldn’t feel the kinds of things I remembered feeling when I did those things before.”  
  
“Ratchet told me your emotions would be kept set very low at first.” It was another in a long list of things she had thought about, fished for a reaction to when it was just theoretical, and found, once theory had become reality, that she needn’t have worried. The situation was, in a way, so strange she had no footing, no basis for panic or anger or revulsion. It was a curiosity. Maybe other people would react differently. She’d long ago given up putting a lot of store by such predictions. You took each day as it happened. You took each person as they were, whether they were robots or humans or dogs.   
  
Ranger nodded. “I knew that, too. I decided to wait and not worry about it. It’s better to wait until after integration anyway. I do love you, now that everything’s put together right. But it’s…sparks love differently.”  
  
“I imagine they do,” Sarah said, grinning. “You can leave the ‘cleaving’ part right out, mister. We can deal with that stuff later.” Sarah admitted she wasn’t that kinky, not like some of the younger kids. And it had been nice, really, the way her physical relationship with Will had softened, mellowed over the years. Their frenzied, volcanic lovemaking whenever he was home on leave had been wonderful; she wouldn’t trade those days for anything. But it had also been fine for some of the fire to ease down. A simple campfire instead of nuclear explosions. Old folks got it on, too; but nobody wanted a broken hip. She wasn’t about to get frisky with a twenty-foot-tall robot who could probably go for days or weeks without stopping.   
  
“Anyway, I don’t think we can say we’re married by any civil or church definition,” she continued. “Till death do us part. Maybe in a Shakespeare definition, though. ‘…Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds…’ I talked to Pastor Rachel about it more, while you were in the tank. Not the details, of course, just as kind of a question of philosophy.” Those had been coming up more and more these days. Human technology could do amazing things, and the Transhumanists had been talking about these kinds of things since the late 1990’s or earlier. Sarah agreed that it was a good idea to think about what some of this hypothetical technology would mean  _before_  it became reality and people were left to fend for themselves with no direction and no help in an increasingly confusing world.   
  
Well. The Autobots would help. Prime sometimes revealed how other species had solved certain problems, always delineating how that species and the circumstances had been different as well as similar. He made suggestions, or, more often, simply restated the situation as he saw it, in remarkably clear terms. The ultimate outsider, but with a surprisingly human insight and unflagging compassion.   
  
Ironhide, interestingly, did in fact treat Ranger almost exactly the same way he had treated Will. She’d asked Borealis about her relationships with Ratchet and Prime, and Borealis had said she did consider them her parents, very much in the human sense; though she also knew and understood things from a Cybertronian perspective. Borealis was completely, unhesitatingly promiscuous with everyone except Prime and Ratchet. Sarah somehow felt that Prime would be willing to take their relationship to a more physically intimate level. It was kind of part of his job. Or at least he seemed religiously inclined to make certain his people were happy, by any and all means available. Ratchet, funnily enough, was a stereotypical mother hen to Borealis. And Sarah didn’t think he’d realized it, despite the teasing. Ratchet seemed to think, in fact, that the teasing was wholly off-base. He was perfectly sane, why was everyone else crazy?  
  
Ranger evoked a nod by movement of certain of his face plates, despite that his head firmly rested on his hands on the ground. “You’re on row 138, stitch 56, by the way. Next should be purl, purl, purl.”  
  
“Ah! I was just going to ask, thank you!” Oh, she loved him. He’d made himself into a walking library of knitting patterns just for her. And…that was a thing Will would have done. Will was in there, she was certain. No matter what the science bots said, this hadn’t been a cold copying of neuron connections and quantum chemical states. The spark Ironhide and Ratchet had created between them somehow also contained Will’s soul.

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2063 – October  
  
Everything was so huge. You could see it in the upturned, wide-eyed faces, and the way no-one had to tell them to stay close together. Maggie remembered her first sight of the embassy; the private jet with John Keller, the armored limo ride from Nellis. The rough hole cut into the side of the irregular mesa, like a conspiracy theorist's wet dream; the echoing, empty hangar, domed ceiling hazed by its own atmosphere. She had wondered why they'd carved the chambers and hallways so high; even Prime wasn't that tall. One didn't forget one's first close-up sight of Skyfire in a hurry, either.   
  
She watched them, therefore, with understanding, rather than the offhand dismissal of the newly-minted lieutenant beside her at the mezzanine workstation.   
  
"More tourists," the lieutenant said.   
  
Tracks was getting out of CR today. This group – a park naturalist and her nature walk group – had been the humans Tracks had saved from Starscream and Skywarp in Indiana; nearly getting himself killed. They were here, along with the handful of Water Babies who had been with them, to thank him. Mirage and Smokey came out to meet them, and lead them into the medbay. Maggie, ignoring for the moment that she was 78 (she'd opted for almost as many mods as Miles; her bones were fine, thank you), sped down the stairs and followed. Hound scooped her up as he, Mirage and Sunstreaker joined the parade.   
  
There were twelve children, ranging in age from 6 to 14; the other six were adults, ranging in reaction from the edge of panic to awe to quietly vibrating excitement.  
  
The cool blue glow of repair colloid appeared chilling to unaccustomed eyes, Maggie recalled, but it was bathwater-warm, and a human could stick her hand in it unaffected. Ratchet's medbay was less a Frankenstein's lab and more Reboot Doctor McCoy, but no less full of equipment the average human physician would not be able to identify.   
  
Ratchet was in a good mood today, and bustled about the CR tank, politely fielding a handful of timid questions. Was Tracks aware in there? Not at the moment, but Ratchet was now initializing his boot-up sequence. Where did the liquid go? To scrubbing filters and storage tanks above the ceiling. The embassy's systems were self-contained and did not connect with groundwater aquifers. Even the human waste disposal system used chemistry and heat to cycle organic by-products into usable power and dry fertilizer for the gardens. Have you ever stepped on a human, even on accident? This from a concerned parent, distracted from their purpose by the size and bright coloration of Ratchet's feet.   
  
"No," Ratchet said.   
  
Tracks' optics lit. Maggie wondered if any of the visitors were equipped to catch the flurry of comm chatter that went up as Tracks rejoined the ranks of the conscious. As the colloid drained, Tracks patted himself here and there, touching the places he'd been repaired, replacement parts grown from Prime's protomass integrated as neatly as if from his own substance. He stepped down as the plex walls retracted, into Ratchet's scan and Smokescreen's arms. Maggie felt Hound's happy thrum through his armor and hugged his helm. The visitors murmured. Some perhaps had not realized fully the emotional attachments the robots formed. They remained very circumspect with the press – and most of the time the cameras were only interested if they were fighting. Stupid reporters.   
  
Disengaging slightly from Smokey to make room for Sunstreaker in the hug, Tracks made several fourth-level gestures of embarrassment and apology with hands and bits of armor, the winglike planes of his helm sleeking down. Mirage laughed gently and replied with a lift of pauldrons and a ripple of green through his chameleon mesh. Hound kept the rev of his engine to a low, barely audible purr.   
  
 _Oh, Tracks,_  said Mirage.  _It's all right to let us express how glad we are that you've recovered._  There were glittering hosts of embedded glyphs and layers of meanings even Maggie wasn't picking up, but they were beautiful and Maggie had goosebumps.   
  
The humans came forward with their tokens – the naturalist had organized them in painting rounded river stones – presenting them one by one until they nestled like colorful eggs in Tracks' cupped hands.   
  
Despite Mirage's assurances, Tracks quickly gathered the humans for a tour of the embassy. They met Rio just outside the medbay. Rio proffered a large basket made of bright woven anodized wire, into which Tracks arranged the stones, and then placed the nest in the newly carved niche on the other side of the stem corridor opening from the first gift display. Bowing, Tracks then showed them around: the view from the famous northern lookout; let them peek into Red's office and the war room; assured them that the handful of mechs recharging in the upper bunkhouse would not "wake" to normal-level voices. The mossary and pond room was their favorite, closely followed by the Joshua tree garden atop Wheeljack's tower. Buzzing and overwhelmed, the youngest children were soon tired from all the walking. Snacks were provided up on the mezzanine, and then the little group bundled themselves off to their bus – with more than a couple of longing backward glances.   
  
Tracks was promptly mobbed by robots and snogged silly and dragged back down to the mossary.   
  
 _Tracks,_  Smokescreen tight-beamed,  _please don’t die. Please don’t._  Tracks wouldn’t come back. Smokescreen had glimpsed enough from Jazz and the Graveyard Legion and Prime to know that once attaining the ecstasy and peace of the Allspark Tracks would stay there. Tracks knew it, too.  
  
 _I wasn’t…that was not my intention, Smokescreen. I just… There weren’t a lot of options._    
  
 _I know,_  Smokey whispered, kissing him.  _I know. I just don’t want to lose you. None of us want to lose you. You’re important, Tracks, please don’t forget that._  
  
“Yeah,” Sunstreaker said, muscling in on the action. Smokescreen extended an arm, letting him in on their snuggle. Tracks and Sunstreaker was a friendship many – including the principles involved – found unexpected. They liked to polish each other – and often ended up doing more than polishing.  
  
 _I’d tell you that getting fragged half to the Pit is my job, but… Yeah._  They understood each other. Sunstreaker was hard, cruel angles and laser-edged blades on the surface. Beneath were things more nebulous and unexamined. Tracks cultivated the image of a pampered Towers pet – an effete artiste, he’d been called in some tabloids – but buried deep were knives and the vicious teeth of things Tracks tried to keep firewalled or forgotten. They soothed each other.   
  
Somehow amid their group grope, Sunny and Tracks ended up with all six pairs of thoracic cables plugged into each other. Full chest-cabling had always been considered intimate, but there was an inescapable connotation to it now. The idea grew between their lips, between their hands, between their sparks.   
  
 _Would you like to merge with me?_  Tracks asked, into the slow motion pause that bloomed around them. He waited serenely, his thumbs making small curves and spirals over Sunstreaker’s cheek guards. Sunstreaker, whose full name in Cybertronian referred to high, thin clouds lit by the sun even after sunset, stared, optics at their widest aperture.   
  
 _I would love to, with you._  Tracks’ thumbs kept up their small movements.  _But you have to truly want this. Consider the risks. …And if you don’t have the Vector protocols, I do._  And if Sunstreaker did not want to, Tracks got the distinct feeling that Smokescreen would. Smokescreen hadn’t merged since the early one with Prime that had produced Groove, and Tracks hadn’t merged since one several years ago with Jazz that had produced a highly curious  _de_ of the same class as Ratchet, named Chromedome.   
  
He hadn’t said no yet. Sunstreaker was thinking about it. Thinking as hard and as branchingly as he could, following all the trails of reasoning, like Prowl had tried to teach them. A spark of his spark would be tied to Sideswipe as well, not just him. They were frontliners, they took greater risks than most. Aside from the crazy Towers mech in present company. Perceptor and Prime had the population rebound thing covered. Was the risk worth it?  
  
Sideswipe leaned, reached for his twin, and the others around Sunstreaker shifted to make room.   
  
 _If you want to,_  Sides said, wrapping an arm around Sunstreaker’s waist, resting his chin on the golden shoulder,  _Do it._  He pressed his temporal spar against Sunstreaker’s.  _Besides, Tracks is hot._    
  
Snorting, Sunstreaker thwopped his twin’s helm. “Yes.”  
  
The secure levels of the cloud mind bubbled and frothed so incandescently it threatened to spill over into channels Thundercracker and Strake could access, until Ratchet reminded them to at least attempt to keep their reactions on the near side of frenzied. As it was, TC and Strake couldn’t miss that something was up, something they were excluded from, but such occurrences weren’t rare. Strake would sulk about it until Prowl took it upon himself to distract him, after which all was well.   
  
Meanwhile, down in the mossary, Arcee expressed a concern.  
  
“Uh, won’t that fry the moss? Botanica will throw a rod.”  
  
“If we all catch and disperse the energy flux,” Shearwater (one of the Water Babies) said, “we can keep the moss safe.”  
  
Prime had joined them by that time. “An excellent idea,” he said, kneeling beside the ledge where the main clump around Tracks and Sunstreaker were. “I will take the new spark to the growth tank.” He held out hands that no longer needed the protection of Hoist’s Kevlar mitts. Tracks and Sunstreaker, already falling into their link, gazed at him for a moment with lambent optics.   
  
Arcee wriggled closer, into Sideswipe’s arms. She had never directly observed a merge before, shying away from even the full-sensory recordings that were exchanged and savored by so many others. It was a good thing they were doing, necessary even, she understood that; she just wasn’t interested in participating. Prowl and Spiral joined her and Sideswipe, making their corner of the stone ledge quite cozy.  
  
Beside them, in the center of the gathered Bots, Tracks and Sunstreaker had pulled their cables tight, adding arm and cervical links as well, their optics dim as they immersed themselves in their sparks. Their chests opened and Arcee felt her engine purr, echoed by those around them. Violet and golden – a deeper golden than Bee’s spark – petals and jagged flares reached for each other through blinding coronae; Arcee dialed her optics back and polarized, though she knew she couldn’t really see what was going on at the quantum level. The watching Autobots hummed and crooned as the prominences grew close and closer together, attenuating, spiraling. Arcee felt strange, had a mad, panicky moment when she wanted to grab Sunstreaker and pull him safely away. That would be appallingly dangerous at this point, she guessed, not really worried that she would do such a thing, but disquieted that she had even thought of it.  
  
The spiraling, whirling conjunction of energies flared – then collapsed, spinning tight into its own gravity and flaring ten times as bright with ignition. There was cheering and singing even as the backlash lightning chained around them all, a hot, uncomfortable strobe across their armor, and Sideswipe got a very odd look on his face and leaned rather heavily on Prowl, pressing his face against Prowl’s broad chest. Spiral patted the twin’s helm, but Arcee felt disassociated, as though an impalpable but impenetrable shield lay between them. Sideswipe turned fully toward Prowl, winding his arms around Prowl’s waist, slipping his fingertips under armor, seeking the hot protomass beneath. Not to stimulate, only to touch, to ground himself in Prowl’s imperturbable substance.   
  
Rumbling in a smugly pleased way, Optimus dipped the new spark from between its progenitors and cupped it against his own open chest, settling it on the open edges of his spark chamber, then closing the panels of his chest armor as he stood and withdrew from the room, shields fully engaged, leaving the gathered mechs to recharge and cool, armor ticking and pinging and for once no one making snickering comments. Tracks and Sunstreaker were collapsed together, blissfully unconscious.   
  
It was tempting to stay and snuggle with Spiral and the others. Prowl watched Arcee with too-knowing optics, slag him. Was he forecasting? Did she want to know what he was thinking? No. Arcee had just recharged a few hours ago, and she was slated to ride herd on Windcharger and Cliffjumper’s patrol in fifteen minutes. She disentangled herself with a lingering kiss to Spiral’s helm, saluted Prowl and made her way back up to the embassy’s main level.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2063 - December  
  
Lennox had been to the Moon, had been to Mars. But never without a spacesuit. (Ratchet, Hoist and Wheeljack had built tailor made suits for quite a lot of people. NASA as a body couldn’t decide if they were delighted or outraged.) And this time he would be returning to Earth – for the last leg, anyway – under his own power.   
  
Parachutes, he thought. We don’t need no stinking parachutes.  
  
 _Scoot a little farther forward,_  Borealis instructed.  _Yeah, there. Now hold on. Feet too. Tighter. Tighter…don’t make me have to pick you up on my way back… Oof! That’s better!_  
  
The Moon came up so fast! He realized he could calculate their speed easily, could understand the chirped data packet Borealis gave him with her engines’ output and the navigational computations she’d made. She could jaunt to the Moon and back half in recharge by now, but she never grew tired of watching the silvery grey orb grow and the green blue white globe shrink behind.   
  
There were lights on the moon these days, and people there to meet them as Borealis touched down at Armstrong Base at the north edge of Mare Serenitatis, near the Apollo 17 landing site. The two robots waved at the humans inside – the base (for now) was too small to accommodate even Ranger – and moved on to Geology Station 8, where Borealis was picking up a crate of samples to take back when they were ready. No passengers this time, aside from Ranger.   
  
She shared with him the memory of her first trip here, before she'd been rebuilt, and he chuckled. She could have made the trip in cometary mode without Skyfire, but cometary drives were slow. It was a form that could get you to orbit from most small-to-medium planets within a certain density range, but you'd better have a ship up there waiting for you if you wanted to get anywhere else this eon.   
  
 _Would you like to swing on a star?_  Borealis hummed to herself, puttering around the foot of the hill.  _Carry moonbeams home in a jar. Would you like to swing on a star... or would you rather be a fish?_  Ranger watched the Earth rise, smiling.   
  
The old scars from the Decepticon attack of 2039 were hardly visible any more. Here and there they intersected coastlines, faint scratches on the surface of the planet, partially filled with sand. They hadn't tried anything on that scale again – yet – but there had been a number of attempts to sabotage Metroplex. The Cons had killed cities before, and this one was young and inexperienced. Ultra Magnus, however, was neither, and the Cons, like the Autobots, no longer had all their previous resources.   
  
Earth and her people were resilient.   
  
Ranger held up his hands, curling his fingers as a frame around the beautiful blue-white globe.   
  
On the return journey, they came to a stop relative to Earth hundreds of thousands of kilometers above geosynchronous orbit. He couldn’t feel much of a gravity tug from any direction. To Borealis and the other deltas, the tides of gravity were as obvious and palpable (and occasionally tumultuous) as waves on the ocean, and she opened her graviton feed to give him a taste, though his CPU couldn't process the raw data as efficiently as hers. Suddenly he could feel not only the Earth and the Moon, but the sun and all the other planets, and nearby stars and their systems of planets, and the mass of the galaxy swirling around with them in it, and subtle and subtle, far and far, the masses of other galaxies. All of that mattered. All of that was taken into the equations deltas ran for simple navigation. It was making his processor ache.  
  
 _All righty,_  Borealis said, withdrawing the feed.  _Kick off here and we'll get you lined up._  
  
But he didn't unlatch right away. Gazing at their homeworld, surrounded by immensity and numberless fires in the deeps, he rested his chin on her hull, thoughtful.   
  
"What do you remember, of being human?" he asked, their armor transmitting his voice, making it strangely both resonant and muffled.   
  
 _Do you want the file?_  Borealis slid some paneling around and offered a cable. Ranger accepted, and gave her in return the Lennox memories. Two lives, lived quite differently, and yet under the same sun, upon the same planet. Ranger processed several aspects right away – the pain of a FOP flareup, the growing frustration of a body trapped by its own skeleton, the soaring of the brilliant mind it harbored, the joy at meeting the giant alien robots – and set other things aside for later. The attack by Starscream he particularly did not want to experience just then.  
  
"Do you think Ixchel and Will had more in common than you and I do now? I mean, you're  _de_ , Seeker class, subclass delta; and I'm  _he_ , Guardian class, subclass tertius. They're...they're so different! Body, core programming, just fundamentally different. So much more than male and female. Male and female are just complementary emphasis on the same set of systems with a little bit of…of hormonal twiddling."   
  
Gods he was so cute. The gender thing still had his panties in a bunch. A cute, inquisitive, eager bunch, but still a bunch. She let her amusement flow through her fields, and his wobbled slightly with embarrassment, swiftly overcome by her fondness. He was so young to this body. Borealis had been alive as a Cybertronian almost as long now as Ixchel had lived human.   
  
 _I suppose the primordial castes were a lot more different from each other than male and female humans. Form followed function, and they were specialists by caste, if generalists as a species._    
  
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”   
  
 _And because Cybertronian genders have nothing to do with procreation, it’s kind of apples and oranges. Besides,_  she grinned,  _gender has pretty much no bearing on interface, if that’s what you’re worried about._  Ranger’s fields lit up with acute embarrassment and Borealis giggled to herself, keeping her own fields even and mild.   
  
Ranger let go finally and floated free, gazing down at the world far below. Happily distracted. Trying to hit land on a largely oceanic planet could be tricky. Following his core programming, he curled himself tight into cometary mode. It was incredibly compact, he realized. There were no internal spaces at all, which was remarkable, given the number and irregularity of the parts that made it up; and his heaviest, toughest armor now lay in layers around his blunt bow end.   
  
 _All righty,_  Borealis said.  _Orbits are all about conservation of angular momentum. Radius times velocity is a constant. But even with nav equations it’s a little weird until you get used to it. You go up to slow down (which means you have to go faster first), and you go down to speed up (which means you have to slow down first). Think of an ice skater bringing her arms in during a spin._  
  
 _Nah, look, Lissi, forget it, I’ve never underst- …Oh my god._  
  
 _Ha! Pretty cool, huh, this robot stuff?_  
  
 _Yeah! I know orbital mechanics!_  
  
 _All right, Neo, just don’t tell Perceptor. Unless you_ want _a LOT of math homework._  
  
 _Gah!_  
  
 _Heh. Now. The Earth-Moon route is pretty easy. You can **see**  where you’re headed the whole time. What you have to remember, though, if you don’t want to exhaust yourself catching up with a planet going 107,300 km per hour, is that everything you see, including yourself – is  **moving**. And they’re not moving in parallel, like jumping from Ironhide’s truck bed onto a car or something on the freeway. Everything is moving in  **ellipses**. Also, once you’re close enough, smacking into the Earth isn’t that difficult, believe me._  
  
Ranger mentally grinned, sending little stripes of wry amusement through his fields. He remembered some of her early “landings”.  
  
 _But landing at a specific spot means you have to start at the right place and head down the well at the right angle. So from here – we’re about 320,000 km from the Moon; 50,000 km above Earth – we’ll drop into geosynchronous, which is about 35,786 km above the equator; pause so you can get the feel of that; then drop again to Low Earth Orbit, which is about 2,000 km; pause again, and then land. Okay?_  
  
 _Okay._  He was all business now. Borealis had the feeling he was going to be good at this. Maybe even better than Ironhide, who had a Cybertronian soldier’s aptitude for all species of military maneuvers. To Ironhide, this was just another skill set. Ranger was enjoying it.  
  
 _Pick your landing coordinates and let the nav equations run. That’ll plot your insertion vectors for you._  
  
 _Got it. Oh! We’re already right over… You did that on purpose._  
  
 _It becomes automatic after a while._  
  
 _For deltas or for everyone with a space-capable flight mode?_  
  
 _Hmm. I don’t know, but since everyone can go cometary, I’d think everyone would therefore have the programming._  
  
 _Makes sense._  
  
 _Also keep in mind that if you miss your insertion target, you can usually just loop around and try again. Takes all of sixteen minutes, depending on your V. Ready?_  
  
 _Ready._  
  
 _Drop. I’ll be right behind you._  
  
To Ranger, there was no strong sense of “down” this far out. Earth was simply “ahead”. He watched the terminator advancing across the face of the planet at a thousand miles per hour, and that was neat. He engaged his thrusters, accelerating gradually. Just as gradually he began to feel the tug of gravity, the subtle reorientation of “down”. They’d been in freefall the entire trip, except for the stopover on the Moon, and he had no stomach and no sinuses to register any distress at the change in acceleration, but he was able to pin the sensations down to proprioceptors in his joints as some parts of him were tugged minutely more firmly than others; and he did have a very coarse (almost embarrassingly coarse, compared to the deltas’) kind of graviton sensor suite, which picked up on gravity waves directly.   
  
The Earth grew in his secondary optics and other sensors. It did not fill his perceptions, but glowed in all its astonishing beauty and complexity against the backdrop of eternal night. As they neared, the turning of the world stopped from their point of view. They dropped neatly into a geostationary slot above South America. Around them, and their intimate dance with their homeworld, the galaxy seemed to whirl around them. A full orbital cycle would take twenty-four hours – a defining term of geostationary orbits, but the subtle movement was still visible to the robots even during the bare hour they spent resting there.   
  
Ranger did a thruster burn against their direction of travel – slowing down to go lower and therefore faster. At the opposite side of the orbit he did another to circularize his orbit at LEO, about 200 miles from the surface. The planet filled most of his view now, unless he directed his active scanners to either side or “up” and out to space. The “thin blue line” was obvious; a tenuous veil of light and life. Complete orbits here took only ninety minutes, so they stayed for several. Silent, both of them, just watching. Until suddenly Borealis “poked” Ranger with a hard sensor ping.  
  
 _Wait wait wait…I think you can see it from here? If not just borrow my eyes…yeah. Right_ there _. See Lynxie?_  
  
 _Oh god. What is he…?_  
  
Sky-Lynx was perched like the Simurgh on a hilltop just outside Rome, stalking the Predacons. Like a cat. Complete with butt-waggle. Borealis was giggling like a mad thing.  
  
The problem with combining into Predaking was that it made them conspicuous to the human defense nets. And Sky-Lynx liked especially to tackle Predaking and chew on him like a giant metal ragdoll. They actually stood a better chance against the huge duo-former separately, but it was difficult to remain separate when under that kind of threat.  
  
Borealis cackled as they split and fled. She’d been chewed on by the Preds a few times herself and was happy to see them chased off  _before_  they’d done much damage.  
  
 _Okay,_  she said.  _Down to landing._  
  
 _Oh god._  
  
 _Dude, you’re in cometary. It doesn’t hurt at all unless you’re already damaged. Now shut up and dive._  
  
 _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!_  He screamed all the way down, and Borealis followed him, laughing. The trajectory was perfect, though, and he plowed the usual furrow in the desert east of the embassy road. Prime stood on the mesa top, watching; one arm crossed over his chest, the fingers of his other hand pressed to his lip components, his expression fond and very, very amused.  
  
“Waah whoah eyaaah…” Ranger staggered around, steaming and trying not to set anything on fire. “Hide, shut up.  _You_  landed in a swimming pool!” Which…was pretty damn good aim, come to think of it.   
  
 _Don’t give him that much credit,_  Ratchet said from the medbay.  _That was on accident, and he’s been complaining about the chlorine ever since._  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
 **Barricade…**  
  
…  
  
 **Barricade…**  
  
…  
  
 **Barricade…**  
  
Within resided billions of patterns. Some retained coherence and individuality, some had dispersed into bliss, others floated in states between. Among the billions, thousands had known Barricade.  _All are one,_  they said.  _Is not Barricade in each of us? Might we not unite the fragments? Bring them together until we know whether the pattern desires selfness again?_  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2043 – April to 2064 – November  
  
Galvatron made us, we know that. When the heat of our making cooled enough, we came online, looking about at the ore-rich walls of the ravine. Galvatron lay some distance away, offline, and Cyclonus knelt beside him. There were others, watching us. There was yelling. Magma, Spire, and Ignis bared their denta and growled, but the soldiers hit them harder and harder until we all were quiet and huddled together. Skyquake came to each of us and did something to our optics that changed their color and changed the way we see. (Later, Mez explained that our optics were supposed to be the same color as Galvatron’s, because he had created us.)  
  
We were afraid. Some of us were angry, but a whisper in our sparks said we were strong. It asked us to watch and listen and feel, and then think about what we sensed. To obey for now, until we understood our situation. There weren’t words; we didn’t have the words ourselves at first. Comfort and warmth and a strong desire for our well-being pulsed clearly in our chests.  
  
Days and nights passed. (Cinder counted. I didn’t care, but he said it was 62 days and nights.) Cyclonus brought a mech to our ravine. The mech told us he was there to train us, to command us. We watched and listened and did what the mech said. The mech was smart. He noticed how Spire made sure the rest of us understood and took care of us. He noticed how Shield inspected even the slightest damage. He looked at Spire for a long time and then he told us his name was Mez. Mez offered a wrist cable to Spire and explained what he wanted to do. Spire opened an arm port and accepted the link.   
  
That was how we got more words. Mez was full of languages other than Decepticon, but he didn’t give us those. He said it would be dangerous. We didn’t understand but it was good to have so many more words and ideas in Decepticon.   
  
He taught us – though we had already figured it out; it was common sense, and we had observed the other Decepticons – to keep our shields on always, and held tight to our armor. Decepticons keep their emotions and reactions hidden as much as they can, and the air on this world is full of ash and acid.  
  
He gave us combat programs and told us our lives would be better if we could become good fighters. We would need to be smart fighters because our adversaries had been fighting for a very long time and they were smart, too. The whisper in our sparks said we should only fight if we had to. We already knew Galvatron or others would hurt us if we disobeyed them, but Mez said we weren’t like the half-deads. We weren’t going to be cannon-fodder if he could help it. We didn’t want to be cannon-fodder either. We wanted to be smart.   
  
He warned us about integration, and stayed with us when it happened. I don’t like to remember that. I think we almost killed him. After, though, he showed us about interfacing. He showed Spire, and the rest of us watched.   
  
He carved small shapes out of the stone of the ravine and taught us games. Using the games, he taught us about statistics and probability, tactics and strategy, competition and cooperation. Spire was good at all of them, but we discovered that quiet Obsidian was better. Mez talked with Obsidian a lot after that, and interfaced with him maybe a little more than with the rest of us. I think Obsidian reminded him of someone.  
  
He taught us how to hide our cloud mind. Having a cloud mind was important because it meant if any one of us was afraid, or tempted to tell our secrets – like about the whisper in our sparks – we could all talk about it, and comfort the fearful one. We could all decide together what to do. He taught us to make our fields feel all the same. This was easier now that our bodies were mostly the same. Our masks hid our faces, making us look like the mouthless half-deads. Mez told us not to speak if we could help it because it would remind others that we weren’t half-deads.   
  
“Don’t trust anyone but yourselves,” Mez said.   
  
“Maybe we shouldn’t trust you, then,” said Spire.  
  
Mez smiled. “Good.”  
  
I wanted to trust Mez, though. He had shown us good things. We decided not to tell him about the spark-whispers; that would be the most secret thing.  
  
…  
  
Mez would sometimes hit us if we disobeyed, but it was Shockwave who took Ash away and did things to him. When Ash came back we had to put him outside the ravine, with the half-deads, because he couldn’t speak any more, or interface, or transform, or think much beyond pain and killing.   
  
“Being angry at Shockwave will only get you in trouble,” Mez said. “Understanding Shockwave is better.” Shockwave was interested in knowing everything, because knowing things made you powerful. Power was important because it meant other people couldn’t hurt you. Everyone in the universe who wasn’t a Decepticon wanted to hurt or kill us.   
  
Shockwave had erased his emotional heuristics. He had learned to analyze the emotions of others so well that he didn’t need them. He thought they were a weakness. So Shockwave would want to know things. He would ask us things. He might take more of us apart.   
  
We were given a flight mode to scan. Our armor colors were changed like our optics. We were all one color now, the same dark violet. It made us harder to see in the electromagnetic wavelengths commonly used by our enemies.  
  
Then Mez was taken away from us. Galvatron thought it was foolish for a grounder to command fliers, even if we weren’t proper Seekers. Skyquake and his trinemates, Dreadwing and Darkwind, were our new commanders. We obeyed them and were quiet.   
  
…  
  
“Sentinel’s coming around the fifth planet,” Mez said, striding onto the bridge of the  _Flay_. “I told you he’d be predictable now that that freak AI tactician of his went to Prime.”  
  
Turmoil lifted an optic ridge at him. “AI?”  
  
“The Praxian,” Mez sneered. “Prowl. Used to be an AI. They uploaded him into a sparked body for good behavior or some slag.”  
  
“And you know this how?”  
  
“Was in the databanks. After the crash, main problem was finding stuff to do, so I downloaded everything.”  
  
“Hmm,” said Turmoil.  
  
…  
  
Turmoil joined Shockwave and Skyquake on the balcony overlooking the forging pits. Galvatron stalked the shadows below, growling, waiting for the final assembly of the new body into which he would place the spark of Jhiaxus.  
  
 _Were you aware,_  Turmoil tight-beamed,  _that Prime’s TIC, the Praxian tactical officer, was originally the AI from Lord Megatron’s cruiser, the_ Fission Blade _?_  Shockwave liked tidbits of information like this. It wasn’t precisely a bribe, more a sort of habitual appeasement gesture. Besides, Mez had so clearly wanted that information to be passed on.  
  
Shockwave gave no outward sign of having received.  _That datum has not heretofore existed within my memory cores._  About as much acknowledgement as Turmoil expected.  
  
The engineers below withdrew from the dreadful, winged shape they had wrought and Galvatron advanced, clawing any mech who did not get out of the way fast enough. The monstrous chest cavity gaped cold and empty. With a single diamantium clawtip, Galvatron traced a glyph into the metal.  _Loyalty._ He forced the opening wider, hearing struts creak and groan, small unyielding plates of armor in the body’s dorsal surface snapping. The engineers retreated further, bowing their heads.  
  
You will not thwart me again, Prime. Galvatron bared his denta and struck.  
  
Allspark energy boiled from his chest, writhing and warping tormented air and metal, flinging a screaming spark through void, crushing it into a shape that would fit inside the mere three dimensions. Jhiaxus tore his way into consciousness, scrabbling to reconnect salvaged memory layers and a new CPU that had not been built precisely to his preferences. Everything felt disjointed and wrong, like he was wearing parts of the bodies of seven or thirteen mechs at once and none of them worked well together. There was raw power here, yes. Energon bled hot into myriad weapon systems and he roared as each system fought within him for supremacy, fought to drain him dry, pulling from the spark that thudded so heavily and irregularly in his chest, swollen with the handful of other sparks he had consumed within the Allspark. He had power to spare, yet he had to fight his disparate parts into a cohesive whole or tear himself apart.   
  
He screamed, thrashing with all his limbs; arms and wings and tail and multiply-jointed legs, convulsing but directing his first intentional blow at the body nearest him. His bladed arm was caught, forced against his own neck.  
  
“Oooh,” Galvatron purred. Half the Cons in the chamber shuddered, halfway to overload. “Do you long so much to die again?”  
  
“I was…” Jhiaxus chose his words and fields carefully, “merely testing this body’s reflexes and programming, my Lord.”  
  
“I see. And does our work meet your requirements?”  
  
“Yes indeed, my Lord,” Jhiaxus said, and smiled. And spread his terrible, thunderous wings.   
  
…  
  
Optimus rested his helm against the edge of the holotable. Disquieted but guiltily relieved. Jhiaxus had not been a comfortable pattern to bear.  
  
…  
  
Today, Mez came to us. His fields were close and even, as they always were, but Shield and Cinder knew right away something was wrong.   
  
 _Spire,_  Mez tight-beamed. (Spire shared with us later.)  _Decepticons do not do this, remember that; but I want to share myself with you wholly. Just once…_ Before you leave us forever, Spire thought, but Mez never said. He drew Spire close, exchanged a single set of arm cables, so Spire was not entirely startled when Mez opened his chest. Spire could feel the commands, knew where they were in his own systems, saw and heard and felt the shifting of heavy components, heavy shielding; felt that ultimate opening and surrender to vulnerability.   
  
We gathered around the light of Mez’s spark, never having seen such before, only knowing the thrum of our own sparks as hidden things, deep things and protected. We hummed in harmony, reaching instinctively for that light, the heat and somehow comforting radiation bathing us. Prominences rose in his corona, lapping at the air near Spire’s chest armor. Spire thought, as Mez had taught us to do, and Spire decided. His chest opened, too. Slowly, awkwardly, as though the pieces of him weren’t sure what to do, how to make himself into a form or mode that would allow this. A slow transformation.   
  
His spark was a different color, and this too we hadn’t known. We would learn, later, how our sparks were different colors even if our bodies were mostly the same. Their coronae touched.  
  
Mez held Spire, helped him as they fell to their knees, Spire crying out in pleasure the way he never did, we never did, because Mez had taught us to be careful and quiet. Spire’s fields flared like a nova, reflecting off the walls of the ravine, the spray of energy going up unbound, all the way to the stars I thought and Lahar said no not that far, because it would disperse, but I knew nothing was lost, only transformed, and that Mez had shown us a new kind of light. A new kind of secret. A new thing we would deceive others about.   
  
Mez had lied to us, we knew, when Spire shared all he had learned. Spark to spark you can’t lie, you can’t hide. Mez was more and less than he seemed. He was wounded, riven, half of him – the half we knew before – lived by lying and half-lying. The other half had been shut away, anguished but steadfast. There was more to him than either half, but we did not understand for a long time.  
  
We were startled by their overload, falling back from the sweep of blue lightning washing out from them, brighter and harder than we’d ever felt before. Spire fell offline, Basalt and Caldera caught him, eased him to the floor of the ravine. We watched Mez struggle and succeed in staying online. Their chests seemed to close automatically. Mez touched Spire’s helm, kissed him, then drew away.   
  
 _Be good,_  he told us, holding as many of us close as he could, cabling to twice that many more.  _Be hard, be strong. Please, please take care of each other. If anyone asks, tell them Galvatron made you; and if they ask again, tell them your loyalty is to him._  
  
 _Tephra, sweetspark,_  he tight-beamed to me, kissing me and caressing my helm.  _Your journals are important. They’ll remind you, all of you, who you were at the beginning, and maybe they’ll help you decide who you want to be in the future._  He uncabled, stepped through us, moved away to the south ridge. “I’ll see you again, if I can. Maybe not for a long time. Be good!” He transformed to cometary and launched himself into orbit. Lahar watched him, sharing her acute visual feed with the rest of us, until he docked with the  _Flay_.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2064 - December  
  
She'd run herself to the limits of her endurance this time, rendezvousing with the handful of active Autobot units in M100 without pausing to refuel after ferrying another pallet of space bridge parts to Cybertron. She had a somewhat urgent bit of news, wanted to get groundside; secondarily wanted to see how Perceptor was doing, have a long overdue snuggle with Rail Racer. Should have stayed in orbit for a day or so, recharging. Wouldn't make that mistake again, but she was down now, staggered as she landed, caught herself with one hand and folded herself into sphinx before she keeled over. Unfortunately she had an audience. She bared the tips of her denta.   
  
Thundercracker grabbed Strake and (practically sitting on him) instructed him to make his optics as big and blue as he could. They were small and cute and harmless! And if the nice big delta wanted to settle down here on the nice hot rock and recharge, why, she was more than welcome to do so. Strake reached out and patted the mesa top...and  _cheeped_  at Borealis. Thundercracker restrained his optic-roll, barely. Borealis' chassis was trembling, her fields dim. Please, he thought, just shut down; we'll watch over you.   
  
 _Prime,_  Borealis tight-beamed, sending an image as well.  _Picked up the life-ring._  In one of her caches was a white, flattened torus made of fiberglass, 80 cm in diameter and wrapped in ropelike cable. Upon it in black, blocky Roman letters were the words “RMS TITANIC”. Countermeasure’s “come get me” signal.   
  
 **Understood! Thank you.**  
  
There. Prime would relay to Mirage and Hound. Everything else could wait. She glared at the two huddling alphas on general principles, then lay down – and fell immediately into recharge.   
  
A short time later, Prime came up. He knelt beside Borealis and opened a panel first in his own side, then in hers, hooking up one of his secondary power conduits. He settled himself comfortably against her hull. Thundercracker met the Prime's gaze, knew that look, felt the long-familiar caress of fields. Beckoning Strake from the opposite end of the mesa, Thundercracker closed on Prime, relishing their renewed intimacy, bestowing ancient memories and desires upon Strake, who responded with enthusiasm. The list of things Prime liked was long and there were always new things to try. Thundercracker remembered the transition from Volant to Optimus vividly, the delight in a new, young Prime who delighted in and loved his people, who was more than willing to share pleasure with anyone who asked. The delta’s dark hull lay tempting, hot, within reach, but they kept their hands on Prime, brushed wings only with each other. Offering and accepting cables, Optimus let them feel the flow of power from himself, let them feel the depths of Borealis’ exhaustion, her fuel to be slowly renewed, her armor hardened by her journeys and redolent of exotic particles from distant stars. Optimus could not hide his affection for the starship, nor his desire to protect one so young. Thundercracker assured him of his own guardian imperatives.  
  
 _The Allspark has granted us beautiful sparks on this world,_  Thundercracker murmured, nibbling on Prime’s audials.  _A bit strange, some of them, but…I think we need different now._  It was hard for his traditionalist spark to admit, but his processor could mold the truth of it even with such stubborn electrons as his.   
  
Laughing softly, Optimus slipped a fingertip up under one of Strake’s wing-facets, making the young Seeker squirm, fields spreading in pleasured waves like a murmuration of starlings.  **Thundercracker, I am not certain how you manage it, but somehow your very inflexibility makes you more tolerant.**  
  
 _Amazing, isn’t it?_  Strake agreed, tweaking one of the elder Seeker’s ailerons.   
  
 _Oh, shut up, both of you,_  Thundercracker growled.  _Even these puny humans know it’s wise to respect your elders._  
  
 **Elders indeed,**  Optimus tight-beamed, careful to continue his physical attentions.  **Ratchet and I know your true age.**  
  
 _………Oh._  Thundercracker also gave no obvious outward sign, though his fields did flux – attributable to the interesting things Optimus was doing with  _his_ fields, stroking and stoking them all higher and closer to overload.   
  
 **He and I are of course curious why you have concealed this for so long, but I will not insist upon an explanation.**  Optimus pulled Thundercracker’s head down for a lingering kiss, adding reassurance and tranquility, respect and acceptance to the explicit expression of his curiosity.   
  
 _You might not, but there will be no end of Ratchet picking at me now._  
  
 **I can ask him not to bother you about it.**  
  
 _You can_  ask.  
  
 **He can hold your reasoning in confidentiality, that is part of his programming.**  
  
 _It’s also part of his programming to be a nosy glitch._  Thundercracker shifted, pressing Optimus more firmly against the delta’s hull, his kisses growing more and more urgent.  _Optimus, I… Slag it, it’s been so long…_  
  
 **You can’t tell me.**  The answer must lay beneath so many layers of firewalls and misdirectional algorithms that Thundercracker himself could no longer articulate it. He spun his spark up, his entire frame humming with its composite power, throwing them all crashing into overload. He cradled the Seekers fallen against him into recharge. Strake would come back online in half an hour or so, but Thundercracker rebooted in a handful of seconds, determined not to escape the conversation in a cowardly fashion even if it was uncomfortable and would have been easier to do so. He let himself sprawl, across Optimus’ left leg and the mesa top stone, nestling his helm into the Prime’s shoulder.  
  
 _I’m sure I could dig it out, given time._  
  
 **And the inclination?**  
  
 _I suppose. Does it really matter?_  
  
 **Without understanding the specifics I do not know. Perhaps not.**  
  
Thundercracker smirked.  _That sounded very Prowl-like._    
  
 **I choose to interpret that as a compliment.**  Optimus let his gently wandering fingers express how pleased he was that TC and Strake liked Prowl so much. Without, however, adding to the growing trend of teasing them about their obvious trining. Thundercracker shifted his wings in gratitude.   
  
Cupping Optimus’ face, Thundercracker kissed him tenderly then pulled away, stretching and flexing his limbs. They were supposed to be guarding the delta and here they were shagging instead. Well. Alphas could do both. Except for those few seconds post-overload, and Prime had remained aware for that. Strake was stirring too, he saw approvingly.  
  
Strake liked this, liked watching TC with Prime. It was a window into the world before he'd been built, before the war. He liked the way they shifted and shuddered, fitting themselves into each other as long-lovers could. Liked how their deep voices grew deeper, went all purry as they murmured wordless things to each other.   
  
He stretched his wings. Prowl was coming up. It was going to be a good night for stargazing.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2065 - January  
  
“He  _will_  fire on you, he  _will_  resist,” Mirage said, his voice anxious and urgent. “Send someone strong, someone well-armored.”  
  
“Sentinel’s been harrying Chaar for a week,” Prime said, “and Kup’s headed in with the Wreckers.” At Mirage’s concerned look, he added, “The Nornir will make the actual pick-up They are strong and heavily armored, and they have several weapons modifications, including some of Wheeljack’s latest non-lethal variations. They will be able to retrieve him without injuring him too greatly.”  
  
Mirage and Hound exchanged a swiftly-evolving look. Yay Nornir, oh dear Wheeljack weapons, yay lesser injury – if any of that worked the way Wheeljack meant it to. As opposed to how things turned out to actually work. All of which was still overridden by yay Countermeasure was coming home!   
  
“I have personally tested a couple of the weapon systems in question,” Prowl said. Hound’s ability to maintain a straight face was completely overcome. Prowl’s matter-of-fact delivery contrasted so delightfully with what Hound knew had really happened yesterday. And it was a testament to the Autobots’ love of sharing games and good stories that no one had spoiled it for Mirage yet.  
  
“Can I show him?” Hound asked, grinning at Prowl. Prowl nodded.   
  
Hound’s holo-emitter lit.  
  
An image appeared in the space the gathered mechs cleared, of Prowl standing as he often did in the security office, watching the mist screens. Red Alert had provided the feed, but Hound had extrapolated a third person view, and over the years he’d gained an almost cinematographic flair for editing. A shadowy mech appeared in the doorway. (Nevertheless obviously Sideswipe from the silhouette.) The mech approached silently, a cylindrical, bundled shape clutched in one hand. He came to a stop directly behind Prowl, who remained, as it seemed, completely immersed in the multitude of incoming datastreams.   
  
Sideswipe removed a single something from the cluster in his hand and placed it slowly, gently, precisely in a narrow groove of Prowl’s dorsal armor. The linear, bulbous-tipped object remained upright and lodged in place. Emboldened by success, another soon joined it. And another, and another. Until rows and rows of soft white objects stuck out from Prowl’s back like fluffy, surreal porcupine quills.   
  
“Are those…?” Mirage asked, frowning.  
  
“Yes,” said Ratchet. “Cybertronian-scaled Q-Tips. He has not yet admitted to where he got them.” Mirage was well cognizant of the layers of meaning placed upon the word “yet”. He wished Ratchet joy of his pursuit.   
  
As the holo continued, Red Alert had watched the entire performance with one set of his accessory optics and kept silent. Red was a firm believer in giving people plenty of rope. And Prowl could not possibly have been unaware of what was going on. Sideswipe had known better than to try sticking the Q-Tips in Prowl’s door-wings, but his fields alone would have at least given his presence and proximity away.   
  
Then. So quickly even Cybertronian optics had to work to keep up, Prowl spun, transforming his pistol smoothly out of his right forearm, and shot Sideswipe in the face.   
  
But the pellet that broke against Sideswipe’s forehelm did not contain butylpotassium, or any other superbase or acid. Nor was it a traditional solid round. Something translucent splashed out of the shattered, thin-walled pellet, spreading and expanding alarmingly upon contact with the air. Sideswipe hadn’t even had time to fully close his optical shutters.   
  
He rolled back a pace, shocked at first – but then what the substance was doing registered fully. He tried to yell but the horrible goo had expanded into his mouth. It was seeping between the plates of his face, up under his helm, dripping down his neck into his chest…and there it stopped, but Sideswipe was beside himself now, hopping and spinning around, clawing at the stuff and making muffled shrieking noises.   
  
Prowl watched this display intently for a moment. Apparently deciding the outcome was satisfactory, he transformed his pistol back into his arm, and  _laughed_. Red had already fallen out of frame, as it were, but his cackles were clearly audible.  
  
“He deserved that, I think,” Mirage laughed, circling around to Prowl and hugging him. “How long did it take you to get all those Q-Tips out – I expect Red helped? Yes. And what  _was_  that you shot him with?”  
  
“One of my favorite substances in all the history of favorite substances!” Wheeljack crowed, fairly bouncing on his pedes. “It’s based on hagfish slime!” He actually did a little dance. “I love this planet! Hagfish slime! It’s amazing! It’s a highly modified mucus, with the proteins incredibly tightly coiled, and when those proteins hit water – BOOM! They expand incredibly as you saw. So I fiddled with some things (Perceptor helped with the chemistry– it was his idea to add in characteristics of He2 superfluidity) and came up with an air-activated variant that was strong enough to give us trouble. If it gets in your joints it’s a real pain to get out! Prowl was helping me field test it, ya see. I’ve been getting huge numbers of ideas from the critters on Earth for different kinds of weapons that stop a person instead of trying to kill. Less energy in a lot of cases, believe it or not.”  
  
“Do the Nornir have this…hagfish slime ammunition?” Mirage was afraid to ask, but he might as well find out now as later.   
  
“No, but they got other stuff.” Wheeljack hugged him. “Don’t worry, they’ll bring your kiddo back safe and sound.”   
  
…  
  
“Have they responded?”  
  
“We don’t need their permission, Silverlance,” Sentinel said. He leaned back in his command chair, smiling indulgently. “Grimlock?”  
  
“Don’t need their help, neither,” Grimlock rumbled.  
  
“Send them down, then.” Grimlock’s elites would lead, punching holes in whatever Con forces decided to oppose them this time. “Silverlance, you follow. Give the ‘Chromes half a breem to clear the landing area, then deploy your snipers.” If Kup’s battalion and/or the Wreckers decided to back them up, all to the good. If not? It wouldn’t matter.  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
As his lieutenants carried out their orders, Sentinel stood. He spun out his cannon, flicked open his polymorphic shield, checking and rechecking the workings of both. There was a whole valley of those weird, mouthless drone-Cons down there that he planned to bottle up and exterminate to the last spark. He had long trusted his lieutenants, and they had long proven they didn’t need direct supervision. Those who were left, anyway.   
  
“You’re thinking of going down there yourself this time.” Trochar leaned against a console, idly flexing his microwelders.   
  
“Might be fun,” Sentinel said, closing his shield. His cannon was a pleasant weight and hum through his right arm. “Might be worth picking that slag they call air down there out of my vents.”   
  
“Don’t expect me to help you with that.”  
  
“I wouldn’t let you that near my vitals, unless the alternative was worse.” Sentinel grinned, saluted his CMO and strode from the bridge.  
  
…  
  
“Slag it, they didn’t even acknowledge?” Springer wanted to punch something. Preferably Sentinel, but there would be plenty of punching to do in a minute. “Didn’t wait for us, either.” Wreckers weren’t used to being second in.   
  
 _Looks like they’re going direct down the center,_  Kup tight-beamed. Still a risk, this close to Shockwave and his spy-drones, but there were ways around that. Besides, they wanted old Shocky to know they were there.  _You take the north flank, we’ll take the south. Try not to get too close to any of Sentinel’s people, remember._  
  
 _I fragging remember all right._  He wanted to turn the  _Xantium_ ’s guns on the  _Rapacious_ and get that whole messy business over with, but Prime and Ironhide and Prowl and Ultra Magnus all agreed that Sentinel’s battalion must have the same opportunities for choice as the rest of them.  
  
Not that Kup wouldn’t like to blow a big slagging hole in Sentinel’s aft, too, but he was better at hiding it.   
  
 _We’re in position,_  Kup said.  
  
 _As Epps would say,_  Springer replied,  _let’s bring the rain._  
  
…  
  
They came down the well from dayside, since with Shockwave's nets it didn't much matter, blowing a line of sky-spies, looping back to break atmosphere on an unpredictable tangent. The clouds hid them somewhat. They didn't have to take much trouble to stay hidden, though – the Wreckers were on the opposite side of the main base, doing what they did best.   
  
This wasn't the usual guerilla hit and run, annoying the Cons, keeping their attention away from Cybertron. They were excited. Drones came up to intercept – always Shockwave's first line. Wear them down with easily replaced hundreds or thousands. The Nornir spread field-nets and kept flying. Some of the drones were caught, some weren’t. It didn’t matter, they weren’t here to waste their energy fighting drones.   
  
There was the  _Flay_. In low orbit – LCO not as neatly pronounceable as LEO, but that was only the translation anyway. Right next to – in outer space terms, meaning about a hundred kilometers – the space station that served as Shockwave’s…main experimental lab? Secondary lab? They weren’t sure. It was a high-priority target either way. And there were, of course a lot of guns between them and it. They weren’t there to put holes in Shockwave’s playroom either. But they certainly had the  _Flay_ ’s attention.  
  
 _They’re launching,_  Skuld said. No need to mask her happiness to her sisters. They were glad of this mission. Somewhere among the Decepticons coming out to attack them was their target. Verthandi did the primary scanning, the other two skimming even as they fired. Lines of Cons fell as greeny-gold curtains of energy swept from the Nornir’s secondary guns.   
  
 _Ship’s peeling off,_  Urthr said, understanding the subtle shifts in engine signatures.  _Our people must be annoying them properly over there._  
  
 _Found him,_  Verthandi said, pinging her sisters with her target lock. Now to play their part and make it look good.   
  
A high-powered particle beam nearly took out Verthandi’s portside wing. Apparently they’d done some annoying of their own. They split apart and took wild evasive tracks low in the smoky sky.  
  
 _Lidless Eye coming out of Barad-dur,_  the Nornir sent.  _Requesting Aragorn at the Black Gate!_  
  
 _Ow! Slag, he hits hard!_  Skuld yelped, barely turning aside in time to deflect the full force of Shockwave’s cannon.  
  
Grief, Springer thought. The Nornir had been tossing cables with Borealis again.  _I hear you,_  he said, and threw himself up into his cometary mode. He’d had upgrades over the course of the war like everyone else – his rotor mode boosters worked in cometary as well and he was therefore much faster than most.  _On my way._  What was a little pain? To the Graveyard! He plowed through mechs and drones, transforming and fighting down to the landing platform.  
  
There he was, easy enough to spot, modified lens-head as he was. Big fragger. Springer landed hard, one of his rotors shot off, but he rolled through it and came up firing. More and more Cons swarmed onto the platform, surrounding him. He’d make them kill him, he wouldn’t be taken alive. Not here, not where Shockwave could drag what was left of him to the lab and do Primus knew what. His right leg went out from under him, sliced at the knee, losing too many crucial cables and half the main hinge joint. He shot the mech who’d hamstrung him in the head and dragged himself onward, his optics focused on his objective.   
  
A curtain of dark blue flame sprang up between him and Shockwave and  _stayed_  – a wall of plasma, superheating the air. Heavy ordnance hit the ground around them, shaking stones loose from jagged lava formations. Springer sent a hasty scan upward, never taking his optics from Shockwave, hazy and distorted as the view was through the wall of plasma.   
  
Skyfire! Skyfire emplaced with a minicon, unless Springer was totally glitched, which wasn’t impossible, but he hadn’t felt that level of power and precision from Skyfire in a long time. And slag but it felt good. Wait, not just a minicon…that was…  
  
Skyfire and Vector Prime.  
  
The minicon must be Safeguard, then. Skyfire swooped down toward Springer as Vector kept up cover fire, forcing the Cons back, knocking bits off the determined ones but Springer noticed he wasn’t killing anyone even though the ancient Prime’s weapons were anything but nonlethal.   
  
 _You’re out of your mind,_  Skyfire told him, as he arced low enough for Springer to catch hold of an extended landing pad.   
  
 _This is news?_  Springer laughed. He didn’t have the energy to haul himself up onto Skyfire’s dorsal hull, or inside if the big delta had opened his boarding ramp – Springer wasn’t in good position for that anyway – so Skyfire simply rolled, allowing Springer’s battered body to sprawl across his ventral hull. He pulled up through the low, choking atmosphere and headed back to the  _Xantium._  That Springer didn’t argue made Skyfire a bit worried.  
  
…  
  
 **Rend… Sunder… Tapout… Bladestorm… Tamper… Clashdriver…**  
  
Prowl and Jazz watched Prime. Optimus remained steadfast on his feet this time, reciting the names of the dead, but he had slowly wrapped his arms about himself, as though to embrace and cradle and comfort the returning sparks.   
  
No decision of words or glyphs passed between Prowl and Jazz. They were both thinking the same thing. They needed to keep Optimus out of combat from now on. His firepower was undeniable, but the cost was too great. They would protect him. Ironhide would help.  
  
…  
  
Skyfire dropped Springer off at the Wreckers’ ship, where Spanner took him in and hustled him off to the CR chamber. Then Skyfire hastened back to rejoin Vector Prime. Skyfire almost stalled, unprepared for the scene his long-range sensors were providing him.  
  
Vector stood at the center of a ring of Decepticons, speaking quietly with Shockwave. As Skyfire approached, Vector transformed and joined him in low orbit.   
  
 _What…?_  Skyfire fumbled, juggling which question he wanted to ask first. It was a common enough problem when in Vector’s presence.  _Were you…?_  
  
 **His mind is logical,**  Vector said, sounding both weary and contemplative.  **Logical but cold as a dead hand.**  He extended his solar sails for a moment, like a shudder or a shrug, then furled them and dove for the valley where Kup’s battalion and the rest of the Wreckers were fighting.  **But perhaps there is hope. Come, Skyfire.**  
  
They plunged into the heaviest knot of fighting strafing broad swathes of the strange mouthless ones, who did not scatter under their withering fire, but seemed to cluster into it instead. Vector dove upon them again and again, with an urgency Skyfire found disturbing.   
  
 **Kill as many as you can,**  Vector Prime said.  **Send them back to the solace of the Allspark.**  
  
Shocked at this peculiar bloodthirstiness in a Prime – an original Prime, a lifebearer – Skyfire faltered. Sleeked against his helm, Safeguard stirred, did something to Skyfire’s optics, he thought, or maybe to his spark.  
  
 _Look again,_  Safeguard told him softly. Skyfire stifled a cry – it was as though pain and anguish had become visible, beyond the usual level of fields. It boiled and blistered from the mute not-drones’ chests like something infectious; every single one of them, lurching and writhing with it. Skyfire shuttered his optics, begged Safeguard to stop whatever modification he’d made, and safeguard withdrew the patch, sent him a virtual kiss over the link, sorry for Skyfire’s distress, but the big delta had needed to understand.  
  
 **They were coerced into life, into bodies which pain them,**  Vector explained.  **Help me send them home, Skyfire!**  
  
Skyfire coughed to clear his intakes, ash dropping from him as he shuddered and swung again into the horde.  
  
…  
  
We are the Taken. They call us half-deads. We rise and leap toward the silver and the white; the ones with beams and blades to kill us, to save us. We leap toward them in need and joy. The silver one looks at us with compassion and his killing strokes are swift.   
  
…  
  
The names were coming faster. It was not reassuring.  **Sundog. Polygon. Ferrum. Stardancer. Aequitas. Infusion. Spinner. Thread. Veracity. Andiron. lronfist. Overcast...**  
  
Jazz and Prowl stiffened, optics wide and horrified. Some of those names they knew. Names of those long dead. Not the Autobot Graveyard Legion, for Optimus always used their newly chosen names – for a reason, because it spared them this pain.   
  
“Aequitas?” Prowl said faintly, feeling as though his CPU had been somehow dropped abruptly or slammed against a wall. “Veracity?”  
  
 _Ferrum!_  Red keened, from the security office, where Ratchet and Wheeljack soon joined him.  _Infusion!_  
  
“Polygon,” said Jazz, grim, growing angry. “Stardancer.”  
  
“Spinner,” Perceptor murmured, shuddering. “Galvatron created a Graveyard Legion as well.”  
  
“Only I don’t think he  _asked_  the sparks he took,” Jazz growled.  
  
…  
  
We heard them killing the half-deads first. Saw the reflection of energy discharge in the ash clouds. Then the order came down, through Skyquake to Macabre to Spire. We would join in this battle. It would be our first. We were not quite afraid, merely anxious, not really knowing what we were in for, despite our training. Mez had warned us of this as well.   
  
We wanted to turn our audials off, but the sound rang through our bodies, inescabable as the clouds of ash and sand kicked up by trampling pedes and wheels and tracks. And sometimes it was only the half-heard chuff of movement that warned one of the enemy behind. We wanted to close our chemoreceptors to the reek of spilled energon and coolants, close our optics to the glow of spilled energon and the sight of mangled bodies, charred and dismembered.   
  
When Tuya died the whisper in our sparks cried out. The valley filled with a sound that we only gradually began to understand was coming from us, from our vocoders. A high-pitched multi-modal keen none of us had ever heard before. We didn’t know how we were making the sound, but it echoed off the walls of the valley and our enemies stared at us in horror. We keened louder when Rhyolite died, and pressed our advantage.  
  
…  
  
 **Tuya… No!**  Prime gasped, hugging himself tighter, and Prowl and Jazz, unable to stand and watch, pressed close against his body, shivering.  **No! Not the new sparks! We have to tell them… Quickmix. Scoop. Rhyolite…**  
  
 _There’s no way to get a message to them in time to make a difference!_  Wheeljack fretted.  _There just… Slag it. Perceptor…Perceptor there has to be a way. If the Allspark can connect across infinite distance…_  
  
 _Then there must be at least one way,_  Perceptor agreed.   
  
…  
  
“Come on!” Mez shouted. A group of Autobots had let just a little too much space open between themselves and the rest of their line. “Slice ‘em and dice ‘em!” Mez led his platoon in a wedge into that space, widening it. Visibility – even with polarization – was slag down here in the valley, with the half-deads and three big clots of Autobots and the new sparks from the ravine and a couple other platoons of veteran Cons churning up the dust and ash. They didn’t need any of the local volcanoes to spew to make this more fun. Fortunately the mountains were being quiet today.   
  
They forced the small group of Autobots back and back. Not Wreckers, Mez decided, though they fought just as dirty, if not dirtier. Not Kup’s people either – they were on the other side of the valley. Must be the new guys who’d slid in from the far side of the galaxy about a quartex ago. Sentinel’s battalion, but not the big brutes, either. These were grunts, frontliners, who’d just done something stupid and it was going to be the last stupid thing they did. Sentinel should thank him for weeding out the morons.   
  
Suddenly the ground behind them erupted with gold-green curtains of fire, engulfing Miasma, Blaze and Roadclaw, dropping them limp to the rough, clinkery ground. Mez kept on, leaving them. There was nothing he could do for them right now even if Turmoil was a big supporter of repairing mechs who'd been unprofessional enough to get themselves fried like that. Laggers.   
  
The walls of fire came down again and again, taking more and more of Mez's platoon down, and even as they ran to pursue the fleeing Autobots, Mez stepped aside to draw a bead on the jets who were firing at them. Or tried to. Whoever they were, the three of them were fast and maybe partially stealthed; his targeting systems kept sliding off, not finding anything to lock onto.   
  
Nice thing about area-of-effect weapons, though, Mez noted, was that they sucked fuel like a pitspawn. Those jets couldn’t keep this up, and when they got low, Mez would put a splinter grenade up their thruster vents.   
  
“Fraggers,” Mez snarled. “We're being herded!” But by that time two more of his platoon had been hit. Mez turned and Coldvault went down. Fall back! part of him screamed. Go on! another part of him urged. So much for AOEs being short-lived. Mez knew this territory, though, and if they circled around, they’d come up onto a higher ridge. The tortured and thrawn spires and dikes of swiftly-cooled lava would still provide his remaining platoon with cover and if they moved fast enough they’d catch the jets below in the valley.   
  
They passed some of his fallen mechs as they doubled back. Mez paused for a fraction of an astrosecond. Firewinder and Steelstake were still giving off fields. The green plasma bursts hadn’t killed them, it had only looked like it at first because their systems had been shocked into such a deep stasis. Mez gestured the six behind him onward and stooped beside a couple more of his fallen. They were alive, too. All of them, all of his troops were alive. What the slag were those jets playing at? Were they using null rays, or just something like it?  
  
The curtains of green fire from above ceased. Perhaps the jets had been drawn away, or they had to let their wide-beam weapons recharge or cool down. Perhaps more Decepticon forces were coming up the valley to help him, or at least mopping up the rest of that Autobot line. Mez didn't end up having much time to contemplate the unlikelihood of rescue, however. The three jets were closing on him fast. He raised his guns and let loose with everything he had. Maybe he'd take at least one of them with him.  
  
They dove and wove, fighting on foot and on wing, taunting, teasing the small group of Cons farther from the main body of the fight, turning, wheeling, cutting them off, cutting their numbers down and down, until only Mez stood against them. He wanted to call for back up but how would that look to Turmoil? Whining for help? These fragging Seeker-types acted like a gestalt, Mez thought, if he could concentrate his fire, at least damage one of them, they’d be more likely to disengage, and he could get back to the rest of the crew.  
  
They never gave him a clear shot. Hold still, slag it! They harried him further, toying with him. Mez grew angrier and angrier, trying to keep the smallest of the three in his targeting reticle, to keep firing again and again at the same place until the shielding went down. He didn’t even care if it was a vital spot – he’d never seen quite this forging before, though he was pretty sure they were Seekers. Well, they were fliers, right? That meant Seekers one way or another.   
  
The largest was having no more of his games.   
  
Urthr transformed and dropped directly in front of him, bringing the pommel of her sword down with the force of her landing, the force of her mass behind it onto his helm. Mez dropped, helm sparking, optics out, his pistol half-folding into his forearm.   
  
 _Sorry, didn’t mean to jog him so hard,_  Urthr said.  
  
Verthandi laughed.  _Come on, grab him and let’s go!_  
  
Urthr picked the limp form up and held him close to her chest as she transformed again and launched herself toward her sisters. They coalesced into their interceptor form, Mez tucked safely within and bolted down in case he came to in mid-flight.  
  
 _We’re going to Earth!_  said Verthandi.  
  
 _We’re going to see Prime!_  said Skuld.  
  
 _We’re off to see the wizard I mean Wheeljack!_  said Urthr, and the other two groaned.  
  
…  
  
 _They took Mez._  Spire was angry. The enemy had taken our friend, our teacher.  
  
I was thinking about the big white enemy, with the strange silver one, both with wings. They had been killing the half-deads, but they stopped when they saw us, even before we began to keen. We fired at them, making no mark against their shields. They looked at us and then flew away.   
  
…  
  
Darkness had many qualities. Mez had always liked the dark. He was, given his druthers, something of an ambush predator. Like Soundwave, he thought to himself. His optics didn’t seem to be working. He couldn’t move, either, but he wasn’t alarmed yet. Flashes of the battle jittered across his CPU, illuminating little, but enough to let him jump to some conclusions. He was either captured, or dead. The latter seemed unlikely as there was enough pain grinding his helm for him to dismiss that idea. He seemed to be in some kind of medical semi-stasis. Maybe someone on the  _Flay_  had picked him up after all. No. Turmoil found him useful, but it would be stretching things to surmise that the Decepticon captain actually liked him. Keep up or get left behind. And everyone liked to tell stories about what the Autobots would do to you if they captured you. The stories had only gotten more horrific, and more true, as the war had ground on and on.   
  
 _Countermeasure?_  
  
Oh look, there’s someone else around after all. Captured then. The voice was weird, like three people talking at once. “Name’s Mez, idiot. Let me up!”  
  
 _He can’t transform. The self and the body are linked? Very well._  
  
“What?” But the gentle darkness moved in from the edges and his consciousness narrowed to a point and went out.  
  
…  
  
2065 – October  
  
Excitement sizzled through the cloud mind. Even the humans who were only equipped for certain bandwidths were picking up on it. Maggie, whose access was broader than anyone else of her generation, woke up that morning jittery even without her coffee, and she pinged Hound and Mirage right away.   
  
 _Get your coffee,_  Mirage told her, amused.  _The last glyph-set was upside-down._  
  
 _Ohhhh dammit!_  Maggie blushed to her roots but scampered down the spiral stair to the kitchenette and collected the nice tall cuppa the non-sentient machine had ready for her.   
  
(Months ago she had finally remembered to ask Borealis if coffee still smelled good. Borealis wasn’t on-planet very often any more and Maggie had found her up on the mesa top, in sphinx pose, looking into the stars. Maggie wondered how long her ties to this little planet would last. In regards to coffee, Borealis had said that it did indeed still smell good – she had an explorer’s keen chemoreceptors, though they were in her lower legs and forearms, not where a human nose would be – but the taste, to a mech used to various refinements of energon, was nothing short of awful.)  
  
She jogged back up to the bedroom, patted Chipchp asleep on her pillow and nudged Glen. “They’re landing in about ten minutes,” she told his bleary-eyed stare.  
  
“Mmmkay.” He yawned and made slow-motion movements aimed roughly in the direction of getting up. He’d had a lot of augmentation, too, but there was a lot of grey in his hair these days. Distinguished, Maggie told herself when she let herself think about it. It made him look distinguished. Followed generally by a smile and a vague mental handwave toward the looks can be deceiving aisle. After all these years Glen was still reliably a geek.   
  
Maggie got dressed properly and patted Chipchip again on her way out. Chipchip spent more time asleep these days than awake. She’d never gotten another phone, since the hardware was now in her head. Optimus had warned her, and all the others who stood custodians for the wee accidental bitbots, that their sparks were so tiny he was not certain how long they’d live. Maggie found she had to agree with Ratchet that while it had been longer than your average family dog, it might not be for much longer. Glen’s Icon and Miles’ Scuffle were similarly slowing down. No grey to show on their muzzles, no muzzles for that matter, so the sleepiness was the main symptom.   
  
Glen was moving, slothlike but moving.  
  
“Meet you down on the road,” Maggie said and he waved her on.  
  
Autobots were gathering from near and far, clustered on the broad driveway that led from the main hangar door to the highway, Mirage and Hound in the center with Prime.   
  
They came down from the East, the three-as-one with their precious cargo, curving around the planet as the planet turned to meet them. The four Furies had joined them from Mars onward, their small, glittering shapes weaving a dance around their larger cousins. Flanked by the Furies, – or the “Little Sisters of Perpetual Velocity” as Borealis called them, saying she’d shamelessly nicked the name from Terry Pratchett – the Nornir landed in their interceptor form, lowering a ramp as Ratchet and Catscan ran forward, Hound and Mirage beside them.   
  
“Easy,” Ratchet said. “Yes, very good, he’s in stasis and stable.” He nodded to Catscan and the two of them formed a stretcher of their arms, carrying Mez swiftly into the medbay, Hound and Mirage again their shadows. Optics of those gathered followed them until they reached the shade of the hangar entry, then returned to the newcomers. The Furies had already settled into the embraces of friends they didn’t often see in the metal since they’d moved to Mars with Rutile and a handful of other Water Babies.   
  
“Verthandi, Skuld, Urthr,” Optimus Prime said, spreading his arms. “Welcome to Earth!” They bounced and laughed and rushed into a big swaying hug, glomped by Elita from the other side, and then by Chromia and Firestar and Moonracer and Spiral and then it was an Autobot pile on the Nornir and it was a good thing no one was particularly breakable.   
  
“Gorgeous,” Maggie said. Glen nudged her shoulder with his.   
  
“What frametype?”  
  
“No idea. They’re Prime and Elita’s first set. Ratchet said they made them up as they went along.”  
  
…  
  
"Countermeasure?"  
  
That voice. That tone. Something long buried stirred, rebooted, reinitialized. He still couldn't move, but he could feel that he was on a repair table, in a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere, at a particular gravitational factor which felt planetlike to him rather than shiplike or stationlike. He could feel, he could think, but a lot of his other systems were blocked. Medical blocks, by the gentle feel. Polite ones. Not Shred's handiwork. Or Knockout’s. A name came up, as the buried parts of himself woke more fully and began to reassert themselves. Ratchet.   
  
Ratchet! He was on Earth! His body twitched and shuddered, trying to transform. The holds on his voluntary systems were released, and the ruddy sandstone ceiling of the embassy medbay filled his view as his optics came back online. He transformed, robot mode rolling and whirring and shifting into another robot mode, one he hadn't worn for decades.   
  
"Ratchet!" Countermeasure gasped, fighting to push back Mez completely. His weapons systems were still offline, but he could feel the surges of power his other self was trying to force down those lines, to make his arms become guns, missiles to emerge from his shoulders and torso, attack the hated Autobots, strike a blow for the glorious Decepticon cause, to take out the vile Ratchet finally when so many others had failed... No. Dear Ratchet, gentle hands touching his hands, his arms, easing the pain of the warring urges inside him.   
  
"There you are," Ratchet said, relief evident but a minor key in his harmonics. Mostly he was just glad to see him in once piece, at least physically. And he wasn't the only one. "All right you two before you blow your gaskets."   
  
Countermeasure suddenly found himself in the middle of a tangle of arms and legs and kisses and helms and soft whirrs and clicks and mewling tones of welcome and homecoming and hugs and bangings on the back struts and laughter. "County! County!"  
  
He struggled in their grasp. Mez was still trying to reassert himself, Countermeasure couldn’t hold on, couldn’t keep this form for much longer. “The codes,” he whispered.  
  
“Yes,” said Mirage, and began to sing. Low at first like a cello, adding a melody in a slightly higher key. Hound joined in, his voice higher and brighter, following the melody. Nightbeat and Afterburner and Arcee filled in harmonies, their music swelling louder, filling the bay and spilling out into the hangar. Jazz sent a fast message to all human personnel to adjust their hearing or grab ear protectors, ‘cause it’s gonna get loud, baby! Optimus came in still clumped with extended family and sang with his fields.  
  
Prowl slipped by Mirage and stood behind the head of the repair table, placing his hands lightly to either side of Countermeasure’s helm. He tilted his head back and sang, his voice belling powerfully above the rest, striking deep into Countermeasure’s CPU, activating code they had planted there together.  
  
“Freude, schöner Götterfunken, / Tochter aus Elysium, / Wir betreten feuertrunken. / Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! / Deine Zauber binden wieder / Was die Mode streng geteilt; / Alle Menschen werden Brüder / Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.”  
  
 _Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,  
Daughter of Elysium,   
We enter fire imbibed,   
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.  
Thy magic reunites those  
Whom stern custom has parted;   
All men will become brothers  
Under thy gentle wing._  
  
Countermeasure arched, held by his progenitors, and Prowl clasped his helm until the code sank in and spread through his systems and Mez was peacefully laid to rest.  
  
“Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’,” Maggie said, sniffling unabashedly. There were a lot of smiles and not a few bright eyes among the human staff. . (Months later, catching the message out in space, Borealis would go into raptures because of Voyager 1 – which she had certainly not been out to visit and love on, and definitely had not nudged in a more useful direction per data Prime totally did not give her about where the most sympathetic galactic civilizations might be hanging out.)  
  
“Your poor helm!” Mirage kissed him again, avoiding the big dent in the crown.  
  
"Sorry, Mirage," said an unfamiliar voice. Or only familiar from one battle, one shout before everything had gone away and he had awoken to find himself here.   
  
"You did what you had to."   
  
 _Mir, Hound,_  Countermeasure tight-beamed.  _The things I've done!_  
  
 _Hush, hush we know, or we have an idea, dear one. If you want or need to talk about it, we're always here, and Smokey is, and if you don't want to talk about it with us, or anyone, that's all right, too. Just give yourself time._  
  
 **Welcome home, Countermeasure,**  came a transmission from Prime, warm and energizing like the sun.  **We're very glad you've returned to us safely.**  In his subharmonics, though, was the message that Prime and Prowl and Jazz would like to debrief him as soon as he felt he possibly could endure it.  
  
 _Yes, Prime,_  Countermeasure said. His interior landscapes were stabilizing now with Mirage and Hound's arms around him, safe with his people, his progenitors on their adopted homeworld where the friendly little yellow white sun shone on them unfettered, unhidden by charred mountains and smoke-filled crevasses, and the cloud mind was open and free and sang welcome at him and made a joyous cacophony in his head. Where the rain didn't kill you and he didn't have to hide to recharge and didn't have to have an optic open for a blade or a shot in the back. He let it all in, happier than he could properly express to be home.  
  
…  
  
Countermeasure went into Prime’s office. It was too late to have shaky feet. Mirage and Hound kept close at his sides. Prime stood beside the holotable, Prowl and Jazz a familiar diptych of silent watchfulness at his flanks. The doors closed and locked; no-one besides the six of them and Teletraan. This was not, Countermeasure reminded himself, a hostile audience. They needed to know what he could tell them. It was now a matter of getting that information past the quieted parts of him that had been Mez.   
  
“They’re building,” Countermeasure said, plunging in. “On and above Chaar they’re building for a massive strike. They mean to finish you, but Shockwave is patient, and for now so is Galvatron. Beta’s attack – I’m sorry – it set them back, but Shockwave just started again with, as far as I know, the same plans and designs.” Prowl said nothing, made no move. There was a brief, tangled flare of fields in the room, but they weren’t just Prowl’s. “It’s ships and an army and something else, maybe another ship, but big. Most of the army is what we’ve…they’ve been calling half-deads. The mouthless ones; they’re not drones.”  
  
“No,” Prime said. “Their sparks are forcibly taken from the Allspark.”  
  
Countermeasure blinked, of course Prime would know, then. Prime would have felt it. If the rumors were true each mass kindling had nearly killed Galvatron, but Galvatron had thrived on pain, had drawn strength from his own agony. What had it done to Prime all these years he’d been gone? Mirage and Hound took his hands, squeezing to reassure him.   
  
“Then you…you know about the ravine kids too?” County leaned forward, hopeful. “They were the last set of 300 made like that, only something went different that time. No one was supposed to talk about it, but I always wondered…”  
  
“I interfered,” Optimus said. “Those sparks are new sparks, kindled as the Allspark has done for most of our history. By whatever will and metric the Allspark itself uses.” Optimus grinned suddenly, and Countermeasure felt his spark flutter. “With whatever quirks of humor it decides to grace us with.” Jazz snorted, and Prowl’s door wings gave just a slight upward twitch – as good as a belly laugh, maybe, from Prowl. Countermeasure stared at them hungrily; oh he’d missed this.  
  
“They put me in charge of them for a while,” County continued, happier now. “For a while, until they were given a flight mode. Now they’re commanded by Skyquake and his wing.” He looked again at Prowl. “I didn’t get to speak with Shockwave; I rarely even saw him, but I did manage to tell Turmoil about you having been an AI, so maybe that will get it to Shockwave. Most information seemed to end up with him anyway.”  
  
“Indeed,” Prowl said, pleased. “That has generally been the case, and what I counted on, even if you, as you say, never got the opportunity to tell him yourself. Turmoil won’t use that information in the way Shockwave will, but I don’t foresee any difficulty for us in that.” Jazz was giving Prowl what Mikaela called the hairy eyeball. Prime looked like he couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to get out from between the two. The collision might be fun. Or hazardous. Mirage definitely looked like he wanted to join in the fun part.  
  
Countermeasure hated to interrupt, but he wasn’t finished. He wanted to be finished as soon as possible, so he could get back to the snuggling. “There have been rumors recently about Shockwave. I never could get into his labs myself, but the energy records indicated there was a high turnover of materials recycling going on. He was building a lot of small things, or one largeish thing and then slagging it and starting over. The rumors were all about what exactly he was making.” County looked deeply uncomfortable. “Weapons seem pretty high up probability wise, but I once talked to Flamewar, who’d glimpsed something in the smelter before it broke down completely that upset even her. Given the kind of damage that was done to Ash, and other things the ravine kids observed, it’s possible that he’s been creating not just new kinds of drones, but new kinds of people. Small, smaller than minicons.”  
  
Prowl made a wounded sound, shuttering his optics hard as his processor collated thought skeins into likelihoods.   
  
“Prime?” Jazz asked. “Is he…?”  
  
“No…I am not detecting sparks in whatever he’s doing. Not sparks as we know them.”   
  
“Thank Primus.”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
“Do you think Soundwave found out that Ranger’s spark was created from Ratchet and Ironhide’s?” Hound asked.  
  
“Very likely,” Jazz said. “But Ranger doesn’t have the merge protocols. He wanted to wait on that, too.”  
  
“Fortunate for us,” Mirage said, disquieted, “maybe not so fortunate for whomever or whatever Shockwave is experimenting on?”  
  
“Urgh.” Countermeasure definitely wanted to get back to the snuggling.  
  
  
…  
  
“A deep-cover agent,” Thundercracker said flatly.   
  
Strake’s optics were very wide and he kept looking from TC to Prowl to Prime to Jazz, not sure what to make of the complex things going on in everyone’s fields. No one seemed genuinely angry, though, so he settled his wings.  
  
“Yes,” said Prowl. “He’s been part of Turmoil’s battalion for the past 38 years.”  
  
“And you brought him back already? Kind of a waste, isn’t it?”  
  
“He asked to be brought back,” Prime said. “He was given a set of things to learn or do and he has accomplished all of his objectives. Yes, earlier in the war we would have left him in place for as long as possible, perhaps even until his true allegiance was revealed. Not now. For the sake of his sanity, we brought him home.”  
  
“He’s a new spark,” Strake said, putting it together.  
  
“Indeed,” Optimus said, beaming at him. Strake started to preen, caught himself, then at the twinkle in Prime’s optics allowed himself to complete the gesture. TC snorted.   
  
“Makes sense,” Thundercracker grumbled. “Someone with no history, not in any of Shockwave’s records, and therefore you could manufacture any story you wanted. Shockwave doesn’t know everything, much as he seems to. But cold, Optimus, cold to send a young one into something like that.”  
  
“Believe me,” Optimus said, “the decision was not made lightly, by myself or by Countermeasure.”   
  
“I suppose not.” He canted an optic cannily at Prime. “You know we…the Cons have deep cover agents, too. Sleepers, some of them.”  
  
Optimus nodded. “Octane hasn’t been heard from by either side for a long time, as far as Jazz has been able to determine. And Sandstorm defected.”  
  
Thundercracker’s wings went down. “What…? You… Sandstorm?” This devolved rapidly into high-speed swearing. Strake cackled, mostly at the look on TC’s face, since he’d never heard of either of the mechs mentioned.   
  
“Octane was always twitchy,” Optimus said. “You knew that perfectly well even before the war. He’s very like Swindle. And Sandstorm was recruited to the Decepticon cause under false pretenses. Once that was made clear to him, he joined a group of neutrals.” Optimus had not spoken with Sandstorm himself, but had gotten the information via Yoketron and Drift. Optimus himself was not yet adept at channeling his thoughts and glyphs through the Allspark, but Yoketron had picked up the trick of it soon after Drift had first come to Earth. He and Optimus had been in occasional contact ever since.   
  
“False pretenses,” Strake said, scratching at a mandible. “Imagine that.”  
  
Thundercracker glowered but said nothing.  
  
…  
  
“You have a visitor,” Optimus said. On the roof, he indicated with an upward tilt of his head. The mesa top.   
  
Countermeasure blinked, nonplussed. He slid from the recharge table and walked out to the main hangar, headed for the open door. There were a lot of new faces around the embassy, human and mech; mostly curious, often sympathetic. The mech who stopped right in front of him, blocking his way had an incredible paint job…and the first overtly unfriendly expression he’d seen. The mech – Hot Rod, his updated HUD informed him – crossed his arms over his chest and after a sullen moment allowed Countermeasure to pass without a word.   
  
At the top of the “ladder”, Countermeasure paused. The only person up there was human. Mostly human. His cursory scan revealed a number of cybernetic additions and modifications. A cyborg. He didn’t recognize her.  
  
Until she turned around.  
  
He couldn’t get his vocoder to work at all. He felt as though Galvatron himself had just kicked him in the chest.   
  
“Hello, boy,” Dani said, smiling through her tears.   
  
“Dani…” he croaked.   
  
“You’re late.”  
  
He nodded, climbing the rest of the way up and approaching her slowly, kneeling at last and shivering at the touch of her hands on his. “I’m so sorry…”  
  
“You missed my Sweet Sixteenth. I am old, County. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago.”  
  
She was 48. He remembered. He knew the story she was quoting. “Do you…do you have a little girl?”  
  
Dani laughed and flung herself at him and hugged his face as he picked her up. “Not so little, now, dammit!” She kissed his cheek spar and leaned back, trying to look into both optics at once. He cupped his hands around her, kept her close.   
  
“What’s her name? Do you have a…I mean, humans generally…er…”  
  
“Melissa. After Bee, kind of, get it?” He nodded and Dani went on, wiping her face fiercely. “No husband, if that’s what you’re fumbling at. Unless you count Hot Rod. And…well, most people do. Human guys seem to find him intimidating and I…let them.”  
  
“Ah.” Countermeasure stroked her back with a fingertip. “So that’s why he’s torqued off with me?”  
  
“Is he? That twit…”   
  
“Is he coming up?”  
  
“Do you want him to?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Dani kissed him again with added sound effects for emphasis and good measure. The amazing paint job poked his head over the edge of the mesa top and glared at her, but couldn’t hold the expression for long.   
  
“Get up here and quit being such a weenie.”   
  
Hot Rod vaulted up, landing with a flourish and a studied, heroic pose. Countermeasure widened one optic and refocused the other, trying to make that color scheme make sense. “I’m not being a weenie. He made you cry, I’m allowed to be annoyed.”   
  
Dani stared at him. “Wow. Really?”  
  
Countermeasure shuttered his optics and opened them again. Nope, Hot Rod was still that color. Those colors. All of those colors. Together. “Ratchet informs me that should you continue to be obstreperous, I should call you…” Countermeasure curled his hands around Dani more closely and sat up stiffly, optics wide as he processed the memory feed he was getting. Mirage’s, and then Sideswipe’s. “Pollyrod?”   
  
“Oh no.” They were never going to let up on that. Centuries from now someone would still bring it up just to annoy him.   
  
“You…actually did that. Got Metroplex to let you out of the tank six months early.”   
  
“He actually did that,” Dani confirmed, grinning. “Damn cute and a good thing too. I don’t think Sideswipe’s forgiven you for all those piggyback rides.”  
  
“He said he didn’t mind,” Hot Rod muttered. Gradually he had moved closer and now he knelt beside Countermeasure, visibly restraining himself from trying to grab Dani out of the older mech’s embrace.   
  
“Jealousy is really weird in Cybertronians, Roddy,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “You do know that, right?”  
  
“You want a threesome!” Hot Rod exclaimed.  
  
“What?!” Dani shrieked, laughing. “You’re delusional!”  
  
“Miles,” Hot Rod began.  
  
“Oh don’t start with Miles,” Dani said, shaking a finger at him. For one thing, Miles was essentially her uncle and the subject of his sexual proclivities was therefore more than a bit icky. “To start with, Beachcomber is tiny!”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hot Rod sing-songed. “Isn’t there a human saying? Something about size? What was it again? Not mattering?”   
  
“Don’t let Jazz hear you say that,” Dani said.   
  
Jazz, Countermeasure thought, (feeling rather plaintively that he was the only adult present,) who was basically Hot Rod’s grandfather, since Jazz and Prime had made Rio, and Rio and Kup had made Hot Rod. Prime kids and Jazz babies. Bee-children and Ratchetspawn and wonder of wonders, a Son of Ironhide. Life had gone on here without him, and that hurt a little, mostly overwhelmed by the gladness. He wished he could have brought his ravine kids with him, but he was afraid he might have taught them too well to be Decepticons. Time would tell. And Prime healed all wounds, it seemed.   
  
Hot Rod and Dani had at some point stopped arguing. When he paid full attention again to his optical feeds he discovered Hot Rod’s face bare inches from his own, the large, appealing optics vivid and wide, watching him with genuine concern.   
  
“County?” Dani stroked his cheek.  
  
He would never tell her everything he’d done. Never. He just couldn’t do that to her, or himself. There was just too much.  
  
“Did you kill anybody?” Hot Rod asked, not an excited question, but a young mech trying to help and maybe making hash of it but wanting to try anyway.   
  
“Yes,” Countermeasure said.  
  
“But, did you kill a sun?”  
  
Countermeasure flinched. “No.” But oh Primus he understood so much more about Prowl now. Oh, Prowl! He pulled at Hot Rod, an arm around his waist, Dani between them, their earlier conversation and teasing inconsequential now. Later, later he’d need to be with Prowl. And Strake; to be between the two of them again. Except they didn’t need him to make a third any more, they had Thundercracker. Oh Primus, Thundercracker! He was so hated on the other side! “We’re so fragged up. So fragged up…”  
  
“That’s a certainty,” said a gentle voice, nevertheless with a lilt of humor. Jazz, crouching beside them, and Smokey coming up the ladder to join them. And inquiring glyphs from Prime.   
  
“You’ll have more help than you know what to do with, County,” Dani said, and kissed him.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
The second pressure-door closed behind him and engaged the quantum lock. Neutron foam lined the walls of the inner labs and chambers, confounding all but the most powerful or sophisticated scans. Special field generators kept out the rest. It was time to check the latest batch.   
  
Shockwave had calculated early on that using small forms for his trials was more efficient. Less metal ended up in the smelter for each batch that way, and small bodies took far less time to build. Banks of assembly pods filled four of the six walls of Lab 2. Shockwave inserted a data jack into the terminal and ran the final checks. This system was entirely isolated form all others, even the two other, equally isolate systems within his lab complex, which took up the center of the second largest artificial satellite around Chaar.  
  
System check complete.   
  
Configuration check complete.  
  
Shockwave compared the results with his sims. Promising. He initialized the boot-up sequence for this batch. Within the pods, tiny crimson optics lit.  
  
The power sources were sufficient. The programming was – as Shockwave was incapable of false modesty, this was his reasoned assessment – extraordinary. But the power sources were not sparks. These would become very clever machines indeed, were they allowed to progress into full-fledged bodies, but they were nothing more than the very clever machines built by countless advanced organic species throughout the eons. Shockwave remembered that he had once found such machines disgusting, but he no longer was burdened with absurd emotional cargo. Now he understood that these machines were simply inferior. They were not properly alive. They did not have  _sparks_. If Shockwave had retained any emotional programming he would have been disappointed.  
  
Galvatron, Shockwave was confident, had valid reasons for having created the half-deads, but Shockwave was not interested in recreating similar models. These would not do, either. He activated the sanitation protocol, ignoring the tiny screams and the desperate scrabbling of minute claws as acid cleansed the pods of their defective contents. The pods would be ready for a new trial within the orn.  
  
…  
  
The external sensors blipped. It was a small sound, that would not disturb Shockwave from delicate work or deep contemplation, but his audio feed recorded the signal and kept it in an accessory thread to be retrieved when higher priority matters had been attended to.   
  
A new batch of test subjects, with the new power source design implemented, was set up and assembling in the pods. A previous batch, much farther along, was nevertheless not yet ready for boot-up. He had a free moment, and opened the saved comm file. It was from Soundwave.   
  
Interesting. Shockwave did not of course share it, but Soundwave in reporting had expressed in subsidiary glyphs a revulsion so profound it had nearly interfered with his functioning. Sound always had been the more sensitive, effusive and poetical of the two. Most of the anomalous memory data was of a limited sensory nature, and poorly coded. Shockwave discarded it unexamined. No primitive organic could possess knowledge useful enough to justify the effort of extracting it from such a disorganized, chaotic morass.   
  
The tactic itself, however, clearly indicated that the intention of the Prime was to settle permanently on the organic planet and to attempt a merger of the species. Galvatron perhaps knew this already, hence the continuation of the war. Certainly this Prime must be stopped; he and his accomplices killed if possible. Testing the boundaries of the Prime’s supposed immortality would be fascinating but Shock set aside any in-depth planning for that eventuality in favor of more immediate concerns.  
  
They were somehow using a merge – very close physical contact, if not full contact, always a risky behavior as far as Shock was concerned – to create a new spark. The subject Sound had queried had not contained specific data on how this was accomplished, but Sound’s investigation had proven beyond reasonable doubt that it was possible, that the Autobots were in fact rather than hypothetically implementing this as a method of increasing their numbers. The results admitted a huge margin of randomness; it was a step – several steps – backward, really. A desperate gambit, but Shockwave was willing to explore alternative modes of thought if it led to useful results.  
  
He would need new test subjects. Two at a time, to begin with, if he could deduce something about the method of combination. They must somehow be using portions of their own sparkmatter to construct the third. Shock began designing the machinery that would be required for such a delicate operation. The manipulators would need to be resistant to the high temperatures and radiation inside the spark chamber environment. Would it be more efficient to send Seekers after some of the requisite raw materials or simply set the nanoassemblers on the task from the very beginning? There were a number of variables and Shock set about arranging them by importance before constructing his equations.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
It was, in most respects, a fine body. Everything Thunderwing should have been, in fact. Jhiaxus was already making lists of the modifications he wished to make, though first he would have to be well distant from Galvatron. No sense in unnecessarily offending the Lord. The three small groups of Autobots had been easily chased off from Chaar and its system; Jhiaxus’ main decision was which one to pursue and annihilate first.   
  
Eventually he had chosen Kup’s tattered remnant of a battalion. Might as well finish what had been begun. The  _Ark_  was a spherical scow, intended for exploration and research, however much it had been modified during the Autobots’ last exodus from Cybertron after the treachery of the Allspark launch.   
  
It was a spherical scow with recently modified engines, Jhiaxus soon discovered.   
  
Slag Wheeljack. Yes, that was on the list, too. As was hunting down and destroying every last neutral colony. Jhiaxus planned to accomplish that during his pursuit of the _Ark_ , the  _Xantium_ , and the  _Rapacious_ , taking whatever opportunities presented themselves for information gathering at the galactic hubs and waystations. Even the most isolated and careful colony would betray itself eventually.

 


	78. Heartlines II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Mirage has difficulty dealing with Epps’ passing, a new Autobot carries human memories, Mirage rakes leaves, and Hound and Mirage tell stories.  
> Lifeline and Catscan watch the ocean, Countermeasure gets snuggles, Rain gets lessons in robot smexing, Sarah!robot grows, TC is thinky, and Sarah!robot decants.

2075 - May  
  
The transmission from Colorado didn’t make any sense. Bobby Epps had been taken to the hospital last night and died. He’d only been 92. Mirage blinked at the connection he’d been bolting on the new space station. It didn’t make any sense. Someone must have their wires crossed.   
  
…  
  
“Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s no mistake.” The nurse on the other end of the line was professionally polite. “I can’t release any other information.”  
  
Mirage closed the connection, staring at the electronic records he’d lifted from the hospital server without thinking. Time of death: 04:37 AM. Cause of death: heart failure. Nonsense. A ridiculous finding. Hadn’t they done an autopsy?   
  
“Mir,” said Hound. “They call it ‘natural causes’. He was old.”  
  
“No. Not yet, it’s too soon! He wasn’t that old!” Hound put a hand on his shoulder. Mirage ignored the gesture. Not just ignored, was simply unaware of. Hound maintained the contact anyway.  _I thought…I thought he’d have another ten years, maybe twenty. It’s too soon! We weren’t…we weren’t done…_    
  
Mechs gathered but didn’t interfere. Wheeljack and Smokescreen; close by and watching.   
  
“We have his mindstate,” Hound reminded him. Bobby had been good about letting them update his scans regularly.   
  
“What does that matter?” Mirage whispered. “It’s not the same!”  
  
“No,” Hound agreed. “No. But it’s something.” It was more than they’d ever had before, of ephemeral friends in the past. What would Seaspray or Jazz give, to ride the wake of Vector Prime’s sword and collect a scan of Alana or Talaria? Beachcomber accepted people as they were, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been sad to lose S’Teth, Glllksassaa and Reyyidh, too.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Arlington National Cemetery. Nineteen guns for a former Secretary of Defense. Another eulogy, another missing man formation. Mirage engaged his articulation locks as the casket was lowered. They were not burying his friend alive. His friend wasn’t alive. A quick scan would tell him that, but he did not want to scan what was in the coffin.   
  
No. He did not want to search the internet. Autolysis begins almost immediately after death. The use of embalming agents had been summarily forbidden in 2037. He did not want to recall detailed biochemical information gleaned from Hound and Perceptor and Ratchet. The microorganisms in the gut… No. He would not react. He would not draw attention to himself.   
  
Salute completed, the mourners filed away in small groups, escorted past the press lines. Optimus lingered beside Mirage, field extended around him. There had been no ripple in the Allspark. The Cube had been on this planet long enough to affect the dominant species’ evolution and development, and yet there seemed to be no deeper connection. Robert Epps had been in the Allspark chamber beneath Hoover Dam. He had seen Bumblebee call the cube to wakefulness and compress itself to a portable form. He had never once physically touched it before its ersatz destruction.  
  
Theresa stood, supported by her daughters, and moved toward the limo waiting to take them to her daughter’s DC house, where extended family had prepared food and had the large guest list well in hand. She paused at a sound. Mirage knelt at the gravesite, his hard-edged feet and knee cutting into the lawn. He did not speak, made no further sound, but touched his chest, optics flickering. Prime and the other robots stood vigil, motionless.  
  
She felt a momentary flare of anger. Where did this robot get off, playing at grief, flinging its motions of sorrow around like he was the only one affected. His kind didn’t even die, not really. He couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to lose someone utterly and completely. Forever.   
  
That wasn’t true. He had seen more death than she could or wanted to imagine. The sure knowledge of pattern existence within the Allspark had only happened once Prime had put the shard in his chest. An unlooked-for boon.  
  
Changing course, daughters in tow, she approached, smiling because with his legs folded like this he was only a little taller than she. “He was an old, old man, Mir,” she said, laying her hand on the robot’s shoulder. “A lot older than he expected to get, back when he was in Combat Control. You helped keep him safe. You gave him years he might not have had, and I thank you for that.”   
  
Mirage met her eyes. The mechanisms in his optics whirled, the light flickered. “I am very sorry for your loss,” he whispered. The odd burr in his voice held harmonics and subharmonics she knew she couldn’t decode, but his meaning seemed clear, alien robot or no. “It has been an honor and a pleasure serving with Bobby, and protecting his family.”  
  
Saved by polite formulae, she thought. Oh, Mirage. She lifted her hand from his shoulder to his face, touching the smooth, mobile plates as she had rarely done, marveling at the feeling of warmth, the almost imperceptible thrum beneath the careful stillness meant to prevent fragile human skin from being caught or cut by the metal. Mirage had always been more scrupulously careful than her husband.  
  
They had discovered that the invisibility suit, if worn often or over too long a period of time consecutively or cumulatively, interfered with human nerve impulses and brain function. That project had been shelved for a long time, much to Bobby’s dismay. Bobby kept wanting to push the research further, test different models. Mirage had talked him out of it. The invisibility cloak was tricky enough on a mech. The Decepticons had never managed to duplicate the technology for good reason. Serendipity had, in a sense, been an inspired madmech.   
  
The eldest daughter, Shareeka, the retired Congresswoman, mustered a smile. “You’ll still protect us, won’t you, Mir?” Mir’s head lifted, as she’d hoped it would.  
  
“Of course I shall, Shari.”  
  
The second eldest daughter, the retired professor, who often shortened her name to Shelley, after her favorite poet, added, “And our children. And our children’s children?”  
  
“Unto the seventh generation,” Mirage agreed.   
  
The third eldest went by her middle name, Jasmine, and liked how thereby she could go as “Jas”, moved around to Mirage’s other side and took his hand in both of hers. “I think you’re gonna need help with that. There’s only one of you, and there are almost as many great-grandkids as grandkids.”  
  
“We will build more people to the purpose,” Prime said. He was so big it was easy to take his presence for granted, his legs just another pair of tree-trunks. “We may not be able to shadow every descendant, but perhaps they would not want that. We will, however, always keep an optic out for you and yours, for as long as any of us remain on this planet.”  
  
The youngest, Mozambiqua, the artist, whose paintings Mirage had bought and shown around to various galleries until someone else had seen the beauty and soul in them and set her up with her first show, clicked at Mirage in the way he’d taught her when she was little, in the Cybertronian pidgin that meant  _I love you_.   
  
He clicked back and added the whistle-buzz endearment that meant “big as a country” which he’d concocted when she’d proudly explained her name to him.   
  
“You’re part of our family, too, Mirage,” Theresa said. “You and Hound and Prime and the others.” She patted his arm. “Don’t be strangers. Come down to the house, at least for a little while.”   
  
“It’ll blow Aunt Marigold’s mind,” Mozambiqua giggled, sounding like a little girl of twelve again. Her sisters rolled their eyes but they laughed too.   
  
Mirage smiled. “Thank you.”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Colorado Springs.   
  
Theresa looked out the window and saw it wasn’t just Mirage, but Hound and Wheeljack and Cliffjumper and Arcee and Prowl. Just there. As weeks and months passed, gradually it was only two or three of them, then only one or two of them, but it was never none of them. Sometimes Countermeasure joined them, since he’d come home. She didn’t want to be involved with the decantation, she didn’t want him to wait; he wouldn’t be Bobby. He wasn’t hers.   
  
My copy might choose whatever she chooses, that’s got nothing to do with me, Theresa thought, her eyes and hands cold as the high mountain air. I would like to believe in human souls, but right now I just don’t.  
  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Like Lennox, Epps had had some specific ideas ahead of time regarding how he wanted his future robot-self’s body built. His choices had been less insistent, though; stating a Prowl and Prime merge would do if his first choice of pair was unwilling. (Prowl thought another merge with Prime was a lovely, tactically sound idea, even if the first pair was willing. Prime allowed that he was easily persuaded to admit that he agreed.)  
  
“Mir, we don’t have to.”   
  
Blue and green. They were balled together, intertwined, like the globe of a water planet, oceans and continents mapped by limbs and torsos, sparks turned innermost, a molten, dynamo core.   
  
Mirage let glyphs flow across the cables rather than spoken comm. Cubes and spheres of poetry danced and tumbled in imagined spaces, blending colors as their arrangements and meanings shifted. Poetry of grieving, poetry celebrating the newly kindled. A small, bright sphere Mirage himself had composed the first draft of at Countermeasure’s decantation. He was still fiddling with it, and presented Hound with the latest iteration.   
  
_I’m worried, too,_  Hound reassured him, taking in the poetry sphere as though taking in a new spark.  _We’ll be putting the engrams of a soldier in with a spark from you and I._    
  
“He wasn’t only a soldier,” Mirage said. He lifted his head, attempted a smile. “He was a father, husband, teacher, leader, friend. And a pretty good basketball player.” The wraith of a smile faded, and Mirage began to keen, resting his helm again on Hound’s shoulder. He would go along thinking he had come to terms with his friend’s death, and then suddenly…he really hadn’t. And maybe it wasn’t only Epps he was mourning. Lennox, too, and Keller, and all the lost here on Earth, and all the multitudes lost on Cybertron and everywhere else their war had taken them, raining destruction and death on anyone with the misfortune to be in the vicinity.   
  
But you didn’t always get what you expected when you made new people. That was still true, and Mirage tried to take comfort in that. They were making new people not to continue the war, but in hopes of surviving to see the end of it at last, and rebuilding their world. The moving of Cybertron would happen soon, if all went well.   
  
Hound rocked him gently, until long after the keening stopped.   
  
…  
  
Bittersweet as it was, Hound had to admit doing this with Mirage really turned him on. He kissed Mir deeply, kept kissing him, pressing him into the table, hands frantic, almost slippery with desire. Primus, he almost didn’t care if they merged now or not, any excuse to see/feel Mir’s spark would do. Any excuse to touch Mirage, to feel Mirage touching him with equal passion.   
  
“There they go again,” Ratchet sighed.   
  
“You don’t have a single romantic strut in your body,” Ironhide chided.  
  
“You’re a fine one to talk.”  
  
Optimus interposed himself between the couple on the table and the arguing friends. Not that Mirage and Hound seemed to have noticed. Prowl was on another table, fingertips pressed to the helm vent that rose between the blades of his chevron. The moment Hound and Mirage were finished, Prime and Prowl would start.   
  
Polychrest gently pushed Ratchet and Ironhide to one side, without interrupting their tiff, and completed the preparation of both growth tanks. Of the same frame-type as Lifeline, she was the progeny of Tracks and Sunstreaker – much to everyone’s surprise, including Tracks and Sunstreaker. Decanted eight years previously, she had spent most of her time with the Protectobots, learning human medicine, but had recently decided to attach herself to Ratchet and gain more experience with the robot end of things. Grinning, she tugged at Optimus’ hand, drawing him over to the table where Prowl perched. “Go ahead,” she told them. “Chances are the ignitions will not happen simultaneously even if you were trying for that, and there are plenty of hands around for catching.” She kissed both of them and withdrew, shifting her primary focus to Mirage and Hound, who were further along now. They had done this before, though not in grief, but in hope of renewal.   
  
Copper and pale green light flickered across the room, striking every high point, reflecting in the tank walls and on multiple planes of armor. Hound and Mirage swayed in their embrace, faces lifted to the unseen sky. They were deep now, despite Ratchet’s misgivings; their fingers were locked on each other, their cables taut, hot with the speed of the exchange. They fell deeper, wingless into the plane of choosing, surrounded by glittering gems or stars of every color. They held each other close, their coronae waving gently, beckoning between them. Who would answer? Who would choose to spring to life in care of the memories they wished to house?   
  
A low, chuckling note rose. They turned and saw a sky-blue spark, like afternoon after a storm, pulsing strongly. They reached out, it reached out, all were caught in the spinning and the sudden rapturous collapse; and Mirage keened, but he sang, too, for the gift given and received.   
  
With eager hands Prowl drew Optimus atop him. The one spark Prowl never hesitated to bare himself to; each joining brought another measure of healing; his mistakes and omissions were again forgiven and his pain soothed. An aching void existed within Optimus, which could not be filled, but the edges could be smoothed, his longing for a dangerous being met and matched. Their mouths devoured each other, their hands more fevered than gentle. Their chests opened before they had cables seated, Optimus pressing down over Prowl, who arched up and into him, the blinding lights of them nearly hidden by their overlapping armor. Prowl singing led their dive and, rather than one, seven stars answered, drawn by his voice, woven by his spark and Prime’s. Room was made beside Prime’s composite spark while more tanks were initialized, the seven humming and bouncing together happily so near their larger parent.   
  
Prowl’s optics cycled wide and bright before he flickered out and offline, cradled limp and utterly trusting in Prime’s arms, his lightly-scarred chest remaining open so that his spark could provide some heat as well to keep the new ones warm.  
  
Polychrest sent glyphs of joy and wonder blooming across the secure levels of the cloud mind. She wanted to tell everyone,  _everyone_. How could they keep this secret from those who loved Prowl and Mirage so? It was hard to predict how the Seekers would react, but she thought Scavenger…and maybe Hook…would be delighted; and maybe they could ease their brothers into the knowledge, with the sweet enticement that their species would not slowly linger and die. They were freed from reliance on the Allspark as well. But it wasn’t her secret alone to share, and she and Ratchet had enough to do, right now, to prepare the tanks and enough protomass for eight instead of two.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2077 – March  
  
They laid her to rest beside her husband at Arlington, but the spouse of the Chairman did not rate, per human custom, the same fanfare. No gun salute. And perhaps that was appropriate. Sarah’s business of life, her career, all the other tasks and arts and celebrations that had made up her life had not involved guns. She had been a staunch supporter of her husband and the armed forces, but she had not formally been a soldier herself. There were many other things to be, on Earth.   
  
Ranger locked his joints, overwhelmed with conflicting feelings of grief and anticipation. Both felt right, and yet were they not mutually exclusive? Ratchet and Ironhide stood close beside him. Annabelle was at his feet, one hand pressed to the warm metal of his armor, her family around her. Was she an orphan now, or not? She had shed her tears, and there remained formalities to get through before her life could resume its course. Funny way to put that. Wasn’t death and loss as much a part of a normal life as all the other things people took for granted? Everyone had to face these things eventually, there was nothing off course about it.   
  
Nick patted Ranger’s other shin awkwardly.  _She was…is a great lady,_  he said, double-checking to make sure he had the correct private channel. He hadn’t grown up with this kind of communication, but he did his best.  _Or will be again. Sorry, sorry, I…don’t know how to phrase this?_  
  
_No one else does either,_  Ranger assured him.  _And thank you. She is. Was. Will be. I don’t know what she will be. It’ll be interesting._  
  
Nick tried not to grin. The services were over. There was to be a Wake back at the farm in Nevada. All the human guests here who would be attending there would get rides on the deltas along with the robots. For most of Sarah’s extended family and Army friends this would be a unique experience. _Whatever she’ll be, I bet the Autobots aren’t ready._  
  
_Heh._  Ranger did smile, and gazed up at the mare’s-tail clouds.   
  
…  
  
The friendship between Sarah and Perceptor had been a quiet thing, little noticed by any besides the two of them. During and after Mikaela’s first pregnancy they had exchanged email steadily and extensively, as Perceptor asked hundreds of questions and Sarah shared the kind of on-the-ground insider info not found in the multitudes of childcare books and websites. Ranger had sort of known this, but he was nevertheless surprised to find out which pair of robots Sarah had asked to spark the body that would house her mindstate engrams. Sarah had used to call Perceptor “Octomom”.  
  
It seemed kind of offhand and, well, rude that “her” body would be just one of Perceptor and Beachcomber’s latest – their seventh – batch. But this was what Sarah had wanted.   
  
Rows and rows of translucent cylinders hummed, glowing softly. Perceptor and Beachcomber were still offline, on the nearby table. Ranger felt like an intruder, embarrassed though he hadn’t been in here for the actual kindling. Miles had let him in and now stood up on the catwalk, gazing down at the sleeping robots more than the tanks. Hers was the first from the left, at the front. Ranger touched the plex. Retaining the human reflex to reach out with hands, even when other senses would bring him a clearer knowledge. The protomass coil hid the new spark completely, and didn’t yet look like much of anything other than a cloudy, wispy yet somehow also very solid, metallic tornado-shaped column. The Tasmanian Devil in freeze-frame, Ranger thought. Only this Taz was about twelve feet tall, counting the long, droopy line of tail. No eyes looked back at him, no  _head_ , no hands reached out to complete his gesture.   
  
Gestation unhidden inside the mother’s womb. Vulnerable, exposed, every mysterious step of development readily dissectable. Ranger extended the tips of his denta, then hastily retracted them. Vulnerable-looking maybe. Plex wasn’t glass, and the walls of the chamber were reinforced granite about a mile thick, sunk into the batholith that made up this part of the Cascade Range. Guarded by a dozen veteran warfighters, or more, and by – once he woke from his post-merge haze – Seekerbane himself, who was as fierce a mamma bear as anyone could want.   
  
_I wouldn’t want to tangle with him, even at close range,_  Ironhide agreed, from the embassy. Ranger chuckled. Ironhide meant to reassure his nervous progeny no doubt, but Ranger had felt Perceptor’s fields whenever anyone called him Seekerbane or praised his fighting prowess. Being one of the most feared Autobots on this or any other planet was a dubious honor Perceptor would rather do without.   
  
End the damn war, Ranger thought, keeping it behind firewalls. End the war and Percy could go back to science full time. Ranger had never been a civilian, but he could feel the longing in many of the Autobots who had.   
  
…  
  
2077 - April  
  
Warm.  
  
Floating.  
  
Awareness of changes in light and dark came gradually, like the awareness of self, of body. Arms and legs, head and torso. Voices, muffled but familiar. It was, he thought later, a long while before he listened hard enough to hear the actual words. For a long while the hum of voices had been enough. There were names he knew, slowly working his way around to the concept of names. Did he have a name? Maybe not yet. Fields were next, winding and looping in and out of range, overlapping each other and him. Two fields were there most often. He knew them, knew their voices, knew their names though he couldn’t think of what they were, and that didn’t bother him. He knew that he knew them and they loved him and that was the only important thing for now.   
  
For now he had growing to do. He stretched a little, it felt good, and he slipped back into the warm dark.   
  
…  
  
The scale shift, once he was awake enough to notice it, was probably the weirdest thing. Looking through the warp of the curved tank wall, he had not been certain that what he saw was not a funhouse distortion. When he at last stepped down out of the tank into Mirage’s arms, feeling Mirage’s welcoming song through his whole body, it was strange to be the same height, a similar build, though he had made the decision himself.   
  
Hound touched the glyphs on the newly hardened helm – a small line of symbols following the temporal curve, which designated Hound and Mirage’s names, enameled in green and blue – and wrapped his arms around both of them. There were things he understood about Hound and Mirage now. Things he’d talked with Smokescreen and others about once his comm systems had developed in the tank. Other things he understood now that his own chest contained the fusion core of a full-grown spark.  
  
He’d picked an alt mode already, the latest Ferrari in glossy black, which Hound had gone out and scanned for him. The file was ready whenever he wanted it, but he found he agreed with Ratchet’s suggestion. He’d get used to his protoform body first before messing around with transforming. That had served Borealis and Ranger well enough.  
  
As Ranger before him had noted, Prime was still a big guy. And there was a lot going on in those big fields and big voice that he didn’t completely understand even though now he could hear and feel more of them.   
  
“Picked a name yet?” Ranger asked.   
  
“You don’t have to,” Mirage told him softly. “Many people wait until they’ve been in the world a while.”  
  
“Did you?” he asked. It was a thing he didn’t know about Mirage, even though the memories in the center of his memory core told him he’d known Mirage for decades.   
  
“Yes,” Mirage said. “Fourteen voors after coming down off the kindling platform I named myself after the sound of the wind through the Towers.”   
  
“Fourteen voors…” Ranger was doing math. “That’s almost 23 years, Mir! Jeez, what’d people call you until then? ‘Hey You’?”  
  
Hound laughed. “Kind of. There’s a sort of ‘unchosen’ pronoun. Um, not used very much outside the Towers. A couple levels more polite than ‘Hey You’, but basically that idea.”  
  
“I’m not gonna wait 23 years,” the newspark said. “I’m…” He was thinking. Whoa was he thinking! That was fast. “I’m Rain.”  
  
"Rain, huh? I thought you were going to call yourself 'Left Cheek'."   
  
Rain made a slapping motion at Ranger's head. "Ha ha."   
  
“Noted and logged,” Optimus said, smiling, his fields embracing his people. “Be welcome, Rain!”  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2077 - September  
  
“I’m going to see Theresa, did you want to come along?”  
  
A Ferrari and a…Mirage had cycled back to the Bugattis, though no longer a Veyron. The Volare was a fine ride if you had the money. Damn thing was practically mag-lev compatible and that was even without Mir’s Cybertronian extras.  
  
“Sure,” Rain said, happy for the chance to go driving with his progenitor. Theresa…Theresa… Rain had not seen her since…the hospital? The floor at home? It had been two years. He was suddenly nervous.   
  
It was a long drive, north and east, over the Rockies. They timed it so that they arrived early the next morning. Theresa had kept their house in Colorado Springs even during and after Bobby’s stint as the Secretary of Defense. She had been of no mind to rebuild her career a third time and she didn’t like DC.  
  
“A Ferrari!” Theresa said, laughing as she came out to meet them. “You show-off. I didn’t know they came in black.” She walked around Rain, admiring as he flexed his rearview mirrors. “I thought you were going to be a jet.”  
  
Rain giggled. And extended the small wings from beneath his car frame. “I am.”  
  
Theresa laughed. “Like Tracks! Clever!” Rain bounced on his wheels.  
  
Not forgetting her other visitor, Theresa walked around the Volare as well. “Hello, Mirage, that’s a lovely alt, too. You always do pick such beautiful cars. Are the seats heated?”  
  
“For you they are.” Mirage transformed. The neighborhood was mostly retirees these days; not that Mirage minded very much being mobbed by excited children and envious teenagers. “Would you like a ride or shall we trim the trees first?”  
  
“Oh, I suppose the trees need it worse than I need to try to sink my bum down into those low seats, heated or not.” The last two wind storms had left quite a scattering of small branches and twigs over the roof and yard, and there were several more dangling, just waiting to fall on unwary humans or cars. “Ping me when you’re done; I have the book picked out.”  
  
“I will.” Mirage waved as she retreated into the house.  
  
“Seriously?” Rain asked. “You drive your aft all the way up here to do yard work?”  
  
“Oh yes,” Mirage said. The only problem was he did tend to get distracted by trying to rake the leaves into complex fractal swirls, and then a car would drive by and he’d realize he’d been raking for ten hours and he’d gone up and down the street and raked the neighbors’ leaves too. “Pick your targets.” Small laser pistols transformed out of Mirage’s forearms. Rain’s optics widened, but this game he could get into!   
  
He stood back-to-back with Mirage, finding all the damaged ends and hanging branches in his view, queuing them up in his targeting field. He only had one laser pistol as yet but that just meant he had to try to be twice as fast.   
  
“Ready?”  
  
Rain nodded.  
  
“Scanned for humans?”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“And birds?”  
  
“Um. …Yep.”  
  
“Steady…and… _fire!_ ”  
  
A fine scattering fan of bright blue flickered around them, followed by a deluge of wood chips and branches. Rain whooped and cackled and bounced around helping Mirage gather the debris into a pile in the back yard. Once they’d repeated the trick in the back they used their lasers again to chop the pile into fine mulch, which they piled around the roses. Theresa liked to trim those herself.  
  
Mirage knelt by the side door to the garage and hummed at the lock, which clicked open. Reaching inside, he retrieved a pair of fan-shaped rakes. The handles were made of closet rods reinforced with fiberglass tape; longer and wider than normal, but still a bit small in the robots’ hands. Rain followed him to the front yard.  
  
Theresa came back out with a blanket, a steaming cup of something fragrant that Rain found he could no longer identify by scent, and a scroll-shaped reader. She arranged herself comfortably on the porch swing and smiled at Mirage. “Ready?”  
  
“We are,” Mirage said, saluting.   
  
“ _The Door In the Air_ ,” Theresa read, “by Margaret Mahy. ‘The girl on the trapeze was called Aquilina, which means “little eagle”. When she was born her mother had tossed her lightly over to her father, and her father, the trapeze master of the famous acrobat circus, caught the new baby and then held her up high, offering her back to the air…’”  
  
Rain looked from the human, who was old and seemed frail, but whose voice carried strong and vibrant to them out in the yard, to Mirage, who was much older but felt strong to Rain’s sensors, delicately wielding a toy-sized rake, listening intently to the human’s voice. The swirly piles of leaves began to take on the flow and rhythm of the story – flying high, chasing through enchanted woods, diving through starry portals. When that story was finished, Theresa continued on to the next, and the next – they were quite short stories – until all the leaves were bundled into the compost bins or tucked around other plants as insulation for the cold weather that was coming soon.   
  
Mirage stowed the rakes and extended a blade from his left wrist. “Penstemon,” he said, pointing at each plant that needed cutting back. “Lamb’s ears, coreopsis, achillea, agastache, hens and chicks, the sad little yucca in the corner, and the artemesias. Right?”  
  
“Yes. I got the lavender and the columbines the other day.” Theresa crossed her arms. “And shut up about the yucca.” Mirage could keep his editorial comments to himself. Mozambiqua had planted it there and there it could stay. It was alive. It was fine. He smirked at her and she didn’t fight too hard to keep the corner of her mouth from quirking back.  
  
Rain shook his head. Weren’t there more important things for robots like them to do? Shouldn’t they be out hunting Decepticons? Maybe, though, this was important to Mirage.   
  
As they finished with the plants, and Theresa finished the last story in the little collection, Rain began to tremble, staring at his hands wrapped around the bundle of yucca stalks he was carrying to the compost.   
  
“These ain’t my hands.” He was shaking hard, and it felt like his fuel was on fire in his lines. “These ain’t my feet!”  
  
“Oh no,” Theresa whispered, leaping to her feet, letting the blanket fall to the flagstone porch floor.   
  
“There we go,” Mirage said in gentle satisfaction as he gathered Rain into his arms. “Five or six months after decantation seems to be the usual time when integration begins.” He ignored Ratchet’s yelling and I-told-you-sos.  
  
“And you dragged him out here when he was due? Mirage!”   
  
Mirage had the feeling she would have called him by his full name if she’d been able to make the sounds, and smacked him with a dishtowel. Her hands were on her hips. Blades was on his way to save both of them. “He will be fine,” Mirage said, hanging on tight and trying to soothe Rain’s fields with his own. They never kept new people bottled up just because they might go into integration; that would defeat the purpose and the process. Yes, one did not interface, but that was more about the safety of the interface partner or partners than an attempt to prevent integration altogether.   
  
“He doesn’t look fine! I’m calling Prime.”  
  
“Oh dear…”  
  
The sound of chopper blades became audible, coming closer.  
  
“That had better be Blades,” Theresa growled. It was. And First Aid, who plugged into Rain the moment he jumped down from his brother’s skid. Rain subsided into a quiet, woozy state that would help keep him safe and stable for the flight back to the embassy.   
  
“Mir, stop fretting,” Aid said, patting him. “Hello, Theresa, how are you?”  
  
“Never mind how I am, you get him home and safe!” The Cons could show up at any time and Rain would be too easy a target. What were those Bots _thinking_?   
  
“They were not unaccompanied,” said a smallish, angular mech, stepping from around next-door’s garage. Six more joined her. Theresa wobbled, surprised and relieved at once. These must be the seven Prowl and Prime had kindled, that Borealis and Azimuth had dubbed the Pleiades. They were all _je_ , like Arcee; black, silver, and white armored – and they had completed integration a month earlier. Their names came up on Theresa’s contact lenses: Midwife, Amber, Keryn, Kingfisher, Eclipse, Stareyed, Turnaway. Theresa wasn’t sure whether to take the translations as clever or cheeky. Probably they’d meant them to be both.   
  
Mirage and Aid bundled Rain into Blades, waving as they took off. Six of the Pleiades melted back into their hiding places, but Keryn scooped up the scattered yucca stalks and placed them in the compost pile with a pat.  
  
…  
  
They took Rain down to the mossary, to the closest thing they had to a garden inside the embassy, under hundreds of feet of stone. They held him warm and safe and told him stories; told him, particularly, the story of their meeting, which was a story of the early days of the war. Not a story of the great commanders, but of confusion and fear, and how a small handful of them had survived to be the ones telling new sparks their stories.  
  
Others came and went, joining voices and memories, holding Rain when Hound or Mirage needed rest, bringing energon in the tall aluminum glasses Rio had been making lately. Trying to recapture some shadow of the former ways of their people.  
  
…  
  
3.008 million years ago  
  
“Beauteous morning, Serendipity,” Susurrus said, giving her a four-square of greeting-poetry glyphs suitable to a first-level acquaintance encountered unexpectedly but pleasantly with a crafted thread of subharmonics indicating Susurrus was particularly pleased to see her. Not only because he liked her and found her attractive – not all Towers mechs did – but because he had something specific he’d been wanting to speak with her about and wished to do so in the metal rather than by comms.   
  
Serendipity looked out the arched windows, as if she hadn’t noticed whether it was a nice morning or not yet. They were two of only a few mechs up and about in the Towers after last night’s party. “Heya, Surr. What’s up?”  
  
Pleased again by the informality, Susurrus smiled at her. “I have a project in mind, a present for Pellucid, who commissioned my creation, requiring your unique sensibilities and creativity. I admired the work you did for the Pan-Canyon Garden very much. The juxtaposition of such vivid blue and orange crystals was strikingly lovely. I know it’s a simple direct complementary pair, but the gradations and texture contrast added—”  
  
“Hang on, Surr. Uh, you’ve got a flight mode, don’t you?” Something about her tone and harmonics was jarringly off. Susurrus was trying to process what it was exactly when she grabbed him. Tucking him under her arm, she ran.   
  
“Forgive me, Serendipity, but…?”  
  
“Explain later; hold still!” Serendipity pounded up the largely ceremonial spiral ramp that led to Iridium Tower’s peak. She ran faster. Three stories from the top, she veered off onto the southern balcony, facing the canyon that separated the Towers from the Universities. The first explosions bloomed far below and to the east.   
  
“What…oh, no!” Susurrus murmured, watching in horror, feeling the fear and cries and panic rising in the cloud mind. Something must have gone very wrong at Hydrogen University. There seemed to be a chain reaction of explosions. People…oh no…people were  _dying_! How could this be happening? The loss of Altihex had been horrible enough – and Susurrus firmly believed it was some terrorist remnant from the Penstirachtatoriafelexians, not, as some were claiming, a renegade shard of the Cybertronian military – but now this! What a dreadful voor it was turning out to be.  
  
Serendipity was inexplicably emptying her caches. Susurrus was distracted from his inner thoughts by the striking amount and variety of the objects she was dumping on the mosaic floor.   
  
“You have a flight mode,” she said, looking intently at him. “Little theta class Seeker-type, yeah?”  
  
“Yes, but what does that have to do with…oh good the rescue coalitions are arriving already.” He read the growing list of the deactivated on the public site in the cloud. “That can’t be right. Oh no, not Telearc, she was such a dear when Panorama had her up for a lecture on pan-dimensional hyperflexions last vorn!”  
  
“Surr! Listen to me!” Evidently having completed her mysterious purge, Serendipity grabbed Susurrus’ shoulders and shook him, bending low to stare into his optics. “Pay attention! They’re bombing the Towers and the Universities! It’s not an accident; we’re under attack!”  
  
“Impossible…”  
  
She shook him harder and spoke very quickly. “It’s happening! Empty your caches! I’m sorry I’m so heavy, but I’ve calculated you should be able to carry me for short distances. We’re going to launch from here and make for a cavern I found on the far side of the canyon, below and east of the Universities. Hurry!”  
  
She looked so upset and so earnest, Susurrus began to almost believe her. He opened his largest cache and removed the decorative vials of vintage high-grade, setting them carefully on the floor.   
  
“Faster, Surr!”  
  
Another boom sounded, shaking Iridium Tower itself. Susurrus began emptying his caches as quickly as Serendipity had, hesitating over the moon-flower gem Pellucid had given him on his kindling day. He had always meant to have it set into his exoskeleton, but could never decide on the perfect placement and design.  
  
“Surr!”  
  
He dropped the gem in the pile, staring up at Serendipity with wide optics, feeling hollowed out and cold. He swayed as the Tower shook again.   
  
“Transform!”  
  
He obeyed, moving to the balcony edge that lacked a railing, meant for landings and take-offs. Serendipity climbed onto his dorsal hull, gripping hard with hands and feet and an accessory pair of mid-trunk limbs he hadn’t known she had.   
  
“Steady, Surr,” she whispered. “Wait…wait…”   
  
After all her rushing and running and chivvying, this was incomprehensible piled on confusing. Susurrus shifted his mass forward, staring almost numbly at the gold and orange and red and black of the explosions and fires consuming the Universities. Chunks of architecture and people with flailing limbs were falling into the canyon. He closed his connection to the cloud mind, closed off the screams of the dying. Something inside him was breaking. He gripped the edge of the balcony with his landing gear.   
  
“NOW!” Serendipity shouted.  
  
He flung himself into the air, engines laboring. They dropped like the flailing scientists into the canyon. His body jerked as Serendipity did something with her armor, lifting and spreading the largest plates to give them more lift. He channeled more power from his spark to his engines as she cabled to him and chirped him the coordinates. He could see it now, as they continued to drop, almost missing the cavern entrance entirely. He clawed for more speed, just a little more altitude.   
  
They were nearly across, but still too low.   
  
_I’m sorry, Surr,_  Serendipity whispered. Her grip on his frame loosened.   
  
_Don’t! Don’t leave me!_  Susurrus cried, cutting power to secondary systems and overriding safeties. Serendipity hesitated, then clamped down again as they slammed into the far side of the canyon four spans below the lip of the cavern entrance. In the instant before they began to fall, she let go with her pectoral limbs, grabbing at the compressed rock with her hands while still clinging to Susurrus with her feet and accessory claspers. Hand over hand she pulled them up and into the cavern mouth.  
  
Susurrus collapsed into bipedal mode, losing consciousness as his spark contracted and the power routing safeties reset themselves.   
  
…  
  
Darkness. The faint thrum of another’s spark beneath the armor beneath his cheek plate. Warm arms around him. Cold air heavy with particulates and oxidative products. Pain warnings from joints and transformation seams and parts of him he only used in flight mode. What had happened?   
  
He lit his optics, shifting through spectra until he found one that enabled him to see. He couldn’t feel any radiation except what he and Serendipity were putting out, and that was minimal. He couldn’t hear the stars. How far under the surface were they? His gravitational sensors weren’t that good; he couldn’t tell from the feel of the mass above them or the slight decrease in gravity as one drew nearer the planet’s core by however small a span.   
  
_There you are,_  Serendipity tight-beamed.  _I was beginning to worry._  
  
Susurrus let his head fall back onto her chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so tired. He could tell he was deliberately avoiding certain thought cascades. He’d partitioned his recent memory. He decided not to delve into that yet. “Where are we?”  
  
“Old tunnels,” she told him. “Three or four layers down, depending. I guess speaking aloud is better than comms at that. No one’s likely to come down here hunting us. Hm. Unless a lot of other people head down here to escape, too.”  
  
“Do you have any energon?” he asked faintly. Things were shutting down again. He should have stayed in recharge longer. He needed to defrag and dump static but couldn’t muster the energy to think of which set of interface request glyphs would be most suitable.   
  
“No. I’m sorry. I should have let you keep that fancy stuff you had in your cache. We could have used that. Slag.”  
  
“Ah. Yes.” He fell back into recharge.  
  
…  
  
Darkness. Motion, vibration, the soft hum of a highly efficient engine being run as silently as possible. He was being carried in someone’s – oh, Serendipity – vehicle mode. His spark felt better, spinning regular and steady, adding energy to the energon in his lines now instead of pulling it in to keep itself going. Why had it been doing that? “Se…ren…di…” His vocoder was mis-timing. She stopped and transformed, lifting him in her arms as he tried again. “Serendipity?”  
  
“How’re you feeling?”  
  
“I…need to…” There were so many ways to ask. The static fritzing through his head wouldn’t let him think properly. He couldn’t choose the right request. Something of his wishes must have gotten through, however. Serendipity whirred contemplatively, striding a further distance before sitting down and settling Susurrus onto her lap.   
  
She stroked his helm and the small of his back, the gimbals of his shoulders and hips, seeking tender places, rubbing quickly to build charge hot and fast. He had never felt the need for overload as so starkly a physical thing before. His body convulsed, joints grinding, and overload slammed through him, knocking him offline. He rebooted quickly.   
  
“Thank you,” he said, at something of a loss. “Do you…?”  
  
“No, I defragged and grounded earlier. Can you roll? If we can get another couple of millidegrees farther east I think there’s an old tunnel that might still run clear through to Iacon.”  
  
Susurrus transformed to his ground mode and followed as Serendipity took off. He would have liked to at least enjoy each other’s heat for a few breems, but she seemed to be in a hurry.  _Why are we going to Iacon?_  
  
_Prime’s there,_  she replied, as if that explained everything.  _We’re at war, Surr. This is for real. Transformer against Transformer._  In all of Cybertron’s long history, they had never taken to slaughtering each other in large numbers. There had never been a civil war before now. Many people might have thought that Serendipity only paid attention to the arts and sciences within whose spheres she was most active. But she had been paying attention in a quiet way to the political disarray the last Penstirachtatoriafelexian war had left them in, and the responses of Lord Protector and Prime and Council. She had friends in high places, or at least acquaintances. She’d been watching and drawing her own conclusions. It wasn’t fair to compare theirs to other civilizations, but some things seemed more common than others. Cybertron had just taken a lot longer to get around to the more self-destructive ones.   
  
_Yes, but…if everything is…if we’re at war, wouldn’t it be safer to take shelter with the military until things settle down?_  
  
_Surr, it was the military who bombed the Towers and Universities. And I’m betting it was the military who killed Altihex, too. I know it’s a terrible thought, but something’s wrong with the Lord Protector. Maybe something’s been wrong for a long time, I don’t know._  
  
_No, no, that was pirates. Or the remnants of the Penstir fleet. Serendipity, there’s never been a civil war on Cybertron. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re all too connected._  
  
_…All right. But either way, we’re more likely to find safety in Iacon, and it’s closer than Kaon or Praxus._  She wished she thought they could make it to Praxus. If anywhere would remain a bastion of reason and considered action it would be there.   
  
_You’re right._  Susurrus felt uneasy but it was better to stick together until they could find out what was really going on.  _If you’re thinking about the tunnel I think you are, though, we should turn left here. The access further on collapsed about a voor ago._  
  
Serendipity chuckled.  _Left it is. I’m sorry, Surr, I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t know your way around down here. Towers mechs never stay in the Towers, right?_  
  
_Correct!_    
  
…  


“We’re in Iacon, all right,” the mech said, “but we can’t get to the surface from here. A couple of people are out scouting to see if there’s another way or if we have to go back down and across to Nova Cronum.”  
  
“Why can’t we get to the surface from here?” Serendipity asked.  
  
“Tunnel collapse,” the mech said. “I know it wasn’t there a quartex ago, but whoever bombed the Towers did an enthusiastic practice run on Embassy Row. Crisped most of the squishies. And the ones that didn’t crisp got smothered when the domes were shattered.”  
  
“Oh no,” Susurrus whispered, clasping his hands over his chest. “Oh no. No. There’ll be sanctions…”   
  
The mech they were talking to shrugged. “I don’t really care what squishies think, but it’ll put a crimp in trade for a while, sure. Me, I’ve got an appointment for a special upgrade package, been looking forward to it for half a vorn, just never had the time. Last quartex I finally got my friend Parabola to take my place on the—”  
  
Serendipity suddenly clicked at him for silence, holding up a hand as she upped the gain on her audials. The rest of the group fell silent as well. Weapons-fire, coming closer. A sound most of them had until now only heard on newsfeeds. Serendipity grabbed Susurrus’ hand.   
  
“We should stay with the group,” he whispered. But Serendipity shook her head. Running, she dragged him back the way they’d come, taking a different side tunnel some way along, making turns seemingly at random; until Susurrus dug in his pedes and pointed a different way. South. Not the direction they wanted ultimately, but he knew the undercities all along the southern border of Iacon. She nodded and followed him.   
  
After what felt like orns of running, but their chronometers informed them had only been a single orn, they thought they’d gotten away clear. They had stopped to rest and plan their next course when they heard heavy footsteps echoing, getting closer. Susurrus half collapsed against a partially damaged wall. His energy consumption was higher than average for his mass, mostly due to the third mode being a flight alt. Serendipity gestured for him to remain where he was and scouted out the surrounding corridors.   
  
After the third dead end, she was about to turn around and hope for a side-passage leading out in the other direction. The direction toward the approaching footsteps, but if they could move fast enough, they might slip through. She didn’t fancy getting trapped in one of these dead ends.   
  
Almost to where she had left Susurrus, she leapt hastily up into the dangling end of a minicon-sized maintenance shaft. It took some creative wriggling, but she was still and silent by the time a group of six heavily armed ground forces stomped by, crossing the corridor with brief but piercing glances and a flash of light beams down either direction at the junction. Serendipity shuttered her optics, not inclined to pray but wishing with all her might that they somehow wouldn’t spot Susurrus. The surfaces of the tunnels this far down were irregular and dingy, but Surr had been sitting essentially out in the open and he was, if facts be faced, several shades of bright blue and violet.  
  
Several breems passed before Serendipity dared leave her hiding place. She landed as quietly as she could and walked slowly down the tunnel, optics tuned low and downcast to hide their glow, audials high. She almost missed him.  
  
He was sprawled in an awkward posture, face turned almost to the wall, limbs splayed; and he’d changed the colors of his chameleon mesh to match exactly the wall and floor, even getting the perspective correct from the angle the armed mechs would have been viewing.   
  
She laughed. “Hey, that’s a good trick! You use your chromatophores in the dances you do with your Tower troupe, don’t you? You need to mask the other frequencies, though, and your fields…just damping them down won’t cut it with a mech who’s actively scanning for…yeah… Huh. Well, anyway, I’m impressed, Surr.”  
  
Susurrus shook his head. “I…wasn’t even thinking. I just didn’t want them to find me.”   
  
“Just because it was an accident doesn’t make it an unworthy discovery,” Serendipity said, harmonics inviting him to contemplate her name. Susurrus grinned and made a small sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.   
  
…  
  
Twelve orns later.  
  
_Pop-pop-pop  fzzt!  **BLAM!**_  
  
“Serendipity!”  
  
“Ow. Slag. Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Quit fussing, Surr, it’s only part of an arm.” Susurrus was too small to really support her much on their way to the temporary repair bay, but he tried.   
  
Shortly after their close call in the tunnels, they’d found another group of refugees. This one was also making in a roundabout way for Iacon, but was led by a member of the Xenon University exo corps, who’d had military training but clearly sided with the Prime in the current conflict. They had further news of events on the planet’s surface. None of it was good. But they were well-organized and confident they could reach Iacon. Serendipity had had no objection to staying with this group, much to Susurrus’ relief.  
  
The medic shook his head at her when they arrived and pointed to one of the few empty portable repair tables. “I’ll do a deeper scan as soon as I’m done with people who actually need my help.” Serendipity waved and nodded. Susurrus joined her on the table, curling up against her side and shutting down into a low power mode to wait.   
  
A few groons later the medic got around to them. “Mostly superficial, but you’ve fried both the primary and secondary afferent plexi for this section. How much power were you routing through that…mesh thing?”  
  
“Not much. Just a few thousand joules. I think I need to modify the power distribution settings.”  
  
“Terrific. You’re aiming to blow your entire arm off next time, then? And where are you getting all that metamaterial? Nobody has that in stores; I’d have heard about it.” He scanned the lines of white alloy running across her armor more closely. “In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen that particular molecular configuration before. What is it you’re trying to do again?”  
  
“Never mind. I’m just experimenting with it. And if you must know, I’ve had this stuff in a cache for voors.”   
  
“Whatever. You’re done. Don’t want to see you in my bay for at least a couple of quartexes, Ren, you hear me?” The medic patted Susurrus’ shoulder kindly and left them.   
  
“Ready?” Serendipity asked, putting an arm around her small, quiet friend. Susurrus didn’t look up or uncoil from his tightly compressed position.   
  
“You made me drop the moon-flower gem Pellucid gave me,” he said so quietly Serendipity had to up the gain on her audials to catch his words. “You made me drop everything to lighten us enough to make it across the canyon. And all this time you kept that big ingot of metamaterial.”  
  
Serendipity shuttered her optics. “Oh. Yeah. I’m…really sorry, Surr. It’s just that the metamaterial took me so long to make, and it’s not really that heavy, I couldn’t bring myself to… It’s the only thing I had left in my caches, I swear.”  
  
“I had nothing,” Susurrus said. “But I understand. At least your alloy is useful. Or potentially useful. All the gem would have done is remind me that Pellucid and everyone else, my whole consortium, all my friends, are dead.”  
  
“Oh, Surr.” She tried to hug him, but he slipped from her arms and from the table and ran from the med-bay.   
  
…  
  
He fled deep into the old complex the group was using as a base camp. When he was no longer in range he folded into a corner and shut off his vocoder, lashing the walls with his fields because he dared not keen his grief and rage. He kept it up until his emitters overheated, shorting with painful shocks beneath his armor. Thin, mostly ceremonial armor. Something upon which to display the bright, intricate patterns he could create with his chameleon mesh. He wasn’t useful for fighting. He wasn’t useful for defending or repairs. There were already mechs organizing their small band as they moved from place to place. He wasn’t useful for anything, just like the gem.   
  
Serendipity was pinging him. She was getting closer, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. He ignored her pings even as they grew more frequent and frantic. He let his chronometer tick on behind firewalls, unconsulted. Eventually he fell into recharge.   
  
…  
  
She was sitting beside him with a cylinder of energon when he came online. Not touching him, just close; watching over him and waiting. He was so tired of onlining in the dark.   
  
_I’m sorry, Surr,_  Serendipity tight-beamed.  _I should have…I don’t know, specified a weight limit or something. Grabbed that gem out of the pile and given it back to you later as a surprise. One little rock wouldn’t have made any difference._  
  
_You didn’t know what it meant to me,_  Susurrus replied, his harmonics ragged with self-recrimination.  _It was just a little rock. A trivial bauble, considering everything that’s happened. Altihex. Polyhex. Vos. Nova Cronum._  He took the energon she proffered and drank half, caching the rest. She watched him, quirking a half smile at his thrift. _Serendipity…Ren,_  he murmured, stroking her undamaged arm.  _I would very much like to—oh, yes, that please, mmm…_  
  
…  
  
Those who could still transform carrying those who couldn’t, the ragged band at last emerged from the labyrinthine and ancient layers of the undercities into the daylight of Iacon. Serendipity was routed to the Sciences complex across the Plaza from the Council’s now vacant building.   
  
When Susurrus gave his name and origin to the mech taking census, the mech gave him a pitying look and waved him after Serendipity.   
  
…  
  
“Wheeljack!” Serendipity shouted, waving her arms and pelting across the corner of the plaza to slam into and embrace a sturdy mech somewhat shorter but a lot broader than herself. Susurrus widened his optics. He’d heard of Wheeljack. He’d ridden in the skimmer Wheeljack had built for Flingfar, for the Rust Sea races. The thing was so ugly no one thought it would even run, but Flingfar won every race she entered with it. The sound of the engine had been like an auditory overload. Flingfar was dead, now; he’d seen her name on the lists.  
  
“Oh Primus, Ren! It’s good to see you,” Wheeljack replied, hugging her, his harmonics ragged around the edges. “I tried to reach you on long-range when I heard the Universities had been hit, and then I remembered where you were and… well anyway, I’m so glad you’re all right!”  
  
Another note had threaded into Wheeljack’s subharmonics, and Serendipity was stroking his helm tenderly. Susurrus made himself scarce.  
  
…  
  
Steaming and sated after a shared cube of semi-illicit high-grade and a definitively high-grade interface, Serendipity and Wheeljack propped each other up at the base of a wall in Serendipity’s lab, where the experiments were somewhat less likely to react badly to the static discharge. They were making inroads on a second cube, catching up on things since the last time they’d seen each other.   
  
“Where’d you pick up the little blue guy?” Wheeljack asked. People treated the slender mech like he was Serendipity’s drone or symbiont, but Jack had seen immediately that he was from the Towers; an unusually configured  _zhe_ , smaller than his own former assistant, Bumblebee, who was now in training as a scout and general recon officer. And slagging good at it, too.  
  
“Ha! That little blue guy and I jumped out of Iridium Tower right as the Decepticons were blowing it to slag. He has a theta-subclass flight mode. I was almost too heavy for him, poor bit.” Wheeljack stared at her over the cube.  
  
“Ren,” he said quietly, “no one else got out of the Towers alive. No one as far as I’ve heard, anyway. They had a full alpha Seeker flight strafing anyone escaping, everyone on the ground; including emergency responders. He’s the only one left.” He’d also heard rumors that there were patrols out hunting any Towers mechs who’d been away, out on larks like they always did; but this was bad enough, no need to add another layer.  
  
“Oh Primus.” She pressed her fingertips to her helm. The impulse to time her and Susurrus’ leap into the canyon to correspond with the fall of the tower itself, and all the debris, had been correct, then. If they’d been spotted they would have been killed long before reaching the cavern. Alphas were deadly. The enemies of the Cybertronian Empire had known that for eons. And now the Lord Protector had turned them upon his own people.   
  
“And you saved him, Ren. Good on ya.”  
  
“I’m not so sure.” Wheeljack put an arm around her and she leaned into him, relishing the warmth of his sturdy body. She was glad he was  _de_  again. Big enough to hold onto tight without worrying about crushing him. His armor squeaked a little, but his fields made it clear he rather liked that. “He wasn’t in any way, shape, or form built to withstand war.”  
  
“Build can be changed.”  
  
“As you well know. I’m surprised you’re still  _de_ , frankly.”  
  
“Very funny. I’ll have you know I’m only mostly  _de_. Had to swipe the feet off a drone after a rainstorm. Slagging puddles.”  
  
“Ouch!”  
  
“You ain’t kidding.”  
  
“I guess we have to call you Deadfoot now?”  
  
“Har har.”   
  
…  
  
59 orns later.  
  
“Surr! Surr, it works!” Serendipity shook him out of recharge, then stood up, waving her arms excitedly at him. Susurrus blinked at her as his systems cranked through a hasty restart.   
  
“Ren, what…? Your arm!” Her entire portside forearm was missing. Except it wasn’t sparking, and the end of the remaining part of her arm looked strange, partially obscured as she moved it about, partially a shifting cross-section view as though the arm had been severed.   
  
Serendipity did something and her arm reappeared, whole and undamaged, if a little warmer than usual on infrared. Susurrus stared at her, fully online now. She activated the shield again and her arm simply ceased to be. He couldn’t see it on any wavelength. Not even sonic or bodily EM field.   
  
“That’s amazing! Congratulations.”  
  
“It pulls power like a cityformer jumping to orbit, but I think I can fiddle with that. I think if I combine the…uh, never mind.” She shortened her enthuse to spare him the technical details. Susurrus was never so rude as to actually let his optics unfocus, but she tried not to bore people. “Surr, I…if you want to, I kind of, well mostly I made this for you. There’s enough of the metamaterial to rig you a whole-body cloak.”  
  
He drew his fields in tight. “Because I’m such a coward, and all I want to do is hide.”  
  
Serendipity took his hand. “Because you’re smart, and you think on your feet, and even when your world was ending you did what you had to and survived. You did the smart thing unhesitatingly. You saved both of us, Surr. Command is going to want to equip their Spec Ops people with this. I think, if you want, you could be the first of a new team. Someone with this kind of cloak could get in deep, do their thing and get out before the Cons even knew they were there.”  
  
“And I need something useful to do.”  
  
“Oh, Surr…”  
  
“Yes. I’ll be your proof of concept. And you saved me, that day, Ren.”  
  
“We saved each other,” she said, and kissed him.  
  
…  
  
12 orns later.  
  
“Ready?”  
  
“As I’ll ever be.”  
  
“All you have to do is hold still, for now.” Serendipity smiled, enjoying looking at him standing with arms and legs spread for her. Delicious. “This shouldn’t hurt, mind, if it does let me know right away.” Surr nodded, casting his smile askew to let her know he was aware of the less than strictly businesslike manner of her visual appraisal. A tool in her left hand came to life, glowing gently at the pronged tip, while the readied the coil of metamaterial in her other.   
  
She began with his feet. The tool in her left hand created grooves in his armor of precise shape and depth, altering as she went per the specifications of the design and the requirements of the strange physics the cloaking suite operated under. As promised, this caused no pain – his armor nanocells were not keyed for much in the way of haptics anyway, and certainly not for nociception – coaxing the grooves into being rather than cutting. The metamaterial uncured was soft as pure silver and easily wielded by Serendipity’s deft fingers, pressed and coiled into the grooves line by line and curve by curve; an intricate, sophisticated knotwork that would be gemmed with peculiar control nodes and foci of esoteric crystals.   
  
By the time she had reached his knees, Surr’s spark was spinning fast, his coolant systems working. Little spikelets of charge danced here and there under his chest armor. Serendipity’s working became caressing, their mutual attraction and affection woven into the design as it was being made, a code of line and texture and implied spaces that perhaps only the two of them would ever read. Her mouth now trailed the workings of her hands. Their fields – especially his – needed to bow and bend in special ways during the installation, and this they managed, but only because they were both adept at fieldwork.   
  
She moved up his thighs slowly. He locked his knees, stifled a moan. Coils and spirals were set into his hips, across his pelvic assembly, lines branching up his narrow waist. White arabesques covered his back, trailed by kisses, looping and swirling over his shoulders, down his arms, careful and tight around his wrists, palms and backs of hands, delicately up and down each finger. Coolant and fans running high, she moved around to his front, drawing and connecting the sweeping lines up his chest, into a special glyph of protection over his spark. Keeping himself from overloading took a supreme effort as her hands and mouth drew the hot lines back and forth over his central seam. He tilted his head back a little more and she moved up to his neck, her mouth fastening on his, their internal fields allowed freer expression than their tightly controlled outer ones, lashing back and forth as she slowly, painstakingly traced the last, critical closing patterns over his helm.  
  
They kept their cables tightly wound in their compartments, but later, when this was done and cured – by bathing Susurrus in eldritch beams of energy only Serendipity knew how to generate – later, cables would fly, sinking home in any convenient port as they sank tangled to the floor.   
  
…  
  
“All righty,” said Wheeljack, breezing into Serendipity’s lab. “What was it you wanted to show me?”  
  
Serendipity only grinned, crossing her arms, and nodded at the empty space in front of Wheeljack.  
  
Susurrus deactivated the cloak. The change in power output caused his spark to wobble, but he’d been braced for it this time. He stood poised and smiling as Wheeljack jumped, banging into a worktable which fortunately didn’t contain anything fragile or particularly unstable at that moment.   
  
“Whoa! Ren? What have you…lemme see that mesh, kiddo.” Wheeljack took Susurrus’ hand and drew him closer. A reticle popped down in front of one optic and Wheeljack hmm’ed to himself as he walked a circle around Susurrus. “Found a use for that meta alloy finally, huh?”   
  
“Yes, Jack,” Serendipity huffed, casting her optics to the ceiling.   
  
“Activate the shield again? …Slag in a can, Ren I’m not picking him up at all! Not even… if I didn’t know he was there…”  
  
“That’s the idea, Jack.”  
  
“Right, right. Surr, would you turn that off again, I want to see if there’s— whoa! Are you all right?” Wheeljack caught him as he reeled. Even bracing himself hadn’t helped this time. And he was low on energy already. The cloak had only been active for a few moments. Serendipity rushed forward, though Jack had no trouble lifting the smaller mech and placing him on a nearby table.   
  
“I’m fine,” Susurrus murmured. “Turning it off makes my spark…bounce a little.”  
  
“Still?” Serendipity stroked his helm and scanned his chest worriedly. “I thought I had that power balance differential worked out.”  
  
“It is better than it was,” Susurrus assured her. “I’m just a little low right now, so the contrast makes me wobble.” He chuckled as both Wheeljack and Serendipity produced cylinders of energon and pressed them upon him at the same time, nearly bumping in their haste and concern. He drank both gratefully and immediately felt better. “I think…I think maybe I should give up my theta alt. Wouldn’t that help?”  
  
“Ah! That’s it, yeah,” Wheeljack said. “If you’re running that close to power output limitations, then, sure.”  
  
Serendipity shuttered her optics. “That would help. I hate to ask you to… if you’re sure?” She looked hard at him, straining to interpret the complex fluxing of his fields. Hadn’t he given up enough?  
  
“I’m certain,” he said. Serendipity would have to re-inlay some of the mesh lines. Such a shame…  
  
“The Spec Ops folks are gonna be all over this, you know,” Wheeljack said, grinning lopsidedly at Serendipity.  
  
“Oh I know they are. Surr’s going to show them how to put this to best use. He used to lead the turbofox culling hunts; and you know how Towers mechs are with well-executed pranks.”  
  
“Not ‘Surr’,” Susurrus said thoughtfully. He considered as the two engineers watched him curiously. “I would be most pleased and honored if you would call me ‘Mirage’.”  
  
…  
  
37 voors later.  
  
“Hey,” the young, green-armored mech said, surprised. “There’s someone up there.”  
  
Wheeljack and Serendipity laughed, Wheeljack with a note of triumph and Serendipity somewhat ruefully. “Come on down, Mirage,” Wheeljack called, waving.   
  
Mirage leapt to the ground, almost stumbling at first; it was a shock to have been spotted so casually. He fought to master the sudden spike of terror. A haze of multicolored static flitted across his HUD for a second as he disengaged the cloaking field. A parade of expressions crossed the green mech’s face as Mirage approached and his fields flared wildly for a couple of nanoseconds before being sharply leashed. Mirage looked away, embarrassed. He knew what most people thought of Towers folk. Useless flibbertigibbets with no work ethic. His hands were trembling, so he balled them into fists.  
  
Above their heads, Wheeljack and Serendipity were jabbering away at high speed in their own personal engineering cant, arms waving wildly in their enthusiasm. Mirage hardly heard them.   
  
“My, uh, my designation is Hound,” the green mech said, moving about half a hand’s breadth closer than Mirage liked. Hound stopped there, though, and kept his voice low and soft. “Wheeljack didn’t rig my sensor suite to make you turbofox teams obsolete, you know. He did it so I…so we could be your backup. I’m sure there will be more of us now that we know the suite works.”  
  
“Salutations, Hound,” Mirage said. “My designation is Mirage.” The formality slipped out, his thinking reverting to old pathways, slinking by partitions with horrifying ease. He wasn’t a Towers mech anymore. He wasn’t anything but a turbofox, and turbofoxes were hunted. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”  
  
“It is, huh?” Hound smiled wryly, his tone indicating he understood Mirage’s discomfort. Presumptuous.   
  
Mirage schooled his expression and fields sternly, settling himself into a calm he didn’t really feel. “Wheeljack’s accomplishment is significant. I appreciate his concern for our safety.”  
  
“If I hadn’t seen your first reaction a few astroseconds ago I’d totally believe you. How do you do that? With your fields, I mean. That was amazing!” Hound suddenly tore his attention from Mirage, doing a quick scan of the entire area. "Hey, Jack, can we get out of here now? This place is creeping me out."   
  
"Incoming?"   
  
"Noooo... not yet. I just…there’s something… below us I think.”   
  
"All right let's scram."   
  
…  
  
Hound kept catching himself staring and would look away hurriedly with an exasperated huff through his core vents, chattering on about random subjects, trying to distract himself and fill the silence that Mirage allowed to settle between them. And then as they continued on across the plaza toward the refueling station, his optics turned again to Mirage.   
  
The young mech was trying so hard. Mirage sternly reminded himself it would be rude to laugh at him.   
  
Serendipity and Wheeljack peeled off at the Science complex, leaving Mirage and Hound alone with each other and their energon rations. Mirage selected an empty table and sat down. Hound followed.  
  
"I'm...I'm really sorry about gaping at you like that. I've never met a... someone like you in the metal before. I've seen plays with real actors and things like that, but—”   
  
Mirage lifted a supraorbital crest at him. ''You're from Uraya and you've seen plays?"   
  
Shame flashed across Hound's face and his fields went down. "I kind of had to sneak out and... Hey, how do you know I'm from Uraya?"   
  
"Your accent."   
  
"Oh. Heh. Yeah, I guess so."   
  
Oh Primus he was adorable. Mirage sipped his energon to keep from laughing again. Or kissing Hound. Given his reaction to the remark about having seen plays, Hound had been sparked for one of the stricter districts, who held what Mirage felt were very strange notions regarding entertainment and propriety. But then he was accustomed to the fact that most people thought the Towers had strange notions about everything, really. Mirage suspected the Allspark had decided to display its quirky sense of humor in sparking Hound; a fun-loving, open, curious, imaginative mech from a consortium like that. He must have learned very quickly to hide his proclivities, but having to do so didn't seem to have bothered him much. Well, that remained to be seen. Until they knew each other better, it would be kinder to exercise caution and not rush into things Hound might not be ready for.   
  
"So, anyway, I've seen plays and plug-in dramas, although I don't like the fieldies much; they’re.... weird. I can't even put my finger on why, they just make me feel all glitchy."   
  
"If you were a scout on an exo team even before Wheeljack's mod, your sensory equipment must have been more sensitive than most to begin with, yes? Right. The fieldies bypass a mech's usual inputs to hook directly into the CPU, and in most mechs that overrides their exterior awareness; it goes into a side-subroutine so you can be snapped out of the experience in the event of an emergency. In your case your inputs don't, ah, like being bypassed."   
  
"Oh! That makes sense. Heh. Of course if my district had ever found out I'd done fieldies... Well, they won't now. They... they're...” Hound shut up, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Which was a dumb thing to say, since you... Slag. I'm an idiot." He turned on the bench to face Mirage and transmitted a formal glyph of apology. It was the wrong level for the offense as far as Mirage was concerned, and entirely wrong for their so-far brief acquaintance, but that Hound had even attempted to extend a Towers-like courtesy meant a great deal.   
  
“Hound, the extent of my loss does not lessen yours. We’re all wrong-footed and gyro-less these orns.” On further thought, Mirage understood that Hound wasn’t mis-sparked for his city-state; he was precisely who he needed to be; the branch of a circuit connecting Uraya to the rest of the world and the universe. They knew they tended to be insular, but their elders were wise, asking the Allspark for individuals who could bridge the gaps.  
  
“I guess so.”  
  
"Please forgive me, but my unit is deploying tomorrow and I need to get in a solid five or six groons of recharge beforehand." Mirage finished his cylinder and stood.  
  
"Oh, yeah, of course. I, uh, I guess I'll see you later?"   
  
"Apparently  _you_  will," Mirage said, winking.   
  
…  
  
"Wheeljack! Wheeeeeeeeeeeljack!" Hound reeled into the lab, looking as though he'd abruptly decided spinning around with his arms outstretched was a bad idea in here, and then as a compromise leaned dramatically back onto a relatively uncluttered section of worktable. "I think I'm in blooooom."   
  
"That was fast."   
  
"He's amazing! I knew… well, everyone knows that Towers mechs are built to be beautiful as well as talented, but I had no idea they were so... so... his  _fields_! And his voice! The way he talks is just so...so... I just... And every little part of the way he moves is so smooth and…and… I don’t know! It’s like he’s transmitting libraries of stuff with a single gesture and I just haven’t learned the language.” He wanted to, though. Very much.  
  
“Yep. Every part of their design – and I do mean every – is created with high standards of aesthetics in mind as well as functionality. They’re  _artists_.” Wheeljack paused, his usual enthusiasm fading to sadness. “They were, anyway. Slag.”  
  
…  
  
Hound spent the next few orns in a state of high anxiety. He kept thinking about what Mirage's unit's missions must entail. How dangerous they were. He was no longer certain he would see Mirage again, in any capacity. Hound had learned that anyone could be killed, at any time.   
  
"Jack? Have you spoken with your Spec Ops contacts yet?"   
  
"Uhhh ... oh yeah. Yeah. Me and Serendip have a meeting set up for next quartex. Deepforge wants to keep this underground as much as possible. Only a couple of higher ups and her. Plus us." He patted Hound's shoulder. “You’re worried about Mirage, aren’t you.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Wheeljack pressed his forehelm to Hound’s. He could say a lot of slag about how smart a mech Mirage seemed to be; that he’d be fine; that he had been well trained, and the turbofox teams were instructed to take no unnecessary risks. The technology was too important. But Wheeljack knew as well as Hound did that being smart, being fast, or well-trained didn’t always save you if the mission went to the Pit. There were always things that happened that you couldn’t predict. Or stop.  
  
“He shouldn’t go out, Jack,” Hound murmured, putting his arms around Wheeljack’s neck and snuggling into his chest. “If he’s the last Towers mech he shouldn’t risk himself like that. What are we – as a civilization – going to do when this stupid war’s over and there aren’t any artists left? And all the scientists at the Universities? I can’t believe the Lord Protector could have ordered his troops to do something so stupid.”  
  
“The Towers and the Universities were foci of innovation,” Wheeljack said, rubbing a cheek spar on Hound’s helm. “Sometimes new ideas are dangerous. They shake people up. Make ‘em question the way things are, think about how they could be different. I have no idea what’s been going on in the Lord’s head, but the military has always been pretty traditionalist. They like continuing innovation in upgrading their weapons, sure, but their basic assumptions, their command structure has been the same for billions of voors.”   
  
“Still stupid,” Hound growled. He burrowed into Wheeljack’s chest, shuttering his optics tight. Wheeljack held him, petted his helm, and after a while their cuddling grew more heated. Mechs in bloom were fun.  
  
…  
  
Two quartexes later.  
  
There weren’t exactly general announcements when the turbofox teams left for or returned from their missions, nor did anyone but the mechs directly involved know how they got to their objectives or what they did there in any detail. Nevertheless, Hound had taken to scoping out the refueling station nearest Serendipity’s lab. Since he had it on good authority that Mirage usually recharged with her, it seemed logical he would usually refuel there as well.   
  
The station today was crowded in a restless, subdued way. The fighting in Praxus was going badly. Much of the city-state had already been destroyed.   
  
Hound didn’t see where they’d come from – which was probably just as well – but he suddenly caught sight of Mirage and one of the other turbofoxes, Sleight, practically carrying each other to the energon dispenser. They didn’t seem any worse for wear; no carbon scoring, no sparking, no leaking of fluids; but their optics were dim, and they moved with a slow deliberation that spoke of care in avoiding a fall from which they might not be able to get up without help. The mechs around them moved subtly out of their way, glancing at them then looking aside. Hound stood up from his crouch on a curtain wall of the complex next door and refocused his optics from the telephoto setting he’d been using. He was about to jump down and run over to help them when he saw they had reached the dispenser all right and gotten a double ration of cylinders, which they drank a significant fraction of right away. Hound could practically hear the energy flooding their depleted systems. They looked much better already. He resumed his crouch and his intent observation.  
  
Taking the remainder of their rations to a table in a sheltered corner, Mirage and Sleight sat, their arms still about each other’s waists. Sleight was another  _zhe_ , similar in build to Bumblebee, with warm, beige-grey armor highlighted by the deceptively decorative metamaterial alloy of the cloaking net. The white metal was more striking, Hound thought, against Mirage’s dark blues and violets, but Sleight’s colors were restful somehow, well befitting the tranquil mech. Hound wondered if Sleight had been sparked in an  _ae_  body originally.   
  
If they were talking it was over comms; their mouths for a while were wholly occupied in sipping the rest of their energon. They took their time, now that the worst of their obvious exhaustion had been alleviated. Mirage finished his cylinder and rested his helm on Sleight’s shoulder. They looked good together. Mirage’s helm a sleek, graceful design that seemed to fit neatly beneath Sleight’s mandibular hinge. Hound’s coolant systems came on.   
  
Sleight nuzzled Mirage’s temporal crest and antenna. Nuzzling turned to kissing as Mirage lifted his face, baring the cables in his throat.  
  
Hound’s core temperature spiked. Urgency and desire seemed to shout from every line of Sleight’s frame as they stood and moved together toward a narrow alley that could be considered a sort of back way to the Sciences complex and therefore Serendipity’s lab. Although Hound knew that passageway had several branches. They could be headed almost anywhere. Hound didn’t need to follow them to know what they’d be doing.  
  
He stood, heat and restless longing surging in his spark. He wanted… he wanted to… No, not follow them. He didn’t want to intrude on what was probably a fine working relationship. If the turbofoxes went out in pairs, instead of, as scuttlebutt insisted, solo; then Hound would bet Sleight and Mirage were partners. Even if they split up once they inserted on the objective, they clearly cared for one another once the mission was over. Taking care of each other. He could easily imagine what tenderness, what fierce passion might be inspired by the dangerousness of their shared tasks.  
  
Hound ran. The energy use and motion did nothing to stem the rising of heat and static in his body. He grinned, knowing just the place.   
  
It was a small den, just a forgotten, irregular space between buildings that had been created at vastly different times in equally vastly different styles. Hound thought the juxtaposition was kind of funny, but mostly he liked the privacy afforded by the unused hollow in the metal walls.   
  
He sat, settling his back against a sloping facet, extending his arms and legs, just relaxing for a few moments, letting his mind fill first with stored images of Mirage. The look on his face the moment Hound had first seen him without the invisibility cloak. The way he transformed into that wicked fast little racing model. The way he walked. How sunlight refracted from the sophisticated coloration of his armor.   
  
How Sleight’s hands must look, moving over that armor. Stroking, tapping, delving into the spaces between to touch the warm living metal of the protoform beneath. Hound touched his own lips, imagining himself kissing Mirage, tasting the unusual alloys Towers mechs were made of. He opened his mouth, pretending Mirage’s fingertips pressed inside, stroking his oral polyhedron. Mirage’s narrow body would be light on his, but hot, the temperature range Mirage’s core systems could take higher than most. Hound moved his hands over his armor, slipping over edges, lifting the plates high, pretending it was Mirage’s fingers stroking him underneath, Mirage’s heat warming him and not just the sun. Maybe it was wicked of him to fantasize about sharing with only one mech (and doubly wicked of him to pleasure himself alone; but that was a fault he’d hidden for vorns) – in Uraya they only interfaced in circles of five or more – but Hound at that moment didn’t care. To have Mirage alone… Hound shut down his vocoder just in time, overloading in a sizzling wash of blue static and falling offline.  
  
…  
  
“Impressive,” the great general said. She was old, was Deepforge. Scarred not from pride of bearing scars, but simply so old the self-repair took a long time, and she paid no heed to personal risk when there was a mission to be completed. She admitted no obstacle, physical or otherwise. Death would come for her eventually but it would be a great shock. “Impressive and sneaky.” Not her style, but she understood immediately the enormous tactical advantage this gave them. They needed it, badly.   
  
“Unfortunately the sensor suite requires some pretty exotic materials,” Wheeljack said. “Not in big quantities, mind you, but stuff we just can’t synthesize with what we’ve been able to salvage so far. We’ve got enough parts to make five more like Hound, to start with, though, and that’s better than nothing.”  
  
“We shouldn’t break up the working pairs, then,” Hound said. “Why not just add one tracker to each turbofox team?” Hound knew which team he wanted.  
  
Deepforge tapped her mandibular commissure. “That would be more efficient. I’d prefer to have a tracker for each turbofox. We can double our targeting and deploy more widely.” She watched everyone as fields changed and were pulled in around the room. “But we’ll try it Hound’s way first. One …hound… for each established turbofox pair.”  
  
“All right, General,” Wheeljack said, grinning at Hound, “you get me your list of candidates and I’ll start fabricating the sensor suites. There are some fussy materials involved, so I’d better get to it.”  
  
“Very well,” said Deepforge. “Everyone, thank you and dismissed.”  
  
…  
  
Three orns later.  
  
“What?” Mirage teased. “Just me? Not with an entire circle? How scandalous!” Hound looked flustered, and then crestfallen, and Mirage hastily took his hands. “Hound, Hound…come with me.”   
  
He led him not to the crowded Iacon skyscrapers, the targets of frequent Seeker attacks, but down, into the ancient tunnels, into darkness and relative safety. A part of Mirage hated that they would be joining thus for the first time in darkness and rust, instead of upon his circular, slightly concave, silver-mesh covered recharge table in his suite in Iridium, with a staggering array of energon delicacies and fine, scented oils. There was an urgency to it this way, and perhaps that was appropriate and right. There were beautiful spaces down here, too, after all. Forgotten by most as the layers of their civilization built ever upward.   
  
After two and a half breems – Hound’s self-conscious ardor having converted to curiosity and fascination, though that could be mended – they came to a series of columned, hexagonal halls. Wire mesh panels hung motionless in the cold air between the columns; tapestries, Hound thought, though he couldn’t decode the shapes depicted in various alloys, some few of which had corroded over the immense spans of time since they were created. Shallow drifts of fine mineral powder clustered at the tapestries’ hems, scattered and disturbed here and there by tracks of…maybe footprints, maybe the signs of other forms of locomotion. There were feral things in the deep layers. Mostly harmless, Hound knew, but not all of them were.   
  
Mirage led him across the halls to a narrow doorway on the far side, half ajar and crooked on its track. Even if the mechanisms still worked, the door itself was too warped to slide. Beyond this was a spiral ramp, leading upward, to a balcony near the ceiling, looking down into the halls. A strangely intact quartz crystal chandelier hung in the center, branching and fractally elaborate, set high enough even Prime or Ultra Magnus could have walked beneath it without stooping. There were couches arranged in a semi-circle, whatever upholstery they might once have been covered with long ago eaten away, leaving only bare metal frames. A small oval table with a stone slab top sat in the center of the arrangement. Mirage placed a small glow-cube in the center of the table and set it for dim light but high heat, holding his long-fingered hands above it for a lingering moment before smiling and turning to Hound.   
  
“Here?” Hound hadn’t meant this to come out as a squeak. The air was so still, and he’d been scanning carefully the entire way and there wasn’t anything else alive here right now except them, not even scraplets. It was a strange, creepy feeling. Until Mirage drew close and put his cube-warmed hands on Hound’s waist.   
  
“Hush,” Mirage whispered, kissing him.   
  
Hound forgot the cold and the dark and the lifeless spaces around them. There was life in his arms, warmth and light in their sparks.  _You’re so beautiful, so beautiful, I’ve wanted to touch you hold you kissing you is so good so beautiful so wanted to wanted to oh you’re so warm so lovely ah your fields…_  
  
Mirage smiled around Hound’s rapid, thirsty kisses. Hound wasn’t editing his thoughtstream at all, apparently. It was kind of dear of him, if somewhat hilarious. Hound did have nice hands, though, and knew how to use them to remarkable effect. Mirage lifted his armor, allowing those hands access to his protoform. Hound moaned aloud and dipped his head to kiss the cables of Mirage’s neck. Nice hands, yes;  _fantastic_  mouth. Nimble, small components arranged neatly as though they had been designed for nibbling delicately at sensitive places. Mirage arched into the contact, engine revving sharply, core temperature spiking. His data cables emerged almost of their own volition, stroking Hound’s body, seeking his ports.   
  
_So fine so fine you taste so good never tasted anyone like you exotic so fine so beautiful oh Mirage oh Mir aaAH—!_ Hound shuddered as the hot cable tips slipped into him. The link engaged smoothly, and the sensations Mirage was enjoying rippled across Hound’s body, shorting his vocal processes and language centers entirely. Hound felt as though he were lit from within, like a newborn sun glimmering in its gauzy nebula nursery. Everything was spinning.  
  
With very little motion, Mirage coaxed him nearer and nearer overload. Hound’s sweet, wild, unfettered desire was a most pleasing starting point, easily stoked to greater passion. He pressed a finger into Hound’s mouth, pushing down on his oral polyhedron in a slow rhythm, sending Hound’s internal fields fluxing. At the same time, he stroked Hound’s protoform between armor plates at the small of his back, in the same rhythm, slowly increasing the tempo.   
  
_Oh Mirage, oh Mirage, oh Mir…Mir… I can’t…oh that’s so good, so amazing how do you even… Oh Mir…_  
  
This openness, the unedited stream, Mirage realized, was a gesture of trust. So precious these days, when traitors on both sides had done so much damage, and so many still weren’t certain why there were sides at all, could only see the death and destruction and even then couldn’t believe the cause. Hound trusted him to make no cruel use of his thoughts and desires and needs. Well. Mirage was from Iridium Tower, not Vanadium. He bent all his skill to Hound’s body in earnest, cleaving to the Iridium ideal of meeting vulnerability with kindness. He slowed the bestowing of gifts when Hound showed signs of shorting out important sensory systems, pleasured him unhurriedly, giving him time to understand what Mirage was doing and why it felt so good; and loveliest of all, taking his own sweet time in finding every hidden place in Hound’s body that might yield up its share of delight to every sense available.   
  
They coupled close, hound and turbofox, warm and together in the cold, ancient dark.   
  
…  
  
16 vorns later.  
  
Hound stared at the glowing holes in Serendipity’s helm and chest for only a handful of nanoseconds. “SNIPER!” he bellowed, dragging her falling corpse toward the nearest buttress. People scattered, the other hounds casting about – the sniper would have moved the moment after the shots were fired. Hound flared his own senses.   
  
There was an unpleasant sound. Not loud; a staccato punch of metal through metal, and the spray and splatter of fuel and coolants. No one but the hounds saw anything. The sniper had been found and intercepted.   
  
Nothing would bring Serendipity back, though. Hound knelt beside her shell, keening softly. He wouldn’t have to be the one to tell Wheeljack; the cloud mind was already crimson with the news, the immeasurable loss. But, oh, Wheeljack… And Mirage. Mirage was up there on the roof, with two other turbofoxes, energon dripping from his knives.   
  
…  
  
Soon after that, rumors began to propagate through the Decepticon ranks. Higher-ups denied them with sneers and cuffed anyone caught spreading what was clearly Autobot propaganda. If a small encampment lost contact, their bodies would be found later, the fatal wounds surgical, no sign of a struggle. The dead mechs never got off a single shot.   
  
Ghosts of the unkindled, the frontliners whispered. Spirits lost from the Allspark, wandering in search of bodies to inhabit, deeming those they found to be incompatible or unworthy. Drink your rations, keep your head down, obey orders, that’s all you need to think about. You’ll be fine.  
  
On the Autobot side, few knew of the turbofox teams, and those few were not inclined to comment upon their actions, nor contemplate them too closely. If a base was supposed to be infiltrated solely to rob it of information, but the Decepticons within were also deactivated, then that was for the good of the Autobot cause, was it not?  
  
Hound worried. Mirage and Sleight were too calm, too cold, even with him. Wheeljack completed another five sensor suites, working fast and hard, but not speaking for orns at a time. Another five hounds were found and upgraded. Sleight was paired with a mech named Trace. Hound liked Trace; she was steady and careful; but he felt unbalanced without a third and clung to Mirage more tightly.   
  
…  
  
214,567 vorns later.  
  
“The sun? How could he destroy the sun?” Hound’s tone rose and rose, spiraling with the panic sweeping from mind to mind among the survivors around the planet. “Why would he do that? Where is anyone going to get power from now? What are we going to do? Why…why would he do that…?”  
  
“Hush, hush. Prime will do something. Wheeljack will figure something out.” The loss of Serendipity still broke through him like laser fire. Mirage held Hound tight through another tremor, stroking his helm, infusing his voice with every soothing harmonic he knew. But the cloud mind was frantic, screaming as the planet turned and dawn never came, only stars and dark forever. They were both shaking, staggering on the uneven ground as plates of the crust shifted.   
  
“We’ll freeze,” Hound moaned. “We’re being flung out into interstellar space. If we don’t hit one of the other planets we’ll still die of cold! We were winning, Mir! It was almost over and now he’s killed everyone! We’ll all freeze!”   
  
Around them, mechs began to scream, running wild and courseless through the halls, shooting their way out through walls when the doors were crowded, trampling each other in the press and rush. Mirage pulled Hound into a corner and engaged his cloak.   
  
A powerful transmission, through CPU and spark, blazed through them suddenly, brighter than the sun had been. Mirage felt as though a great hand pressed gently upon his chest and helm, warm and calming; and yet he also felt as though he was being lifted high out of his body, able to look down at the rooted forms of mechs below and up and around at the stars still burning.   
  
**Be calm, Cybertronians,**  Prime murmured in every CPU.  **Be calm. Our sun has indeed been extinguished. Our planet and moons are on a tangential course outside what was once our solar system. Our astronomers have calculated that we are not on a collision course. I repeat; we are not going to strike another planetary or stellar body. The Allspark is secure and safe. Auxiliary fusion reactors are even now being activated beneath all Autobot strongholds to provide heat and light and energon conversion. It is more important than ever that we all work together. We will survive, my friends. We will recover. Further instructions will be forthcoming within the orn.**    
  
Hound collapsed against Mirage, his shudders melting into a soft keening. “We’ll be all right,” Mirage said, stroking his helm and back. “We’ll be all right.”   
  
…  
  
2077 - October  
  
The telling had taken days, weeks, as Rain experienced what they had in leaps and hops of realtime. He lay in their arms on the stone ledge, the great clump of them cradled in Prime’s lap, watching the ripples in the pond as Rio swirled his fingers through the water.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Rain said softly. “About Ren. And the rest. I’m sorry you’ve lost so much.”  
  
“Rain…” Hound began, but Rain lifted his head, pressed his forehelm to Hound’s.   
  
“I hate it that you’ve been driven from your home, that your home itself is dead. But I’m not sorry you came here. This crazy little rock. Not sorry ‘bout that at all.”  
  
Mirage laughed. “Neither are we.”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2077 – October  
  
The rock beneath her aft was serpentine. Hydrous magnesium iron phyllosilicate. A group of common metamorphic rocks. The narrow, irregular crescent of beach lay behind her, cool grey sand, green and grey pebbles, strewn with drying kelp. Salt and organic proteins blew heavy in the moist air. Her chemoreceptors were on the sides of her face, beneath protective cheek spars. She could hear birds calling, and the wind rushing against the cliffs around her and the trees tossing atop the cliffs, several of her heights above. She knew humans often found watching the ocean soothing, part of the multitudinous rhythms of this planet.  
  
Lifeline found it reassuring. No two waves ever broke the same way. She watched them carefully, paying attention to how the light changed as the day came and went, and the night. She had found that she did not like being indoors, though she could tolerate it. Kalis had not been quite as adept at simulating natural environments; running too many chaotic threads at a time took up precious energy, and there were clever shortcuts, some of which took a long time for even a trained observer to notice.   
  
Catscan understood. He joined her on the rock, watching the waves with the same intensity and purpose, though he had been drawn fully back to reality long ago by the undeniable concreteness of Ratchet’s spark.  
  
Glyph was in New Guinea. She was almost finished learning every human language that still had at least one native speaker. Dozens of obscure, dying languages had become extinct during the course of her self-appointed task, but Glyph had taken it with professional calm. Languages changed, merged, split, fell into disuse. Much like living things themselves. And ephemeral lifespans were, well…ephemeral.  
  
“Another pod,” Catscan said, casting his senses out into the water. Humpbacks were migrating. Now and then they caught scans of the great, solitary or sometimes paired, wandering Blues, like deep-Seekers, booming their songs of location and kinship and warning and topography. He put his arms around Lifeline, pressing his chest into her broad shoulders. The wind was chilly, though the sun was warm on their fronts, and she settled her hands over his, revving her engine for the heat.   
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Twelve years he’d been back on Earth, and they hadn’t left him alone for one second. Countermeasure was more grateful than he could express. Someone was  _always_  near; well within range of hands or fields or a soft voice, layers of the cloud mind kept bright to hold him when the dark things inside him boiled to the surface and had to be fought, pixel by pixel, back down. Sideswipe rickrolled him just seldom enough it always took him by surprise.  
  
Arms around him from each side, Hound and Mirage accompanied him down to the oil bath; Mirage with half his systems shut down already, including his optics. Countermeasure loved the trust Mir so unconsciously placed in him.   
  
As usual, once they came around the curve of the hallway they found the oil bath already occupied. Jazz and Tracks, Ramhorn and Steeljaw snuggled up to Blaster, with Jazz and Tracks’ progeny, Chromedome, completing their little circle with Eject and Rewind in his lap. (Rewind had been let into the Bodleian and had stayed for six weeks without a break. He was still buzzing with excitement but his poor little body was near collapse. He’d been just as bad in Egypt and Australia, China and the Rift Valley. Blaster was running out of ideas for getting him to recharge regularly instead of only when he was on the verge of stasis.) They were sitting half-submerged on the ramp at the shallow end of the pool, talking softly, perhaps to avoid waking the recharging symbionts, or just in a quiet mood. Chromedome and Jazz scooted carefully around to open a space for the approaching trio.   
  
He would never get tired of this, Countermeasure knew with a relieved sort of certainty. Never get bored watching the way Chromedome nuzzled and nibbled on Rewind’s antennae as the little symbionts stirred in his lap – not as asleep as County had thought. Rewind lifted his face for a deeper kiss, and scooted around until he was straddling Chromedome’s lap. Eject shifted over to snuggle up to Blaster and his hostmates. Blaster could get ESPN even all the way down here, and from Blaster’s clump he had a better view of Rewind and Chromedome.   
  
Mirage went limp against County’s side. Hound handed him a dipper and County gently used it to pour the clear oil over Mirage’s shoulders, watching Chromedome and Rewind as their caresses grew more fervent. Mirage’s fields fluttered and fell quiet.   
  
_You can lean him on me,_  Jazz tight-beamed, smiling fondly at Mirage,  _if you an’ Hound wanted to get more active._  County suspected Jazz just wanted to cuddle Mir. It was a devout act of close friendship, cradling someone as they slept. Mirage didn’t stir as County and Jazz rearranged him, but he did sleek himself right up against Jazz before sinking more deeply into recharge.   
  
So nice, to have Hound’s knowing hands on his body with others tenderly embracing next to them. So fine, the symphony of fields and quiet cries echoing from the domed ceiling. Chromedome opened his chest, pale amber light reflecting from the oil, dancing on the walls and ceiling. Rewind chirred urgently, splitting his own chest, baring his small, carnelian spark; they touched, spinning bright, heat blowing outward from their union, Hound’s mouth fierce on County’s, Blaster’s body arching as Rewind and Chromedome overloaded, the other symbionts shuddering and chirping with shared ecstasy, and everyone settled deeper into the oil, draped over each other, until only a few headfins and shoulders and Blaster’s great big feet showed above the surface.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
“Hey, how’s it hummin’?” Keep it smooth, Rain thought. Keep it casual. Polyamory, yeah? How hard could it be? He’d gotten “the Talk” from Ratchet, which mostly consisted of a file download, and he’d read that and assured Ratchet after that he had no questions or qualms.   
  
Arcee and Firestar lifted orbital crests at him and kept walking. Rain shrugged. Lots of other fish…hm. Water Babies. Only he couldn’t tell what half of them were.   
  
He clapped a hand to his helm. He kept trying to pitch everyone into narrow little boxes labeled “he” and “she”, and it was getting real annoying. There was so much they had never tried to explain. So much they couldn’t really explain until he had the body and the senses that would make explanations unnecessary. He ran after Arcee and Firestar. Both of whom the humans called “she”, but were in fact – and so obviously –  _je_  and  _she_  respectively.  
  
“Sorry,” he said. “Look, I’m just…sorry…” Maybe something in his CPU was glitched. He should talk to Ratchet. Or Smokey? Arcee and Firestar exchanged a glance and took his hands. Inferno,  _he_ , Scalam class not Guardian class like Ironhide and Ranger, came down the hall toward them, tall as Prime, optics bright. He stepped close to Rain, laid a big, gentle hand on his shoulder, the thumb trailing across the top of his pectoral armor. Their fields tangled and Rain reeled, awash in the heat of the three bodies moving around his, drawing him toward the nearest bunkhouse.   
  
“Aw, don’t worry about it, Rain,” Inferno drawled softly in his audial, lips brushing polished black metal. “We can show ya a few things. Then you’ll get some of this confusin’ stuff figured out…”  
  
He felt a whirl of hands and bodies, around him, a part of him. Somehow he ended up on a wide berth at floor level, propped in Inferno’s lap, the firetruck’s chest warm and solid against his back. Windcharger and Smokescreen joined them;  _ke_  and  _zhe_  respectively. Hands stroked him, how was there room? Engines purred softly, all their fields meshing; Rain fumbled for a moment, not consciously aware of how to influence the bend and sway of his EM spectrum, until someone – Smokescreen? – showed him. Cables slithered between, over armor, Rain opening ports he hadn’t used yet, shivering with each new connection, knowing they were holding back, giving him space to expand and accept.   
  
I am not Bobby Epps, he thought. Not any more. Who he was is a part of me, but not the whole. I am a Cybertronian with the mindstate and memories, and therefore something of the personality of a human; but my spark is new, is me, my basis. My spirit. Spark be true. He felt a brief stab of sorrow, understanding a little of what Perceptor had sacrificed, but also how his spark had given him the courage to do it. Perceptor maybe wasn’t exactly the same person he’d been before the war, but who was?   
  
I am Rain, he thought. And what Rain really wanted right then was Inferno’s mouth on his own, and for Inferno’s hand to never stop stroking him right _there_. Gentle laughter bloomed through the link, and heated agreement; Fer’s mouth was good for kissing, his hands felt good on bodies, his fields and mind warm and broad and comforting in the way great power leashed by experience and kindness could be. Metal bodies surrounded Rain, metals hands petted him, the first licks of static skittering under his armor, making him shiver and arch. He was aware both at once of his body and the expanding complexity of the mental, hardline link; he was built to encompass all of it, not having to switch his focus, however rapidly and adeptly, between multiple tasks; his physical brain was set up to process hundreds of separate threads independently, parallel, powerful – and so  _fast_!   
  
_Just wait,_  they hummed to him, smiling, kissing, nibbling on his fingers. Rain writhed in their arms, but they kept pulling charge away, not letting him ground, keeping him from overloading, showing him the full, extended pleasure of slowly rising heat and excitement. There was nothing between his legs to show his pulsing, aching need; instead his fields blew outward, dark and rich with desire and the mechs around him hummed louder, engines revving, coolant pumps laboring, chevrons and other helm fins flaring red with heat, dispersing into the air with the scents of their oils and alloys.   
  
_Open,_  they coaxed him, Firestar and Inferno’s hands stroking each other on Rain’s chest.  _Open. Be the Rain we need not fear!_  
  
Ultimate vulnerability, ultimate strangeness to the mindstate that nestled within him; this body that could crack itself open like an egg, like a ribcage, and not die! Rain felt Inferno’s armor shift against his back, Arcee’s chamber seals snapped aside with audible snikks within her small, angular chest, Firestar was folding herself back, layer by layer, Windcharger already spilled bright, hard, blue light across the room. Smokescreen had parted his armor but was trying to remain more an observer, to stay on the edge, until they knew for sure that Rain would be in no distress.   
  
Ultimate arousal, ultimate longing! This body, this new life, so young despite almost a century of memories in his core, this body  _wanted_  this ultimate connection with a fierceness that shocked him. Rain arched, armor snapping aside, spark chamber juddering in his chest, sparklight dancing bright, warm blue, mingling with the others, their colors blending, reflecting from glassy armor, refracting through not-glass alt-form windows, until Firestar leaned in, copper-red spark, an eternity falling in, galaxies whirling, and their coronae  _touched_.  
  
Practical determination, quiet strength, intelligence and ingenuity pushed past their limits over the long grind of the war, sacrifice, joy in function performed well, love expressed in keeping loved ones safe! /FIRESTAR/ How beautifully their names suited! How beautifully all their parts fit! All the layers, perceived at once, clear and magnificent. Hardlines. How could he distinguish bodies, when everyone touched everyone else, could feel and be felt – and yet he could. Individuals making up a whole. Minds linked, a blending of nevertheless distinct flavors. Now sparks; souls! Somehow one-in-many. All of them riven by suffering, yet whole, and healing themselves, healing each other.   
  
His body lashed as the charge grounded – not entirely dissimilar, this little death, flash and flush of electrochemistry; more dramatic, though, lightning striking twice, thrice, sending shockwaves and plasma through the air.  
  
Melted. He was sure his entire inner structure, oh yeah, his protoform, had melted. “How,” he murmured dizzily, “does anyone survive spark-sharing with Optimus?” And what a way to go, if they didn’t.  
  
Firestar half rolled off him, whooping with laughter.   
  
“First time with him is definitely intense,” Arcee said, smirking at Firestar.   
  
“Every time with him is intense,” Inferno amended, rather purrily.   
  
“Because you like it like that,” Firestar snickered. “So do I. So does Red.” Red in particular thrived on that intensity. It burned through all his empty spaces. “Optimus has greater control over his spark than most people – even before he went and Allsparked himself. He’s the Prime. If the sheer power of sharing with him gets scary he can tone it way down, give you only what you want, what you need, not smelt you into slag.” She shifted, stroking Arcee’s helm, thumb tracing an old scar. “The Protector, though. He wasn’t so good at tuning himself down.”  
  
“Mmm,” rumbled Inferno.   
  
Rain unshuttered his optics, cycling them wide. “You…got jiggy with Megatron.”  
  
“Have done,” Firestar said. Like Ironhide, she’d always been military, but had sided with the Prime when the world changed. “Also intense, but not in the same way as with Prime. Optimus you feel like you could happily, joyously lose yourself, he’d let you that far in if that’s what you wanted. Megatron was always fiercely himself and you were at your strongest, felt the most powerful you’d ever been, with him. You had to be, or you’d break.” She whirred sadly. “It was no big mystery why so many followed him at first.”  
  
Rain blinked, thinking through several things at once. Human history and Cybertronian. Brother against brother. Military versus civilian. How conflict could go from small scale to large. Robert Epps’ job with Lennox’s squad had heavily overlapped Prowl’s. “Civil wars suck,” he said, with so many layers of harmonics Arcee sat up, impressed.   
  
“They purely do,” Inferno agreed.  
  
…  
  
For an activity that didn’t (always) require a lot of thrashing around, interfacing sure could take it out of a bot. Rain came online twelve hours later, alone on the berth. Arcee had patrols to run, and there had been a chemical plant fire that Inferno and Firestar had hustled off to help with. He didn’t mind. There was no sense of abandonment, not with the cloud mind bubbling away just below the more businesslike levels of comm traffic. He got a few curious pings (Hound, Mirage, Bee, Ironhide, Smokey; Ranger conspicuously silent, but everyone knew what Rain had been doing – what he had been doing that Ranger had not), including an amused but affectionate one from Arcee.   
  
_Sleepyhead._  
  
_Yeah, yeah. Sunday morning, man._  Besides, he wasn’t on the duty roster yet. He was like a college student on summer vacation. The last day of, maybe, but that was a whole day to enjoy. And Optimus Prime was sitting at the end of the berth, watching him.   
  
“Good morning,” Optimus murmured, smiling. It was, actually. Outside, the sun was coming up.   
  
Rain tried to say good morning back, all casual, but his vocoder made an incredibly embarrassing meep instead. Prime’s voice. Prime’s voice  _did things_. And now Rain had a lot of context for the things that voice did, and the things his body was doing in response. What was the difference between hardwiring plus core programming, and what humans called instinct? Rain decided he kind of didn’t care. With a certain amount of work, you could override either, but sometimes that wasn’t the fun way. His engine revved.   
  
Optimus scooted closer, beside him, somehow managing to make the maneuver look dignified, almost ritualistic, like a samurai changing his stance. He’d done something to his shields; Rain could feel the heat of his body…no, the heat of that enormous spark. His own spark was doing weird pirouettes in his chest.   
  
Rain tried again to say good morning, hello, take me now, something, anything.  _Prime…_  he managed the single glyph, undecorated, ancient, needing no elaboration.   
  
“Hmmm?” Optimus bent close, nibbled inquisitively at Rain’s temporal spar. Prime was  _curious_ , Rain could feel it openly in his fields.   
  
_Prime!_  Rain wrapped his arms around Optimus’ neck, pulling him down, pulling their bodies together, mouths together, his chest armor parting, chamber seals disengaging.   
  
“Easy, Rain,” Prime murmured between kisses. “Gently.”   
  
_Prime…_  So close, so close… What of armor, if it separated them, kept him from this center of desire? His body understood, ardent and determined.  
  
Optimus drew a thumb down Rain’s chamber seam.  **Slowly.**    
  
Torture! Rain shuddered, curled his hands to keep from clawing. Sky-blue light gleamed, waxed, shone, blazed against Prime’s armor. To be so open, and Prime’s hands so near, his spark so near; Rain lay still, did not writhe, but only via steely resolve.  
  
**Spark of Hound and Mirage’s sparks,**  Prime said, his harmonics and subharmonics thousands of layers deep,  **of course you would be beautiful!** Heavy armor parted, heavy protoform, heavy chamber walls, strong enough to house the blue-white giant. Rain did not quite whimper as the outer heliosphere swept through him. Inescapable as the approaching shock-shell of a supernova. Rain dove into the contact, his corona reaching wildly outward, prominences whipping and braiding in their eagerness to mesh with Prime. They were met and caught, caressed; Rain was laid bare, defenseless…and enveloped in a love so vast he could find no way to measure or describe it, make no comparison in even the sharing with Inferno and the others. Spacetimelove itself bent deeply around Prime’s spark, bowing, falling joyously into that well. And if Rain was laid bare, so was Optimus. Nine million years of a life built around his people, the war a hideous wound that only now was beginning slowly to heal.   
  
Rain keened, learning newly this capacity, and cried out in wonder and ecstasy, surrendering to overload.  
  
…  
  
How long had he been offline? A quick flick of thought at his chronometer – handy, that – told him it had only been about half an hour. His chest was hot but no longer steaming. There were other sleepers now in the bunkhouse berths. Optimus lay beside him, optics off but awake.   
  
There was nothing…nothing in his human experience to compare this to. Bobby had known the cell-deep relief at survival against terrible odds, had known wedded commitment and carnal bliss, paternal joys, the boundless love of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren; his human legacy through time. Religious ecstasy? No. But maybe that was close, in human terms, maybe as close as one could get.   
  
That didn’t mean the human experience was without worth – indeed the very fact of his current existence proved otherwise. Sometimes, though…sometimes comparisons were useless.   
  
**Recharge, Rain,**  Optimus hummed, curling beside and around him.  **Think later.**  
  
_Yes, o my Prime!_  
  
**Heh.**  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
Ironhide showed Rain how to manufacture ammo. The heat of inner forge and nanoassemblers, intimate workings; the satisfying thunks as new rounds slid into their chambers; the solid, warm feel of full magazines; the savage enjoyment of eating metal, the delicate textures of mineral/supplemental wire; the leashed fire of chemical propellants and weaponized corrosives. The suspended, breathless feeling of transformation, followed by solid settling in the new configuration. Having weapons that were literally a part of him was fantastic, heady, intoxicating; lines of power surging through them extended from his core. And by slag he couldn’t miss anything he had a solid lock on!   
  
Including Ranger. They soon discovered the joys of shooting at each other using the lowest power settings. Better than paint-ball! Ironhide actually facepalmed – Rain took vid. Ratchet made threatening noises over comms…which dissolved into laughter when Ironhide transmitted a mental image of himself taking both Rain and Ranger over his knee...  
  
Rain didn’t care. Let the old bots fuss. They were out at White Sands, blowing shit up!  _Fun_!  
  
Until he and Ironhide and Ranger returned to the embassy, and Rain got a look at Prime. There was nothing sad or reproachful in his demeanor or fields, but Rain just got this vibe… Wasn’t hard to figure out. Prime wished the newsparks didn’t have to train for battle at all. They shouldn’t have to.   
  
And not all of us do, Rain reminded himself. Me and Ranger, we know this shit already. So maybe it was thinking about Rain and Ranger compared with Borealis. Borealis hadn’t taken to fighting right off. She ended up having to because she was a great big fat Prime-kid target. That sucked ass. But that’s the way things were, for now. He went up and leaned on Prime. Leg, anyway. Damn tall mech.   
  
**Welcome back, Rain,**  Prime said, curling a hand around Rain’s helm. Rain sort of found himself purring into it.  **Was your excursion to New Mexico enjoyable?**  
  
“Hooah,” Rain said, grinning, laying in several layers of harmonics and subharmonics, most of them ironic, but a couple expressing that big booms were basically cool. You can take the man out of the Rangers, but…you couldn’t take the boy out of the Autobot? Something like that.   
  
Hound and Trailbreaker from outside and Mirage from somewhere down below converged on him for hugs. He’d only been gone a couple days… Hugs were good, though. Hound was solid – not tippy like his alt mode had a reputation for being – not tall but good to hold on to. Trailbreaker moreso. And Mirage, lithe and slim. Okay, so Rain liked hugging Mirage. For long hugs. Hugs that would have made Bobby Epps squirm. Rain had been thinking about doing more than hugging Mirage and Hound, but that was a step he wasn’t quite prepared for. Not yet. He wasn’t actively squicked out like Borealis seemed to be – and Ranger, the glitch, was still celibate – he could feel in himself that at some point his niggling, ghostlike objections to snuggling his parents …progenitors… were going to evaporate. Maybe not all at once. But sometime.   
  
Meanwhile he was perfectly happy to let Mirage and Hound and TB drag him and Ranger and Ironhide down to the oil baths. The white sands at White Sands were sneaky as shit and somehow got everywhere even when you thought you’d had your shields up the whole damn time.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2078 - December  
  
Layer by layer, seed by seed, her CPU grew. A fading in of consciousness, sentience. Self-awareness came later, as the memory data became selectively accessible. She could feel her body assembling itself, slowly growing as more mass was added. Each new skein felt so bright, so full of potential! She could be anything! A choosing. Like the choosing of sparks within the starry expanse of the Vector protocols. There were bodies Sarah had admired, others she had learned to fear. And yet, to overcome fear, learn more. Take the form? Yes. The skeins of mass knew every shape, were pliable, obedient, bent themselves to her will, once she had a will.   
  
Later. There were others, in the tanks beside and around her. The two, to either side - she could feel their nascent fields, as they could feel hers. Once they had hands, they pressed them to the sides of their tanks, reaching for each other. No, no sense in taking Roddy's road. They would be smarter. Wait for legs. For wings.   
  
…  
  
They weren't allowed into the growth tank chamber. Thundercracker understood the Autobots' caution, though he knew and Prime knew and Prowl knew that nothing in space or on planet would induce him or Strake to harm the newsparks. Their protective algorithms had been fully restored to prewar standards. They weren't allowed in the chamber, but the rumors flitted through levels of the cloud mind that they had access to.   
  
Three new Seekers were building themselves in those tanks up in Oregon. (There was something odd about that, but neither TC nor Strake had paid any attention to the processes of building or kindling since stepping off the kindling platform at Simfur themselves.) Three new  _alphas_ , to be precise That there were three meant...well, it was obvious what would happen. And it was for the best, really. One new alpha would have made things complicated for them and Prowl. Jazz was an interfering pain in the afterburner, but he wasn't wrong. Proper trining took at least a vorn, anyway. His trining with Starscream and Skywarp had been forced, yes, but it had saved his life, and he'd been grateful, once the agony of losing Novawind and Saberfall had eased. He could admit that now, when his new, nascent trine would be so good, so true, in a few decades, when Prowl would allow himself to be rebuilt. All the sweeter for having waited. All their firewalls would come down during those flights. Very rarely, trines failed at that point, but almost never when they'd had time to do things properly. So he was a traditionalist. Nothing wrong with that, considering.   
  
He watched sunlight flash on Strake's wings, 10,000 kilometers below; a graceful, silver and black shape. So sweet, so good. And just the thought of Prowl in an alpha body set his engines roaring. Ratchet and Skyfire and Perceptor were working on a design when they had a spare cycle or two. Ratchet had blabbed. Thundercracker wondered if they'd let him and Strake upgrade at the same time, because whatever those three came up with was going to make their current design look like a stop-gap patch job. Which in a sense they were, once Cybertron's infrastructure had collapsed. People had to keep upgrading, to maintain any kind of combat edge, but they had to do it with whatever materials or expertise was on hand, and both had only gotten more scarce as the millennia wore on.   
  
Well. New alphas were new alphas. This was going to get interesting.  
  
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>  
  
2079 – May  
  
She came out of recharge slowly, languorously, stretching her limbs though she had no muscles and tendons as such to require warming. It felt good anyway. She was warm, every intricate part of her body supported by the thick colloid of the growth medium. She extended and contracted her wing-shards. She and the others had consulted, they had their alt modes picked; Cybertronian designs from before the war at base, but with very modern modifications. They were beautiful. They knew it, they had chosen to be so.  
  
They could get out of the tanks on their own if they needed to. If the worst happened and no one was left alive, not even Ven, who could activate the opening sequence for them. The worst had not happened.  
  
_Perceptor,_  she sent, smiling at the fondness in his auto-reply. His full attention shifted as soon as it was safe to do so. She knew he’d been working on something delicate and important. The nova-nets, he told her, grudgingly using the name Scrapper had coined.  
  
_Are you all ready to emerge?_  
  
_Yes. Whenever you’re ready for us._  
  
_We’ll be right there!_  
  
By the next morning, those who wished to attend had assembled, flying up from the embassy or in from other places via Azimuth and Blueshift. Skyfire, Borealis and Polaris were in deep space – Polaris and Borealis in M100, Skyfire on his way back to Earth, but two weeks out.   
  
She and her batch-siblings smiled at everyone, jiggling with excitement. There was Ranger, off to one side, optics on her alone, trying to appear nonchalant. Rain, leaning against a wall, Mr. Cool, but with fields making wild loops and wings all over the room. Ah, there he pulled them in. Someone must have said something. She giggled.   
  
The colloid drained. A tickly process that left her feeling hollow and wobbly for a second, fragile and strangely dry. There was no residue. The plex tank walls retracted and the twenty newsparks descended. She went to Beachcomber first, folding herself down and down; he was so tiny and warm against her broad chest, his arms barely able to reach around her neck. She nuzzled his helm, glancing up at Miles watching from the catwalk with Yasmina and Joey and Marcus. Oh, yes. They would have an interest in observing this process. Observing her. Their heart-rates were only a little elevated. Excited, happy, not worried.   
  
Her senses were set only a little below Cybertronian norms. She would require only one more major adjustment, and then some fine-tuning for her frametype. Seeker. Alpha. Impulse and Volley were alphas, too. The three of them could already feel the attention directed at them. A number of Autobot newsparks had chosen flight modes, but none had ventured to be alphas until now. She released Beachcomber, straightening somewhat to embrace Perceptor, who was more than twice Beachcomber’s height.   
  
“Serenity,” he said, hugging her with all four arms. She had whispered to him her new name a few weeks before, pleased to share with him one brief secret before her life became wildly communal.   
  
When the show had originally been on, Sarah had barely heard of it. It sounded too weird. Then her life had gotten a lot weirder, and stories about people just trying to scrape by under difficult circumstances, even when those circumstances included being out in space in a rust-bucket of an old ship, seemed a lot more relevant to her interests. Now her life was an order of magnitude weirder than anything on the show. And she liked the sound of the word. She felt she had gained a measure of that trait, and that it might be a valuable thing to bring to the Autobot camp. She conveyed this to Optimus, who agreed warmly. Although the other Autobots would tease her a bit.   
  
_An alpha?_  Cliffjumper laughed from the embassy.  _Named Serenity???_  The cloud mind tossed the name around with amusement and thoughtful observations that a serene alpha might be a good idea, if it worked. Or maybe he…she? She. She, then…or maybe she would be an example of the naming tradition of the Jehren, who gave their vessels names opposite of desired traits in order to avoid unwanted notice by the gods. Serenity broadcast a raspberry.  
  
“It’s a lovely name,” Ranger said, fidgeting off to one side. Serenity smiled at him as she stood to hug Optimus. Optimus was about due for another mass-removal and was currently taller than she by a meter and a half.   
  
“Welcome, Serenity,” Optimus said, gazing into her optics. His field washed through her, enfolding and warm, unequivocally pleased by her chosen frame, and not for reasons of combat advantage.   
  
“Thank you, Prime.” She let him go reluctantly, but she needed to go over and hug Ranger before he melted or something.  
  
“It’s a good name,” Ranger insisted as she knelt and they embraced, metal arms, metal bodies, powerful sparks. She knew he would never, bless him, make the mistake of calling her Sarah. He was small, but solid. It felt so good to hold him again, even with the differences! A part of her could not have failed to recognize him.   
  
More wings moved toward them. Volley and Impulse, the other two alphas. Ranger looked up.   
  
A bolt of sheer possessiveness lanced through him – and then dissipated, never to return. The three of them had grown together, would belong together. Sarah had given up care of her husband to his squad, hadn’t she? Trusted them to protect him, have his back all those years. Ranger understood alpha trines in a basic way, a tactical way perhaps, but he was not unsympathetic. Volley and Impulse knelt and joined their snuggle, fluttering their wings and optical shutters at him, acknowledging the connection between him and Serenity with pleasure. They knew they’d always have dedicated backup.   
  
“Party in the entry hall!” Beachcomber called, leading the way up and out.   
  
…  
  
“Can we call you Seekermom now instead of Seekerbane?” she asked, at the end of her checkup. Volley and Impulse were already done and waiting for her impatiently. She buried her face in his sensory fins as his fields glowed with a resounding, emotional  _YES!_  (She had wanted to nuzzle his lionfish head for decades, or Sarah had, but only now could she do so easily. Some of his vanes felt zingy against the metal of her face, some were sharp, but she didn’t press too hard.)  
  
“Oh, please do,” Perceptor said aloud, hugging her powerfully with his strong-arms.   
  
**Thank you, Serenity,**  Prime tight-beamed from the embassy. His glyphs expressed a quieter, vaster joy than Perceptor’s.  **This is why the Matrix wanted human memory engrams in Cybertronian bodies. You enrich us.**  
  
_Too bad you aren’t collecting them from more humans._  It wasn’t a critique, exactly.  
  
**By what criteria would we choose, if not that of friendship? Humans call this nepotism, but we…we have become so few, our bonds of “family” so fractured and mended in whatever ways we can…**  
  
_Some humans would say you should preserve the great and the good. In fact I think Raoul said as much, didn’t he?_  
  
**Yes. But that is not what we want them for. How is any individual, no matter how great and good, more _human_  than any other?**  
  
_…Okay. You’re right. Optimus?_  
  
**Yes?**  
  
_I love you._  
  
He laughed.  **I love you, too, Serenity.**  
  
“Are you talking with Prime?” Perceptor asked. A bit nosy. She nibbled at his mid-helm vent.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I surmised as much. Your fields have become – as Beachcomber would put it – whirly.”

<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>

2079 – October

“Have you three been topside yet?” Thundercracker landed neatly, handing Prowl down to the mesa top without a bounce, Strake and Countermeasure right beside them. They had spent the last couple of months in China. Thundercracker’s reparations included building houses for the poor and dispossessed. (He agreed with Mirage – the way this planet’s physical processes casually murdered its inhabitants was disturbing. Earthquakes were just _wrong_.) Strake, Countermeasure and Prowl always offered to help, but Thundercracker found the repetitive physical task both soothing and a focus for his thoughts. A meditation on things he’d done he now deeply wished he hadn’t, and on things he might do in the future. (Like clang Perceptor senseless. Cybertron would have a sun again! Soon, soon!) This particular jaunt, Strake and County had spent most of their time enjoying the company of the Spychangers. REV and WARS were dependably snarky and hilarious, and CounterArrow’s quiet humor reminded them of Mirage. 

The new alphas fluttered their wings. “You mean orbit?” Impulse asked, torn between excitement and nonchalance. 

“We were waiting until Borealis got back,” Serenity said. Which would be in a few weeks – Prime had just gotten a ping from her. Three months earlier than anticipated. Serenity would be happy to meet her, but wondered what was up. Prime hadn’t elaborated.

“Why?” Strake asked. “We can show you better than a delta can.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with the way Borealis teaches orbital mechanics,” Ranger said, bristling slightly. “And she likes doing it.”

“But we’re the same frametype,” Strake said. His armor stayed down but his fields went just a tad spiky. 

“And we’re ex-Cons,” Thundercracker said. Everyone looked at him, then away, uncomfortable. “Let the new ones decide for themselves, Strake.”

Serenity walked up to TC and offered an arm cable. She remembered the footage from Beijing, but she trusted Prime. And Prowl. TC accepted and opened his side of the link without hesitation. _I want to know how you feel about newsparks. And memory-custodians._

 _Newsparks?_ Thundercracker cocked his head, but kept his responses open, let her follow his associative emotional and linguistic threads. _Prime told me before I left the Decepticons how few of us this war had left alive. Megatron, Galvatron never admitted that we’d nearly wiped ourselves out. Newsparks are_ important. 

_So are the experiences of the elders,_ Serenity said, rather unashamedly basking in his harmonics. The glyph for “important” had echoes miles deep. He would die to protect any of them, despite Prime’s geas; or live on in unimaginable suffering for a geological age, separated from the Allspark and his first trine. He _needed_ to protect them. She wriggled further into the link, pushing, and he let her, the connection becoming intimate. She found herself leaning eagerly into his flight memories – storms and battles and leaps into space. Races and dances and wings brushing wings at hypersonic velocity just to prove you could. 

_You’re trine leader,_ he said, warmth and a kind of instinctive comfort coloring his fields and harmonics. His place was at the leader’s portside wing, had always been so. He liked it that way, was good at it. She swept closer, enjoying his contentment, snuggling into his personal love for and loyalty to Prime, and Prowl – and Starscream-that-was. He caught her wandering hands and held them away from his chest. _Serenity, you haven’t integrated yet._

_Oh! Ah, I’m sorry. How about memory-custodians, then?_

He smiled. _That? Is weird. I have some of the Ixchel memories, though. And some of Will Lennox’s. And I know you have Sarah Lennox’s entire mindstate._ She could hear and feel how alien he regarded these memories as being, how strange this alliance; but he was Cybertronian, and Cybertronians adapted. 

_Which ones of Will’s?_

_Hn. Battles mostly. Interactions with Ironhide. Paratrooper training. A few others, mostly sensory suites. Limited, but enlightening._

_Understanding your enemy._

_Avoiding the disgusting squishy bits._ He gave her hands a squeeze and let them go.

_Nothing about Annabelle’s birth, then?_

_Gyaaugh!_

Serenity laughed and withdrew the link. “Thank you, Thundercracker.” The internal exchange had taken a couple of seconds. “Let’s go up with them. We can fly with Borealis when she arrives.” And pick up a few gravity-surfing delta tricks, maybe, but pass up the offer to learn important frame-skills from same-type veterans? That would be plain stupid. Ranger was nodding. She could tell he’d come to the same conclusion.

Up they went. Blue and silver leading, black and silver flanking. Serenity’s colors were gold and blue, Volley’s gold and turquoise. Impulse was currently mauve and bronze but he changed his mind every week. Five. Thundercracker felt the imbalance like a cut fuel line. He didn’t blame Prowl for delaying a rebuild, and neither, Thundercracker was proud to note, did Strake. Strake’s devotion to Prowl filled him with quiet delight. 

And if Starscream was here – he and Skywarp were in the Sol system somewhere, they thought, but were unsure where – would he try to kill these newsparks, or would he set aside faction programming and pride and help in their training to the best of his considerable ability? Thundercracker didn’t know. He wanted to believe the latter. He hated that he wanted that. 

They flew. Past the blue into the black. Wheeling and rolling giddily, giggling, as gravity loosened its hold, wings glittering in the hard sunlight. So young, so trusting. So graceful even out here beyond the air, where they had to relearn how to maneuver with precision. And there was Strake, three million years older than them, but somehow with a similar natural exuberance, just as happy as they to fly and laugh and admire the gleaming blue world below them. 

And it wasn’t that they made Thundercracker feel old. He was old. There had been a very good reason, he remembered, to hide how old he was. Chronological age wasn’t that important. Prime was just curious, he’d said. But maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to unpack those memories. Sometime. Later. 

The western United States rolled by beneath them, pale and arid, higher elevations tipped with black that would turn green closer to, irrigated greener to the west, in California, grey with cities on the coast. Prowl and County were lying on the mesa top, looking up, catching the faint glitter of the alphas as they orbited by. Prowl sent Thundercracker and Strake glyphs of pleasure and unabashed admiration, and Thundercracker’s spark expanded, young again, hot with anticipation. 

They looped the Moon, as Borealis had done with Ranger, and then Rain; but unlike them did not land, winging directly back to Earth. Serenity began to tremble first, watching their homeworld expand. 

_Oh!_ Strake looped around the three young ones, herding them closer together. Serenity was transmitting a weird sound, not keening exactly, not singing either, but maybe a combination of both. 

_Skyfire, you in range?_ Thundercracker figured he probably was. Prowl trusted them this far, but most of the older Autobots did not. _Serenity is…ah, there go the other two…_

 _Integrating?_ Skyfire approached, blipping a quick IFF. Not that TC would mistake him for anyone or anything else, but there were plenty of EDF satellites here in geostationary that liked to be reassured. 

_Yep. They’re fairly safe up here,_ Thundercracker said, _but for the sake of monitoring and company we should take them down to the embassy._

 _Ratchet yelling at you, too?_ Skyfire asked, grinning.

_Yep._

…

Three weeks later.

Serenity didn’t want a cooped-up hole below the embassy. Ranger wasn’t entirely comfortable about trying this in orbit, alone. Moonlight on the mesa top seemed a reasonable compromise. She flew down and he climbed up and they took hands in the center, the expanse of stone around them both gouged and polished by decades of metal feet. Kissing with metal lips and laser-sharp teeth was no worse than keeping their braces from locking, back in high school. 

Now it was wheels and wings, cannon-parts and missiles, talons and compound ankles, and she had to stoop to kiss him, and he had to extend his pedes; but their hands explored as they had once done, discovering themselves and each other. They had energon pumps for hearts, but their sparks spun as pulses once had raced. 

It felt odd at first, being so small in her hands, standing beneath the shadow of her wings; odd but …nice. She had a broad, keeled chest to snuggle into, a streamlined waist to wrap his arms around. Long, clever fingers dipping so neatly into the heated spaces in his body. She was bigger, she was stronger, faster. She was the one who must gentle her powerful talons on his body. Nice, yes and more than nice. He arched and shivered beneath her. Seeker, his programming said. Deadly and beautiful! Her engines sang, a high, musical chord like no mortal jet, ringing with echoes of an ancient world neither of them had yet seen in the metal. 

Down on the stone still warm from the day. Shoulders and helms, tires and heels and sharp, sharp elbows scraping sparks from the rock. Fingers and mouths found good places, different from human places, and began the mapping of future pleasures in these bodies. Erogenous orogeny. Charge leapt from metal to metal and Ranger laughed because it no longer mattered who came first when physics sent them past the edge together, and nothing was over until they wanted it to be. He loved these bodies! 

Serenity grinned. Cables sleeked and pinned him to the rock, wide open and shouting as the link flashed through them like blue fire. Mind link, body link, they felt themselves light up, felt each other, blended and whole at once. If tactile had been a cartography of new realms of delight, cables was leaping into an outrushing tide; bubbles rising through their minds toward the light, sinking into and with each other; no bottom to this ocean. Love and joy swept them up in a stopless current from depths to heights, crashing glittering in consciousness-fragments on their moonlit shore.

Intertwined, fans and coolant pumps humming, they rested, putting themselves back together. It occurred to them that it would be possible to plumb the depths of each other’s memories; to seek out discrepancies in the shared lives of Sarah and Will, every lie, every omission, the things they had never told one another as human beings limited to spoken words. Every petty feeling, every selfish act could be recalled and tallied, every experience compared; but none of those things seemed important. Their human memories were important, but manufacturing conflict was pointless. Serenity and Ranger acknowledged the possibility – and skimmed on to other ways of sharing. 

Their sparks thrummed, so close, Ranger draped over Serenity’s chest. Opening they found strange, as Rain had, but they trusted each other and there were plenty of experienced mechs nearby if they got nervous. 

Celadon spiral arms, saffron wings wrapped around each other, corona to corona, nearly touching photospheres. Two unique sparks carrying threads of Ironhide and Ratchet, Beachcomber and Perceptor met and twined, their radiation singing an old-as-the-universe Magnificat; their souls magnifying the wonder of their creation. Expanding with spacetimelove, attracted and delighted by their dissimilarities, the two young suns, pale green and gold, pulsed then blazed; a springtime nebula in autumn, coruscating through them and lighting the desert like dawn.

…

“That was awesome,” Ranger murmured against Serenity’s shoulder. Their fields wound slowly around and through each other, lazy, fulsome, not quite sated.

“We should do it again,” she agreed. “A lot. Soon.” Wrapping her arms around him, she sat up abruptly, staring into the sky.

Impulse and Volley stooped upon them from the tropopause where they’d been waiting, watching. Letting their trine leader take the first sip. 

“Ranger?” Serenity flicked shoulder armor as the pair landed at the other end of the mesa, hot from the air and glittering with starlight. 

The whirlwind of three alpha bodies around him? Yes…oh _hell_ yes! 

They gathered him between them, eager to forge their bonds in this way newly open to them, and leapt for low orbit. Falling sustained, four voices, four energies braided into a spiraling, sparking, giggling, radiant comet tail.

…

Even beyond the clarity gained post-integration, some things Serenity understood now in a completely different and stunningly physical manner. _Ranger!_ she tight-beamed, harmonics full of intent. Impulse and Volley watched them with half-shuttered optics, engines at low hum.

He stirred against her chest. _Mmmrr._

_Optimus!_

His optics lit as he lifted his head; bright and irised wide. _I know!_ Waiting had gotten harder and harder over the past sixteen years; especially as the physical affection aspect of the robots’ lives had become less and less hidden from general humanity. The seven basic genders had made a splash in 2078, but then in one day the Cons had destroyed the Taj Mahal, Khufu’s pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, half of Macchu Picchu, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Himeji Castle and a chunk of the Forbidden City. Humanity had been kind of distracted by that. 

_He's so...so...!_

_I know!_

_You, too?_

_YES! Is that weird?_

_No, it's hot!_ It seemed odd somehow that there should be a straightforward glyph for requesting interface, but not only was there, there were entire lexicons of variations, with wide-ranging degrees of elaboration. But what she and Ranger lacked in many cases was social context. The language made it possible to just ask someone for intimacy or help with a quick defrag, but was it polite to do so? And they couldn't help thinking it might be a little beyond the pale to make such a request of the Prime. _I suppose you don’t want to ask Ironhide._

_Uh…not really._

_I’ll ask Ratchet, then._

Ratchet would of course instantly blab to Ironhide. Ranger covered his face with his hands. _Oh god._

_He says we can either just ask Prime or we can make goo-goo optics at him whenever we see him and he’ll take pity on us._

_Outstanding._ They could start their polyamorous career in the most pathetic way possible, mooning after Prime like a quartet of groupies.

_Or we could pounce on him._

_Damn, you really are an alpha, aren’t you._

_Mm._

…

Bands of platinum-bright clouds poured lines of rain on the desert amid spears of afternoon sunlight, rainbows ghosting from tattered remnants to full arcs and multiples. Optimus paused, his weight shifted onto one hip, and tilted his head to look over his shoulder at the four mechs watching him. 

What were they supposed to do, with fields like that and a gaze like that directed at them? They ran to catch up. 

Prime had lifted a feed from the local TV station’s Doppler and was aimed at the heaviest front, dropping his shields as the leading edge swept over them. They followed his example, Ranger tilting his head way back, lifting his arms, bending his torso in a slow sort of dance, humming in tune to the music the rain made of his metal body. Serenity and her wingmates held out their hands and shivered as the water dripped down through them. They had not felt this before. 

Rain sleeted down their bodies, Prime’s fields wafted through theirs, drawing them onward, closer, to a pile of rocks near the cliff where the Twins had tried out their steel whips. Shielded thus from view from the embassy, Optimus sank cables into them, pulled them closer, and flooded the link. Flooding the torpedo tubes before firing, Ranger thought helplessly. He'd forgotten to engage his articulation locks and would have fallen if Prime hadn't caught him.

This is so weird, a part of Ranger thought, as Optimus gathered them in. Serenity and her wingmates were currently taller than Prime, and their wings made them broader, but Prime’s arms fit around them as though designed for that purpose. Weird, Ranger thought again; because for years, decades, Optimus had in a real sense been his, Lennox’s, commanding officer. On paper, for the benefit of human governments and militaries, Lennox and Prime shared command; and later, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and then C-in-C of the Earth Defense Force, on paper Lennox had had the greater authority. It was the humans’ planet. But on the ground, in the thick of it, Lennox had never had any trouble following Prime’s orders. Deferring to three million years of battle experience, against these very foes, was simply common sense.

Cybertronians, though, had never had anything like human rules against fraternization. Ranger’s body, his spark, curled against Prime’s like coming home. He was aware of the others, their keen edges and shivering wings, but Prime made each caress, physical, field and mental, feel as though there was only the two of them. 

**MmmmmrrRangerrr…**

The purr of his name in that voice, the glyphs around it spiraling outward in combined meanings he could only grasp the edges of, mind-phantom hands roving his body until he arched once, twice in overload. Optimus kissed the Seekers through the afternoon, but as the sky turned deep blue he turned his head, brushing his lips gently against Ranger’s. Ranger climbed up out of the strutless state he’d been in, wrapped his hands around Prime’s helm, drawing the kiss, and Prime’s internal fields, deeper.

**Ranger…mmm…Ranger, open…**

Ranger’s dentae clattered. He felt the command sling through his systems, electrifying, that breathless moment when the pieces of his chest began to slide apart and he felt the air on his inner workings, sizzling on the photosphere of his soul. The blue-white giant approached. Pale celadon petalled up to meet it, unfurling shyly. Not his first touch spark-to-spark, but Prime was…Prime was…

 _Optimus…_ Not fear, but a weight of knowledge nurtured this hesitation. Knowledge already possessed, knowledge soon and swiftly to be acquired. Prime nuzzled him, engine thrumming. Prominences from their coronae wisped at each other, not quite touching. Ranger wanted him, wanted this, with his entire body, down to the resonating strings, poising on the brink to draw out the threshold. 

They touched. Two atmospheres mingling, spirit and spark. Had he thought he had understood before what a Prime was? 

He arched, desperate, and Optimus slipped an arm beneath him, helping him spread himself wider. Sinking, immersed, drowning, no, not dying, his human mind rejected the image; falling back into the deepest, plushest featherbed, miles deep before I sleep, on the clearest Sunday morning with nothing to do but make love all day. Optimus hummed above him, enjoying the sensations, clean skin on clean soft sheets, warm bodies softly pressed together, though now their bodies were nothing like that, nothing soft about them but their voices sometimes and the way their touch could be gentle with tiny, fragile beings. Optimus opened vistas of memory to him, and yet greater vistas of emotion; twenty-five thousand shades of love, contentment in a yearlong embrace, the security of knowing and being known completely – spiked with sadness, knowing that sometimes that was not enough, but hope for a someday he had time enough to wait for. Easy to be patient, and patience a balm like time like Prime to heal all wounds. The love of sun to sun, shivering planets into being, gravity of affection tenuous but felt across vast distances, like holding hands across a galaxy. Sending ripples of life across spacetimelove, this joining of sparks that was and was not sexual, framed by human experience as it was, but sixteen years of robot life full of love, too, coloring everything with a wider spectrum. Ranger dug his fingers into Prime’s armor, holding tight as the cataclysmic rush of charge began, lightning in the dark, as Ranger’s lights, for a little while, went out.

…

Strange, Ranger thought. Not for the first or last time. Optimus lay on his side, Ranger curled in the hollow of the Prime’s body; Serenity spooning up on the other side with Impulse and Volley draped over the lot of them, Volley’s cheek spar resting on one of Ranger’s feet. Strange that overload – physical climax – caused unconsciousness (unless one knew Red Alert’s trick). Intimacy and vulnerability. 

Big hands petted him, a single finger tracing his central seam. He opened eagerly.

In Ranger’s mind they twined together as bodies made of light. That’s what sparks were, kind of. Light and energy and matter that could be divided and shared, and love to bind them all together; and to guide them to their ultimate home when the soul’s fuel at last ran out. He was aware of Serenity and the others nearby; a warm, neighboring trinary system.

Optimus sank into him, layer by layer, not a merge but passionate inquiry, fundamental parsing; a wind through the leaves of everything he was. A calling, note by note, listening for resonances, harmonies, echoes. Prime’s body might not be able to sing, but his spark surely could. Ranger began to feel a little laid bare, as though any further and he’d unravel…

Instantly, Optimus withdrew to a safer level, to a more bearable intimacy, wholly pleasurable.

 _Is there something wrong with my spark?_ Ratchet hadn’t said anything of the kind, and the alphas’ sparks and his own had been so individual, so different from each other, besides the essential spark-ness of them, that he realized he had no basis of comparison. Except, now, with Prime’s. And that probably was an apples and oranges thing. 

**No indeed, beloved,** Prime assured him, bending his head far to kiss his forehelm. 

_What happened when I – when Will – died?_

**I do not know for certain.**

_You have ideas, though._

Through their cables, Optimus transmitted both formal glyphs and raw emotion/cognition. Acknowledgement uncertainty concern. Wish to gather more information, wariness toward haste and the mistakes caused by it. Ranger knew how the Allspark/sparks could sometimes alter memory and perception if one delved unprepared. 

_Yeah,_ Ranger said, in kind. Frustrating but definitely understood.

Strange, Ranger thought. And wonderful.

~~~~~~

2079 – November

White mackerel clouds made a bright pattern against the ruddy desert below as she flashed through the upper atmosphere. _Memory-custodians, huh? So that’s what the kids are calling it these days._

 **Welcome home, Borealis!** Spark of my spark, said his glyphs, warm and enfolding. 

“Borealis! Borealis!” A bunch of baby jets swarmed out to meet her as she transformed and landed on the road next to the embassy. And not so baby jets, and a load of other people she hadn’t seen for the better part of a year, none of whom cared that her armor was still hot from re-entry, climbing into her arms or onto her shoulders or clinging to any available surface. 

_Serenity! Aren’t you three cute! Were I unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion._

_’Cause we’re pretty?_ Serenity purred.

_’Cause you’re pretty._

_Thank you, that was very restorative._

_Know what the first rule of flying is?_

_Love!_ the three alphas chorused, and all the jets dissolved into giggles.

“Perceptor, they’re adorable, can I keep them?” 

“It’s like some kind of insta-geek field,” Eject marveled. “She wasn’t even in this galaxy when they decanted.”

“Heya, Jazz.” She couldn’t quite manage a full salute as she passed the First Lieutenant on her way inside. “I’m covered in beeeeeeeeeeeeees!” Jazz laughed. The last time she’d been on-planet Rewind had hosted an Eddie Izzard marathon. “Hullo, Ranger…oh, I get a kiss now? Wooo!” She switched to tight-beam, _What does Mikaela say about the “memory custodian” nomenclature?_

Ranger sighed. _She said calling it by a nice shiny new name didn’t change things, and felt even more like a creepy cover-up. I understand where she’s coming from, but…it’s hard on Bee._

Urgh. She’d be sure to give Bee extra snuggles when she saw him. She switched channels, casting her thought around the turn of the planet to Argentina, where Skyfire, Beachcomber and Miles were tootling around the Ischigualasto Formation. _Skyfire! Someone…uh, they called themselves Homomdans...put up a new wormhole near Svirskalix Tertius! Cuts the time from here to Cybertron back down to six months!_

_And they let you use it?_

_I asked nice. I also…might have made puppy-optics at them._

_…You made puppy-optics. At a Homomdan._

_It worked! Or, was inconsequential, one or the other._ She shrugged, bouncing Serenity and her trine, who whooped and giggled and tightened their claws on her armor. _The being I spoke with was really nice!_ Skyfire, in Argentina, was bent over, hands on knees, laughing and being pestered by one geologist and one human about what was so funny. Ratchet and Perceptor had joined the embassy crowd and were propping each other up, equally overcome. _I suppose making cute shouldn’t have worked on that species? I’m not even sure they were vertebrates…?_

“Ancestrally,” Perceptor explained between chortles, “the Homomdans reproduced via fractionation. Now, as far as I know, they grow new individuals in tanks, much as we do. So you are correct, taking on the mien of a submature entity should not have been a compelling argument, as they have little tradition of caring for young.”

“Huh. Well ne said nir name was Ar Be-Ka iSchloear and to give nir regards to Optimus, so that might have been more the point than anything my face was doing.”

“Ar Be-Ka!” Optimus had joined the reunion now that they were in the main hangar and people scooted around on Borealis to make room for him to hug her. He stood on the tips of his pedes and reached up and could just about wrap his arms around her waist when she crouched somewhat. “Aaah, Little Bird, I’m glad you got to meet nem! The Homomdans were once among our closest allies.” Homomdan lifespans were measured in millions of years, but that had been no guarantee that Be-Ka would still be alive by the time Cybertronians could take a place again on the galactic cultural dance-floor. “You actually spoke to Be-Ka nemself?”

Borealis rolled her optics, but reached down – somewhat encumbered – extending a wrist cable, transferring the entirety of the experience to him. “I actually did.”

 _Someone just made Optimus really happy,_ Hot Spot commented from the other side of the equator. 

_I think that’s my new favorite pastime,_ Borealis said, grinning bemusedly. 

_Sweets,_ Jazz purred at her, _that’s a lot of people’s favorite pastime._

~~~~~~

A few days later.

“Hoist! Hooooiiiiist!”

Hurriedly scooping the latest fruits of his labors into a suitable box, Hoist scurried up the ramp and outside. Borealis had landed on the bare mountainside and was now leaping down to the entry clearing. She paused when she spotted him. Gauging the distance, she made an immense show of prostrating herself at his feet, arms outstretched, her hands making pathetic grasping motions. Weak mewls escaped her vocoder. Hoist considered fleeing back to the kitchen. 

“Is it true?” Borealis moaned. “Did you really make…?”

“Yes,” he huffed, pretending exasperation. “I did make.” With a flourish, he withdrew a single confection – scaled for deltas – from the box he held behind his back. Smallish, domed, squatly cylindrical, robin’s egg blue, with a layer of softer filling of a pale lavender in the middle. Borealis’ enormous fingertips snatched it from him with lightning delicacy. 

She sat up and brought it to the olfactory vents in her cheek spars. Sugars no longer appealed to her Cybertronian fuel systems, but other high-energy compounds were interpreted by her CPU as “sweet” and thus stimulated her pleasure centers. Similarly, though the scents of vanilla and chocolate and other things Ixchel Chase had enjoyed were still pleasant, other aromas also brought with them a more visceral – or core programmatical – reaction. She nibbled, a precise, testing bite. The outer surface was slightly shiny, crunchy, and gave way to a soft, airy, chewy center, with a creamy manganese filling between the two halves. “Oh my god,” she whimpered, and took another bite.

“Did I get it right?” Hoist asked, bringing the filled box forward. Borealis’ optics were shuttered, and she continued to nibble slowly, her fields swirling and feathering in heavy, dark, blissful enjoyment. Hoist was pretty sure he’d gotten it right. 

The gypsum doughnuts had continued to be popular. Certain people insisted on teasing Prowl and Streetwise about them, but Prowl would only eat them if TC or Strake (or, especially, Prime) fed them to him bit by bit during or after interface. Making a special ritual out of something mundane. Hoist thought Mirage had probably given him the idea. Now there would be another goody for the treat menu. French macarons. 

“Hoist.” Her voice was faint, pleading.

“You’re going to eat them all, aren’t you.” He’d been hoping to get at least a few others to test them, but now that Borealis was home…

She leaned down to kiss him, hooking a sticky finger behind his knees. “How many more do you have besides the ones in that box?”

“I’m not telling.” He pushed the box between them, as if to fend her off, but he didn’t struggle as she slipped another macaron into her mouth and gently lowered him to the ground. They offered cables at the same time, and soon Hoist was awash in the bliss of macaron appreciation and enjoyment. Yes, he had gotten them just right.

~~~~~~

3 days later.

Crash! Crang! Spaang! Whoops and shouts and howls of outraged dignity, hum and whine of energy weapons discharged at their lowest setting. They were doing well, the three of them. Seekers in general were not fond of close quarters fighting. All the more reason to drill them harder on it. Air-to-ground they already had down. Ironhide watched them wheel and parry and swing, firing solid gold (soft, with no penetrating power to speak of; they just _stung_ ) rounds at point-blank, evading or blocking most of them, duck and turn and kick – becoming very much a dance. Ironhide huffed steam from his core vents. This sort of exercise was no doubt helping them trine, but wasn’t doing as much for their reflexes. They were ready to move on to opponents other than themselves. 

The usual suspects showed up to help. The Lambo twins, Cliffjumper, Arcee. Lots of noise and dirt scuffed up and Ironhide kept having to shoo them away from the road. The din was making the visiting ambassadors and other dignitaries nervous. 

Prowl, Thundercracker, Strake and Countermeasure landed on the mesa top to watch. Ironhide considered enlisting their help. Maybe later. Shortly thereafter, Borealis came in from the other direction and landed on the road. Talk about someone who could use a little more hand-to-hand practice…was she actually tippy-toeing? 

“BOREALIS!”

“Oh crap.”

“Would you kindly assist us?”

“Yessir.” 

Serenity beamed as the delta shuffled over. It was so hard not to jump up and hug her head or something. Big sister! She felt an upwelling empathy for Ixchel and Borealis and how they were meshed; she now had what Borealis called the “Good Parts Version” of the Ixchel memories – the parts people most seemed to like sharing; the parts of a human life that taught the most about what humans thought they were, and who Ixchel had been. Slow Sunday mornings and graduations, swimming and breathing and singing, rubbing sleep from heavy-lidded eyes, and being rescued by Ratchet. Coffee Americano and vanilla latte. Chocolate. A purring cat in your lap. (Steeljaw had the sound and vibration down, but he was not squoodgy like a good cat could be.) Serenity’s spark-self and Sarah-self conflicted for a moment in a flash of emotional turmoil. Lissi didn’t like fighting, it wasn’t right to drag her into it unwilling, was it? Versus the excitement of taking on a much larger, powerful foe with her wingmates beside her! Borealis wasn’t a veteran in the same league as Ironhide or Skyfire, but she had fought in real combat! She had taken on a whole battleship! And dented herself pretty badly, but hey Ratchet could fix just about anything, right? 

“Start on the ground,” Ironhide said. “Basic maneuvers. If you remember them, Little Bird…”

Borealis shot him a bland look and unsheathed her arm scythes.

Oh. 

Serenity saw Impulse and Volley’s optics widen, knew her own were doing the same. The curving blades more than doubled the delta’s already considerable reach, and the edges glowed orange-hot. 

“The bigger they are,” Impulse said, twirling his arm-bolters.

“Keep telling yourself that,” said Sideswipe. He kinda wanted in on this action too, what with Astrotrain and Blitzwing making themselves annoying lately; but it would probably be more fun to watch. 

There was a good deal of cautious circling at first, Borealis reluctant to throw the first punch. Ironhide bared his denta, but Skyfire was often just as bad. Judge the enemy by how he attacks, versus hit first hard enough and you might not have to hit again. Balance in all things, Ironhide supposed. Emboldened by her apparent reluctance and slowness, the alphas began to nip and harry her – there were three of them and she only had two arms.

Until Impulse got too close and Borealis stepped on him. Ironhide wasn’t sure what the poisonous look she shot the watching Thundercracker was all about. Probably he didn’t want to know. In any case, the alphas now knew to avoid her feet unless they could be very fast on their own. Risk assessment all part of the process. 

Wheel and bank, feint and drive, whirling faster. Borealis remained calm at the center, and Ironhide allowed himself a few nanoseconds of pleased pride. She was as good a student as she could be. Not everyone was forged a soldier. 

Volley ducked and swung under her arm, zipping inside her reach where he could do more damage and she couldn’t—

—do anything? He suddenly found himself pinned between her chest and upper arm. 

_Squeeze him,_ Ironhide said. 

_But…_ Borealis began. _Squishy…_

_Until his armor creaks._ They needed to understand that they could be crushed. They needed to respect others’ strengths. Arrogance was a common alpha trait. _Don’t assume getting closer gives you the advantage._ Volley yowled and Borealis let him go.

 _But our missiles and rays can’t penetrate her armor,_ Impulse complained. What was the use of distance weapons if they didn’t work, and of getting close if that got you smushed?

 _Not without putting a lot of energy into it, no,_ Ironhide agreed. _Together, though, you are a threat. Remember, too, that deltas are slower than you in atmosphere, and they’re not as maneuverable. They’re scientists, explorers. Cons may change their programming but that’s how ours are. They aren’t going to want to fight, and they’re slow to anger. Taunts won’t get you anywhere._ Ironhide made a face. _That said? Don’t piss off Skyfire. I mean it. Just don’t._ He decided not to mention at this point that in every hand-to-hand fight that he’d ever seen between Skyfire and Starscream they’d been evenly matched. Mutual hatred, perfectly balanced. _Now. Let’s start again._

The spar went on well into the afternoon; the young alphas chafing to get into the air, each leap at the delta’s head or wings lasting just a touch longer than gravity’s strict dictates allowed.

“All right!” Ironhide bellowed. “Take it to the roof!” _Thundercracker, Strake, monitor._

Borealis transformed and was already rising fast on AG drives. The new alphas scrambled in a flash of wings and feral grins to catch up. The elder alphas transformed and followed.

 _Keep her down in atmo,_ Ironhide warned. _Don’t let her reach stratopause or you’re toast._ Powerful and sleek, the alphas grabbed for height, pummeling the heavier ship below. The thinner the air, the more maneuverable and faster Borealis could get. 

“Good,” Ironhide muttered to himself. Borealis slipped and slid, fully utilizing three dimensions, but the nascent trine kept on her, pushing the advantage numbers and maneuverability gave them. The delta got past them a time or two, and made sure they remembered the lesson. There would always be more to learn. None of them could afford to become complacent. 

After the spar, Borealis felt pleasantly tired rather than exhausted. The alphas flocked off into the embassy to bathe and snuggle and recharge, but she activated her AG drives and floated up to the mesa top. Casual back flip because dude _antigravity_! She landed and settled into sphinx pose, glancing at Thundercracker, who pretended not to notice. Shifting her feet, she tapped her fingers on her knees. A few wisps of cirrus cloud above them seemed to hold some fascinating secret, considering how hard Thundercracker was staring at them. After a moment she side-eyed Thundercracker again; leaning in, then straightening. Smug bastard. Thundercracker stood very upright and poised, wings arrayed but also subtly tense. If she stepped on him now it would be in full knowledge of what it meant among Seekers. He wanted to get stepped on. Her growl distorted the air around her throat like heat-shimmer; rousing in him very alpha-ish responses. A worthy adversary. A challenge. An ally who could drop from above, who could traverse vast distances and arrive with unlooked-for aid.

Prowl ignored them. Strake gave every appearance – hard fought for – of doing so. Strake was pretty sure that if he laughed TC would smack him and Borealis might punch him. (Hulk punching Thor.)

Borealis considered her options, shifting the grip of her talons on the stone. Step on him or no? She flared her wings, balanced to leap, and locked gazes with him. He uncrossed his arms, similarly prepared. Their fields bubbled and flowed – then _flared_ and they sprang upward in unison, making for space.

Strake fell over laughing. Prowl, laughing softly more at Strake than TC, curled up against him. 

They spun circles around each other as they flew, closer and closer, until their wings touched. She thrummed at the expert brush of his hull against hers, and he rumbled his engines, sound transmitting through metal in the void. They nudged each other, belly to belly as she parked neatly at a volume of L5 not otherwise crowded. Borealis transformed. TC followed. His armor gleamed in the hard sunlight, a lighter blue than hers, striped on his wings with silver, marked in subtle places with glyphs, and in not so subtle places with fading scars. He was old and worn and hard…and so goddamn sexy she couldn’t fathom why she hadn’t grabbed him already. She wrapped a hand around his waist, her thumb along the edge of his chest. 

She half expected teeth and claws from him; and there was a fierceness in his gentle caresses, his sharp hands on her star-hardened armor. _Goddamn sexy jet… So sue me I like blue…_ She pressed her mouth to his lower abdomen, armor thinner under the chest. _So hot…_

He accepted this as his due, amused that the concept of “hot” was used in the same ways in English and Cybertronian. Seekers in general and especially alphas were attractive even to many non-Cybertronian species. To deny this with some feeble effort at false modesty or self-deprecation was pointless. 

_Like scoring a supermodel…_ she murmured, putting them into a slow spin so that his armor was now in sunlight, now in her shadow, storm-blue diamond bright then glossy-black reflecting stars.

 _No, that’s Mirage._ Sort of. Mirage was more like a geisha, the original meaning, when Westerners weren’t mistaking them for expensive prostitutes. A highly trained artist and entertainer. 

_Mmmm Mirage._

_We are in complete agreement there. Alphas are more like rock stars._

She laughed, though her mouth never left his body. He’d said it with such unshakeable assurance. Fair enough. Rock stars dated supermodels. _Can you sing?_

_Can you make me?_

She pushed the fine manipulators in her fingertips into gaps in his armor, seeking the lower thoracic nodes. Finding them. Thundercracker arched, bared his denta – and then she pulsed heavy scans through his chest. His spark pulsed back and he overloaded hard and fast, but so good. 

Primus, he liked deltas. Their soft, deep voices, their fantastic sensor arrays in long, sensitive hands, their fabulous engines. He’d liked deltas three billion years before Starscream had been kindled, and even if meeting Skyfire here on Earth was fraught, TC was still glad to see the white starship alive, glad to feel those big hands on his body again. And here, now this new one, who was in bloom for Skyfire – that was nice. Their mutual affection for the elder delta a bridge between them.

 _He likes you, too, you know,_ he rumbled, rousing quickly again enveloped in her fields. _More than he lets on._ More, maybe, than Skyfire knew himself. Well, they all had that problem sometimes.

 _Mm._ Skyfire liked her, she knew that. She had a sneaking suspicion that Skyfire liked her – at least in part, at least at first – because her spark had a great many resonances in common with Ratchet’s, and Skyfire’s love for Ratchet was deep and abiding. But she couldn’t explain that to Thundercracker. The tips of his thoracic cables tapped at her chest and she uncovered her ports, sleeking her own cables at him. The link engaged smooth as glass, though Borealis scrambled behind her outermost firewalls to set her inner thought-streams in order. Once she had her security protocols set, she opened up wider, welcoming his mind, curious and eager to share his wealth of memory. 

He wrapped his arms around her neck, touching forehelms. So young. So young! What had they done? What had they become? He understood the concept of children now, as he had never bothered to in all his long life. These newkindled sparks the Prime-as-Allspark was drawing forth, and the humans…such a young species, a child species…and he had swept through Beijing with their blood on his feet… 

With Prime’s help, he had excised the parts of his programming that had made it possible for him to do that, but if Prowl must endure the memories of what he’d done, so would Thundercracker. He kept the worst of it behind firewalls, but she felt the edges of his distress. Fleeting and firmly mastered. This wasn’t the time, and she didn’t need to watch him thrashing at himself. She was kissing him, trying to distract him, soothe him. Even if it didn’t work, even if she did something wrong, she had to try to help, he could feel that in her. Such Autobot coding.

Dangerous, she thought, this mech she was snogging. Ixchel had never liked bad boys. But she had always fancied older men. Fear me, love me. Do as I say and I will be your slave. No. This wasn’t that kind of story. This was old and scarred, young and battered, flight and new stars and dead planets and teetering on the edge of extinction. Everything lay under the shadow of the war. Evil the absence of love. Letting entropy win. To which side of that equation had she pledged herself? Maybe not so formal a vow as Ranger repeating a human oath upon his decantation, but hull and spark had she not felt it as deeply? 

He smiled, emotions mixed, and stroked her chest. _Open?_ If she wanted to distract him, that would be the best way.

Hm. She unsealed her chamber. She definitely wanted this, but it was going to be interesting. Drift knew about the merge process, he had progeny of his own. He had left the Decepticons five thousand years ago, though, and his conversion had been catastrophic, by the accounts she’d heard. No one who had them wanted to share those memories, and not many people had them. But Thundercracker and Strake had not been told. Not yet. Her merge scars from Tessera had faded almost completely, but she couldn’t disguise her spark. Well. Let him come to whatever conclusions he would. She opened her chest. 

Another thing he liked about deltas. Big sparks. This one had originally been half her current size, he knew, her spark grown to fit the body it powered. Going the other way was trickier – once you go big you don’t go back – though it could be done. It was done for the very aged. As their sparks became dim and feeble, they would be installed in small, light frames to prolong their lives. 

He hated that thought, loathed the idea of it. Slowly fading, weathering, corroding until even movement was an effort. 

That was long in the future for the pale blue giant before him, though. Hot and young and vital, drawing forth his own spark’s desire. Two sparks made to fly. Prominences flirted and flashed, stroking outward into each other’s chambers, striking deep with pleasure. Ah! He felt so fine, so well honed, full of a long life’s knowledge; canny and wise, protective and strong and more than a little broody. Ah! She felt so good, so curious, powerful, full of a scientist’s never-ending quest for knowledge; an explorer, determined and resilient, intelligent and more than a little nerdy. 

There was something else about her spark, though. Something familiar in the way she handled his, meeting him strength for strength, care with care, allowing him as far in as he could take, demanding nothing more of him than he could bear. She felt…she felt a little like…Prime? Not exactly like, but…

He hadn’t the cycles to formulate a more coherent thought; their shared energies gathered, coalesced; blue plasma rippled and ribboned over their armor, spinning out as perfect spheres in the weightlessness of space. 

Thundercracker fought hard to remain conscious. They weren’t entirely safe, though help if they needed it wasn’t far. He withdrew all but one pair of cables, stroking her face as she rebooted, immensely pleased that she had trusted him so. 

She came online slowly, doing thorough systems checks she must have picked up from Skyfire, stretching theatrically then curling around him and nuzzling his helm.

 _First memory?_ she warbled sleepily at him.

_Mm. Can’t. Not without some heavy-duty dredging. Will bits circa the reign of Volant and Alpha Trion do?_

_Ooooo! Yes please!_ Ratchet had shared some of that, too, but it would be fantastic to get a different perspective.

His first trine. Flocks of alphas gathered for Processions and Great Dances, flying in tight formation, swift and deadly in battle – the latter few and far between for much of his early career. 

She drank in the ancient architecture, the views of a planet she had only seen in ruins, outside of others’ memories. The arrayed Seekers and their Lord were breathtakingly beautiful, pale armor glittering in the warm sunlight, their Prime’s darker coloration a striking contrast. Borealis giggled.

_Oh my god, TC, seriously?_

_What?_

_Pastels??!!_ They were gorgeous, especially en masse like that, but it was fun to tease him. Ixchel Chase remembered the 80’s. 

_What’s wrong with pastels? They were very popular when I was your age._

_Did you have glittery eye makeup and poofy helms too?_

_…Er…_

_You did!_ She cackled, but he kept on with the memories, and she was soon lost in wonder again. Poofy helms in this case meant a lot of flanges and vanes and things, reminding her powerfully of Perceptor in full-on inquisitive mode. Mmm, Perceptor…

The tenor of his recall became more intimate. Logical enough, considering what they’d been doing. What their bodies were still rather lazily doing. Thundercracker had enjoyed the Prime often. First Volant, but then Optimus – delightfully young, so gentle, so different from his predecessor… Borealis ducked away, trying to steer the stream toward more general memories of Great Dances, but so many of those had ended in the Prime’s arms she veered again and again, arguing with herself even as she did so. Would it be so awful? She was being silly! Childish, ridiculous, bigoted…but the very idea, the mere thought still put her off powerfully. It wasn’t revulsion exactly, but a deep-seated, overwhelming feeling of DO NOT WANT that she had had little inclination to try to overcome. And now her stupid human bias was going to imperil herself and every newspark and progenitor.

Thundercracker wasn’t pursuing, though that impulse was in him; to hunt down the reason for her aversion to what was to everyone else a highly desirable activity. It wasn’t polite to press for reasons, not when everyone carried scars from the war, he knew that very well. But what was this about? He couldn’t help being curious. She wasn’t that old. What could Prime have done to her in so short a time? What _would_ Prime have done? Why would this bother her when her own spark was so like Prime’s…? Her spark…

Prime was drawing sparks from the Allspark. Thundercracker _knew_ that. The Graveyard Legion mechs admitted themselves that they were the sparks of the dead, re-embodied. Galvatron had done the same thing. The ravine kids Countermeasure had told them of were new sparks, though; yet also drawn from the Allspark, the kindling Prime had turned from the course Galvatron had intended. But what if there was something else going on, too?

Why would two sparks that weren’t twins be so similar? Why would Borealis feel both like Prime and like Ratchet? How did that make any kind of sense? Unless.

This planet.

This disgusting organic planet.

The humans. They made new people, by combining information and matter from two parents. They _mated_.

Kup meeting Hot Rod. Drift meeting Afterburner. Those could have been old friends in new bodies. But what if they weren’t? Prowl and Blades. Blades was new. Not just a new body, he was _new_. Young. A…child… Whose spark felt like Prowl’s. And like Prime’s.

Thundercracker reeled. _That’s… Not… Possible…_

_Uh, Prime?_

**Little Bird?**

_I blew it. I’m sorry! I think TC’s figured out sex makes babies. Or he’s about to._

_You._ TC’s glyph was the plural, warform, meaning “you Autobots”. _You’ve…_

**Skyfire!**

_Yes, Prime?_

**Get me up there NOW!**

_Yes, Prime!_

_You’ve…been doing…_

Borealis glowered at a hot white streak arcing up toward them from the planet. She had reported a security breach, not called for the cavalry. Ten kilometers. Five kilometers. At 500 meters Skyfire transformed, Prime kicking free of his dorsal hull and jetting closer, optics on Thundercracker. Strake, carrying Prowl, arrived a few seconds later, while Thundercracker was still sputtering.

_You’ve been doing… **sex**!_

_Oh god,_ Borealis sighed. _Well. Yeah. Technically._

 _It doesn’t resemble the human method,_ Skyfire said, as though somehow that would help. He chirped TC the basic merge file, sans the Vector protocols.

TC struggled in Borealis’ arms, she let him go and he rounded on Prime. _OUR FIRST SPARK-CHILD IN TEN BILLION YEARS AND YOU PUT HUMAN BRAIN ENGRAMS IN IT???_

**The Ma—**

_OMGWTFBBQ THIS AGAIN???_ Borealis roared. Her hands clenched and unclenched. She wanted to smack TC, but if she hit him as hard as she wanted to she’d dent his helm and that was way kinkier than she wanted to get with someone she’d been snogging two minutes ago.

Skyfire folded his wings back and down, looking distinctly embarrassed.

 **Oh dear,** said Prime.

Glaring lightsabers at pretty much everyone, Borealis transformed around Thundercracker – who made a major production out of not protesting – and arrowed for Mars. 

_Which…ones are yours?_ Strake asked Prowl. Prowl turned and hugged him.

 _Blades, Nightbeat, Afterburner, Strafe, the Pleiades, Tideline and Highwire._ Prowl included his partners for each merge, and the dates of kindling and decantation. _Blades made Breakaway with Evac, and Spandrel with the rest of the Protectobots. Nightbeat made Crosshairs with Ultra Magnus._

_So you’re a grandparent._

_Yes. There are some third generation newsparks among the Water Babies._

_The Water Babies are all…?_

_Perceptor’s. Usually with Beachcomber, but one batch was with Seaspray and another with Hoist._ Prowl knew Perceptor wanted a batch – or three – with Prime, but Optimus had been uncharacteristically uncooperative, and uncommunicative regarding why not. 

Strake pressed his forehelm to Prowl’s. _You’re not telling me something._ The angle of Prowl’s subharmonics had been evasive. There was something Prowl was hoping Strake wouldn’t ask.

_Sparks made in this way are entangled with their parent sparks. Somewhat like twinning, but the effects are in certain ways more pronounced. There is no communication in terms of language, but there is a certain…awareness. Particularly of a spark’s state of…being._

_If you were killed, Blades and Nightbeat and the rest would feel it?_ Targeting the worst possible case. 

_Yes._

_And if any of your progeny were killed you and whomever you made them with would feel it?_

_Yes. When Evac died, Breakaway nearly extinguished in the growth tank, and Blades – because the effect on Breakaway echoed to him – briefly lost consciousness._ Prowl wasn’t certain whether the unease he’d felt in his own spark at that point had been a further echo from Blades or simply his own grief and pain. 

Strake gaped at him in horror, shaking him a little, hands rough on Prowl’s shoulders. _Prowl!_ Thirteen hostages for Prowl’s spark. Thirteen! The bonds of love and honor and long friendships among Cybertronians had been weakness enough that Megatron had slowly reprogrammed them to reject them bit by bit. Now Prime had led his people into absolute, physical bonds they couldn’t undo or reprogram their way out of. The Autobots were _insane_.

 _We’re all connected, Strake,_ Prowl said. _One way or another. To each other, to Prime, to our children. Links which, yes, cannot be broken._ He kissed Strake, soothing with lips and hands and fields. _I think it will save us, not destroy us._

_Are you forecasting that?_

_Yes._

Strake rumbled, unsettled. Then huffed and banked his wings. _All right._

…

That hadn’t gone as planned, Optimus thought glumly, on the ride back to Nevada. (Skyfire was conspicuously silent.)

 **Don’t ask us,** said Lustral in the Matrix. **You’re on your own for this kind of thing.**

 **None of us ever reproduced. Except Volant,** Palladium said thoughtfully. Maybe wistfully. Optimus wasn’t certain. Maximal and Zeta were yelling at each other. Rather loudly. And Decorum was trying to intervene, which sometimes helped, but…not when Zeta was involved.

 **Yes, but I didn’t…stick around to raise him,** Volant pointed out. 

Optimus aimed a tight-beam down to Earth. **Ratchet?**

_Yes. You did._

**…What?**

_The question you were going to ask me. “Did I just frag off our daughter?” The answer is yes._

**I see.** A significant fraction of his personality programming involved the desire and ability to ease people who were upset. Not to upset them in the first place or make them more so. He had examined this programming in minute detail over the millennia of the war, dissecting where he had failed with Megatron. He had long ago come to the uncomfortable conclusion that while he had made a number of mistakes regarding his twin, he could not have prevented, or fixed, everything. He wasn’t the only influence. Megatron had his own programming, had made his own decisions. He couldn’t wave his hands and make everything all right again. He couldn’t make his brother well. And that hurt. 

_Oh stop fretting,_ Ratchet grumbled. _You’ll live._

…

The Noctis Labyrinthus. Where Autobots and Decepticons had united – if briefly – to fight Thunderwing. Down a small side-canyon where an autonomic scan would pick up no traces of frozen energon. Borealis found a spur of rock and pushed Thundercracker up against it, the angle of the stone fitting neatly, comfortably between his wings. The kissing didn’t stop for a long while.

Night fell, though, and the mist around them froze. Borealis curled around Thundercracker, activating her more powerful shields and spinning up her spark to keep them warm. 

“You’re not afraid of alphas any more?” His voice was faint in the thin atmosphere, but she had turned up the gain on her audials.

“No. Not alphas in general.” 

“Being wary of Starscream in particular is wise. And don’t discount Skywarp. He’s impulsive, rash, but it makes him unpredictable.” 

She mimicked a sigh and nibbled on his crest. She supposed talking about Starscream was inevitable, but she wasn’t about to encourage Thundercracker to elaborate. “Prowl’s going to be almighty sexy as an alpha. Skyfire showed me the latest version of their plans.”

“Whaaaat? Gimme!”

“No, no, bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

Thundercracker couldn’t even swear properly, all that came out of his vocoder was garbled noise. He flailed out of her embrace but she caught him by an ankle and pulled him back to ground. 

“Jets,” she said, grinning like both her progenitors at once, “are ticklish!”

~~~~~~

A week later.

Thundercracker watched them. Standing with the others on the mesa top, he dug his claws into the stone of the northern edge, optics gleaming. Keenly aware of Strake brushing against his wings on his starboard side. And Prowl, between them; almost three meters shorter, but his fields, his presence in their private cloud, the sheer magnitude of his touch on their hulls vastly larger. Prowl's engine purred, watching the young ones fly. They were all affected, but Thundercracker knew he and Strake felt a particular ache. 

They were rushing this, he thought, but maybe being sparked first and building themselves for two years changed things. 

The first trine to claim this world’s skies. 

Ranger watched them. Not part of this formal arrangement, and yet part. They would make newsparks together; he and each of them, all of them together. Three points describe a plane, but four described the third dimension.

Down at his feet, Annabelle bounced like a teenager. She was a grandmother now. How had that become a thing? Ranger wondered. How fast would human lives go by for him now? How could sixteen years have gone by so quickly? He felt a sudden levinbolt of sympathy for Ironhide. For Mirage and Tracks and Wheeljack. For Hound and Perceptor and Bee and Ratchet. All those who loved fleeting humans. Fleeting humanity. 

Annabelle watched them. “My mother the fighter jet,” she murmured, zooming with enhanced lenses. She didn’t have the tracking software, though, so it was quite a trick to follow the exuberant loops and dives of the three-dimensional ballet going on far above. 

Ranger grinned, rumbling his engine happily. 

My father the truck. It sounded surreal put so baldly. 

“Are they even human any more?” Nick had asked late one night. Anna had stroked his cheek fondly. 

“Of course they aren’t. They’re Cybertronian. And they love us like Cybertronians do, with all the power and grace of their sparks.” Giving up being human, was it so terrible? But she had grown up with robots, and Nick hadn’t. It wasn’t his fault – and she thought of it as a lack, a poverty, evoking compassion toward those not so privileged. Dani and Nate understood, and the Epps daughters. Dani maybe understood certain things even better than Anna and the others, having taken a robot Companion. Consort. Something like that. And Dani was more than half robot herself. Most of her peripheral nerves replaced by biomimetic wire; metal and nanofactories lacing her bones; heart entirely artificial now, after that valve problem ten years ago. More things installed in her brain than even Anna wanted to know about. Dani so far looked entirely human, though her options for Halloween were vastly expanded. Anna envied that every year.

In a sci-fi movie, Danaela would be the monster. Autobot Dani. The Modern Promethea! To be justly punished for hubris with fire and windmills. And what of Perceptor who aided and abetted? Who had watched Dani’s cells divide since before her birth, who knew more about her personal physiology than any human ever had. Wasn’t Dani sort of his first daughter, as much his child as Mikaela and Sam’s? Did Perceptor’s love for his legion of children since make his love for Dani any less? No. Anna agreed with the Dalai Lama and Prime. Love and compassion were infinite, inexhaustible. 

In the sky above, three bright jets danced, following intricate, ancient patterns Serenity had wheedled – very effectively – out of Thundercracker. A dance whose forms had never been seen in Earth’s blue sky, that hadn’t been seen anywhere since before multicellular life had oozed around Earth’s oceans. 

Thundercracker watched them, and was happy.

~~~~~~

2080 – March

**Jury!**

_Frag. Sorry, Prime, Sinnertwin got around behind me. Gotta say, I prefer being sniped to shredded._

**I’m so sorry.**

_No, no, it’s fine. I’m up for re-enlistment, though. Got anything in the pipe?_

**Oh Jury… The Germans have a yard full of old aircraft they’d like me to enspark.**

_Umm…I wasn’t thinking Legion this time, actually. Next time you merge, add me to the queue? You need a custodian for the Theresa memories, yes?_

**!!!**

_You’re so cute when you’re floored._

**Heh. Hmm. The plan for those engrams is that Mirage and I will merge once he has recovered sufficiently – and I would like very much to get another newspark from him. But if you’d like to harbor them as well?**

_Sure, why not? Humans are interesting!_

**As you wish! Thank you, Jury.**

…

It was an unseasonably cold night, the desert’s early spring interrupted by wind shrieking down out of the northeast, carrying the taste of snow off the Rockies. Mirage hugged himself and put up his shields. A good night to be down in the Mossary, or one of the bunkhouses, with Hound and whomever else was about and in the mood. Inferno maybe; always in the mood, that one, and a nice big hot chassis to warm oneself by.

Or…

Mirage pressed the flat of his hand against his central seam. Maybe the cold had at last blunted the sharpest edges of his grief. He’d come to love Theresa so much. The shared stories, love of literature, of words and the ways they could be made to dance through another’s mind, even thousands of years later. Laughing over the snotty, whiny, passionate poetry of Catullus, and his striking similarities to Witsledge, who had also died young, long ago during the reign of Lustral Prime and Lord Stormshatter. Enjoying their shared labors in her garden, Mirage taking over more and more as the quicksilver seasons passed and Theresa’s tall, strong body grew frail. She had never remarried.

_Optimus?_

**Mmm?**

Optimus made the most wonderful interrogative noises. Mirage laughed softly at himself. Halfway to heated up just from the sound of his Prime’s voice. _Now?_

 **Most assuredly! Where would you like?** Merges were seldom performed in the growth chamber these days, especially if Prime was one of the participants. He could easily carry a single newspark, or an entire clutch, whatever the needed distance to the waiting tanks.

_The Mossary._

**On my way!**

Mirage sprang down from the mesa top, boulder to buttress, and skated into the hangar. Garnering handclasps and kisses from various mechs as he passed them. Only a handful of night-shift humans were about, and they were more than used to Cybertronian modes of affection.

“Give the big guy an extra flourish for me,” Jazz said, swooping in for a long snog and grope. Mirage pulsed his cloaking field at him, making Jazz shiver and hum.

Hound said nothing, but his optics and fields communicated the branching, flowering tree of his emotions as he drew Mirage into a brief but intense hug. 

Down in the Mossary, Optimus had arranged himself on the wide stone ledge on the far side of the pool. Stretched out with his ankles crossed, fingers laced behind his helm. He had quite unnecessarily removed strategic pieces of his armor, stacked neatly against the side wall. Mirage felt the gold tips of his thoracic cables extend from their housings, and the longing to touch zing like charge from his hands up through his spark to his entire body. He swayed through the moss garden, almost dancing, a subtle ripple running up his torso, fields licking forward at and into Prime’s. Stroking himself lightly here and there – understated gestures that would be easily missed if one weren’t watching for them – he smiled at the vivid flare of Prime’s optics. 

Optimus extended an arm, giving him a hand up, and Mirage straddled Prime’s waist, loving the way Optimus ran his fingers up and down the backs of his legs as he leaned against that broad red chest and tilted his head up for a kiss. Cables sleeked between them, closing the small remaining distance between them. Mirage opened his armor, touching protoform to protoform. 

**Mmmmmirrrrr…**

A line of bronze gleamed the length of one of the struts in Optimus’ neck, visible only as he tipped his head back. Wire-thin, the bright inlay was inscribed with microscopic glyphs. Mirage traced it with a fingertip, shivering at the strange currents it introduced into their mingled fields. Irrevocable changes. Neither Ratchet nor Perceptor had any idea how long Prime could stave off this particular transformation. Mirage kissed the fine line of encroaching Allspark material, moved along the edge of Prime’s jaw, settled into the kiss as their mouths met. 

By his arts, Mirage overloaded his Prime three times before they began the merge. The sight of Optimus strutless and steaming beneath him was pleasing indeed. His armor was polished to a high sheen these days – Elita, Jazz and Prowl had conspired to keep Prime entirely out of combat since the brief capture of Soundwave. And Primus help anyone who tried to thwart those three. 

Their cables grew hot as they sank into the deep link, the Mossary now lit by blue-white and bright copper reflecting off the still water of the pond. They spiraled around and around each other, sinking deeper, falling, until with a piercing effort they reached the field of blossoming stars. Mirage made a low, helpless sound, but Prime steadied him, warm and patient, as the possibilities gleamed and beckoned, no two alike, every one some combination of the two of them. Choosing was the hard part; having matter stripped from one’s spark was simple by comparison. In his mind, Mirage drew the oldest glyph for “love” that he knew – he was working on a new one, for the love of ephemerals – and chose the spark-pattern that rested beneath the last stroke. Optimus hummed happily and the lightning struck, blazing scars across their chests as first one, and then, surprise, another spark whirled into being between them. 

Had Prime chosen one as well, or…? When Mirage briefly unshuttered his optics, the thin line of Allspark material in Optimus’ neck was still glowing. He smiled and surrendered himself to recharge. 

**Ratchet…we need two…**

Shaking his head but smiling, Ratchet keyed the next tank for prep and fill. He’d been tinkering with the peripherals and now it only took a few minutes for a cold tank to warm up and be ready with protomass and growth colloid for a new spark. Getting more than you intended had become…not unusual. Not that Prime minded keeping the extras cuddled around the edges of his open spark chamber. Ratchet wondered if the new sparks ever jiggled at each other, vying for who got to stay with him longest. He would, in their place. Gotta plug into a body sometime, kid. Tel and Ven said bodies were overrated. Ratchet wasn’t sure how Prowl felt about it. He’d shared Prowl’s first memories, knew that Lance had not wanted to be embodied. Or at least not as a ground vehicle. How might things have been different if Prowl had been given a delta body? Or an omega? Probably, for one thing, he would have been dead by now, given how few deltas had survived. The omegas were all gone.

Spiral’s AI precursor had been curious, had desired the experience of embodiment. But had the part of Prowl that had been Lance reconciled itself to the change? Had it struggled in the grip of the logic-sinks when they took it from the _Fission Blade_? How cruel had they been to an entity they had wished to honor for bravery and kindness and shrewd understanding? That could have gone hideously wrong, but they had gotten such a spark in Prowl… 

The new body they would build for him would be worthy of that spark.

Ratchet steered his processor back to the present as Optimus came through the door, one hand over his chest. Where was his armor? Never mind. “There you go, there you go,” Ratchet cooed, tipping the new sparks into their tanks to nestle into their protomass. One (a lovely periwinkle blue) seemed to poke about in its hollow curiously, the other (aquamarine a touch greener than Wheeljack’s) set to beginning its bodily construction with single-minded purpose, as though it already had a plan and was anxious to get started. They weren’t twins, that was clear enough. Had Prime and Mirage decided to kindle two for some reason; two of the myriad patterns that would have arrayed themselves before them shining at them particularly beguilingly?

It didn’t matter. Optimus had gone back to the Mossary to curl around Mirage; and Mirage’s fields, before fading offline, had been happy. 

~~~~~~

2080 - September

She found Ratchet up on the mesa top. Ironhide was sprawled out half on his lap and Ratchet had a hand splayed on his abdomen, moving it slowly in circles. Mikaela stopped, and almost turned around to retreat back down the ladder, but then she saw that First Aid was kneeling beside them, watching intently. Not what she was thinking then. Although Aid’s presence didn’t preclude snuggles, something about his demeanor said study and concern, not…snuggliness.

“What…are you doing?” she asked, walking around Ironhide’s huge feet to stand next to Aid. Aid moved a panel on his leg, offering her a higher platform for viewing if she wanted it. She climbed up readily. Even from a better vantage it still looked like Ratchet was just sitting there rubbing Ironhide’s tummy. “He eat a fridge past its expiration date?”

“Ha ha,” grumbled Ironhide. 

“Diagnostic belly rub,” Aid explained. As if that was some kind of technical term, instead of something he’d made up right then. 

“Diagnostic belly rub.”

“Oh yes. It’s the latest technology.”

Ratchet rolled his optics – a habit he’d picked up from her, though it was like pulling teeth to get him to admit it. “Ironhide is leaking somewhere inside. His self-repair I think would close it eventually, but not as fast as I’d like. Rampage’s needler.” The Autobots of course weren’t the only ones to constantly develop new weaponry. Rampage had a new double row of tiny launch ports running down the back of his beast mode. The needle-like projectiles had an energy component to them – fields which sliced through most shields like a laser through foil. Fortunately, these new field mechanics were only usefully efficient at a very small scale; something larger, like, say, a cannon, would fall victim not only to horrific fuel consumption but wildly erratic quantum fluctuations. That is if you could get the thing to operate at all without blowing itself to smithereens. Someone had commented that now Rampage was like a porcupine, throwing quills, and Wheeljack had whirled whomever it was around, kissed them and then ran off to his tower. Mikaela was looking forward to finding out what he came up with. From a suitably safe distance. Preferably a different state. Maybe a different hemisphere. 

So, anyway, First Aid hadn’t been kidding exactly. Ratchet had some of the same kinds of scanners in his hands as Skyfire did. Mikaela could appreciate how finding a series of small leaks, or even one, might be difficult, even for their high tech senses. They were mechanical beings, sure, but you couldn’t just prop open a copy of Popular Mechanics and wave a wrench around and hope to get anywhere. Their metal was biological. And as Lennox had once pointed out, even mechanical devices could be finicky and complex. Some guns – British and German in particular, he’d said – were so finely machined that if you took one apart you had to put it back together just exactly right or the pieces wouldn’t fit. And you couldn’t replace a worn or broken piece from another gun because that wouldn’t fit either. The LHC wasn’t exactly built with Legos. Cybertronian bodies were at least several orders of magnitude more complicated than any rifle. 

“If you move your hand a little to the left does his back leg start shaking?”

“I can hear you,” said Ironhide. His optics were off, though. He might be in some pain. Maybe only a little, maybe a lot – or maybe Ratchet had switched his nociceptors off if the data they were sending were muddying the waters as it were. 

“No, but his tail wags,” First Aid said. 

Ironhide’s arms twitched, as though he was longing to spin out his cannons…but was feeling too lazy to bother. Optimus came up the “ladder” to join them.

“May I have a diagnostic belly rub, too?” He lay down next to Aid, who fluttered his hands for a moment, and then situated himself – without dislodging Mikaela – so that he could reach. 

“Okay,” said Mikaela, covering her eyes and miming a flinch. She was good at pretending to be Sam. “Do I need to leave?” Frisky robots! Optimus stretched extravagantly under Aid’s hands, then relaxed just as elaborately, purring like a giant fragging lion. “I’m out,” Mikaela said. Groping Optimus was more than she was prepared to deal with, especially with Ratchet (TMI personified) poised to reveal the most embarrassing things possible about her current physiological state.

~~~~~~

2082 - March

“Another flyer,” Rain said faintly, entranced. Not an alpha, though. She was nothing his CPU could identify. Like many of the Water Babies, she was something new. 

“My name,” the eagle said, spreading her knife-feathered wings, “is Airazor.” Mirage sang her name into the welcoming canticle, taking her hands tenderly as she folded her wings back. Memory-custodian for Theresa Epps.

“Holy mother of pearl,” Borealis muttered. “Why didn’t I think of that?” 

“Yeah, yeah, call me Jury again, it’s easier,” said the other new person. Not a new spark, though. “Figured we could use another chopper, what with all those retro jets the Legion just got. Hey, Blades, c’mere, sweets.”

“Jury?” Blades hugged her hard, but his fields wobbled.

_No, honey, I’m not Evac. You know that. Volant went back to the Matrix._

_I guess so. I’m sorry! I’m happy to see_ you _again, too!_ It was still an odd thought, to him, that Breakaway was thus a Prime kid. Just not an _Optimus_ Prime kid. He didn’t suppose it really mattered. It was just odd.

 _I know you are, hush. I know you are._ “Ahh, Wheeljack, give us a squudge!”

“Good to have you back,” Wheeljack said, snuggling into a space the two copters opened for him between them. It was definitely Jury. He’d always told himself he agreed with Prime that it was best not to try to match spark-signatures of the Legion with those of long-departed friends. There were so many, after all. Not Keel was as far as he generally let himself get. Besides, would Keel ever come back, given the chance? Always complaining he needed a vacation. 

“Good to be back,” Jury murmured into Wheeljack’s helm. She suspected she would always come back, as long as he was alive too. 

~~~~~~

“My Lord Galvatron.”

“Shockwave. What are you doing to my army?”

“My Lord?”

“I did not create them to be fodder for your experiments. Particularly when those experiments prove so…destructive.”

“Sacrifices must sometimes be made in order to further the pursuit of knowledge, Lord.” Repeatable results were vital. Megatron had understood that.

“I was not referring to the rebuilding – yet again, must I remind you – of your laboratory. I am referring to the loss of one hundred of my Silent Legion.”

“My Lord. The members of your Silent Legion have proven unsuitable for further modification. I ceased using them 8.6 quartexes ago.” 

Galvatron stalked a languid circle around him, dipping his helm to snuffle one of Shockwave’s head-fins. Shockwave ignored this. “No,” said Galvatron. “You’ve moved on to using the newer…recruits.” He trailed a fingertip over the angled plates of Shockwave’s chest. “I of course applaud your efforts to cull the weak, but I do rather wonder what exactly it is you’re working on.”

“Rest assured, my Lord, I will inform you immediately when my efforts yield useful results.”

“Of course, Shockwave, of course. In the meantime I would prefer it if you would make an effort to reduce the number of mortalities.” 

“I understand, my Lord.”

“I am certain you do.” Galvatron left him.

Shockwave considered. Runabout and Runamok had just arrived from out-system. They were a twinned spark. Perhaps a twinned spark would more easily render up the unity that seemed to be required for a merge. 

~~~~~~

“Ratchet?” _Ratchet!_ Maggie shifted to comms as she ran down the spiral stair from her and Glen’s apartment to the hangar and across to the med-bay. _Ratchet, there’s something wrong with Chipchip!_ It wasn’t like the microbot to remain cold and offline in phone mode once she picked him up. 

Ratchet met her in the doorway and knelt to take Chipchip. He scanned the microbot silently. When he was done he didn’t say anything, only placed his other hand over the small, still form. Optimus approached from the other side of the hangar and also knelt. Maggie took one look at him and burst into tears. 

“His spark faded a few minutes ago, Maggie,” Optimus said. “I’m sorry.”

Maggie took the little body back from Ratchet. Just a phone now? With a dead battery? No. “What are you…? I mean, what should I…?” she wiped reflexively, uselessly at her face. _We can’t bury him, can we? There are trace toxic metals? We don’t have to send him to the Laurentian do we?_

“No,” said Ratchet. “That was a stopgap measure at best. I might be able to use his components to repair other micros. Or…?” He looked up at Optimus. 

“We can ask one of the jets to take him to the sun. It is up to you, Maggie.”

She kept her hands pressed around the little phone, didn’t look up at him. _You felt him?_ That meant Chipchip had had a real spark, had been a real little person. She hadn’t been anthropomorphizing to think of him so.

 **Yes. His pattern is a small but distinct ember in the Allspark. He is joyful. He retains memory of you with great love and affection.**

She sobbed openly. What was she going to do without him? No more midi serenades or unexpectedly orchestral showtunes. No more little friend riding on her shoulder. He hadn’t been a pet; he _talked_ , he knew things, he understood more than what was spoken. He’d spent most of the time sleeping on her pillow these last few years, but whenever he was awake he wanted to know what the newsparks were doing. She leaned against Prime’s foot and cried. He lifted her to his chest and held her there, rubbing her back, letting her cry all over his windshield. 

“Ratchet,” she said, finally, holding out the small body. Using his parts to maybe extend the lives of the other minis was the best thing she could think of. Ratchet took him gently, his fingertips lingering on her hand.

~~~~~~

2082 - June

Sunlight through the crystal cast a vivid heliotrope splash across Tracks’ cheek spar. He turned it this way and that, watching the light reflecting and refracting. He felt more than heard Mirage’s approach.

“I’m so sorry.” Mirage stopped short of actual physical contact, though his fields were open and concerned. Tracks had stormed out of the embassy in his flight mode, engines howling. Mirage had followed him, on the ground, to the Oregon base. “Is that his…?”

“Yes.” Raoul had been shot half a block from his own home; caught in rival gang crossfire. They hadn’t even bothered to rob his body. “He always was negligent about updating, though. This is from last year.” Tracks closed the memory shard in a fist. Mirage stepped closer, lifting a hand.

“Tracks. Don’t…”

“He never told his family about anything. About us. What he wanted. His life was compartmentalized, and we were just a small compartment. I’m not even certain he wanted his mindstate preserved; or if he was just humoring me.” Which was fair enough, Tracks thought. Raoul had known he would exist for such a miniscule fraction of Tracks’ lifetime. He’d hardly rate a footnote on the bedpost or some such nonsense. It was the quality of the interaction rather than the quantity, Tracks had tried to convince him. Tracks had thought he’d done so. Now he wasn’t sure. 

Mirage wrapped his arms around himself. “Could you…perhaps download the memories yourself? To see what he truly wanted?”

“Oh, come here, Mirage,” Tracks said, holding out an arm to him, “before you rattle something loose.” Mirage clamped onto him and they exchanged cables. _I might do that, yes. Or Smokey and Jack might be able to read them from the crystal well enough to determine whether it would be all right to load them into a newspark. I don’t know. Sometimes this human memory thing seems like an amazing, fantastic idea, and then suddenly it doesn’t. The legal complications aren’t even… Prowl worked all that out in about half a breem and that’s with half his old Counselor coding still compressed in long-term storage. I just… Mir, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do._

Mirage closed his hand over the hand holding the memory shard. “Don’t do anything rash, then. Give yourself time.” Tracks had been so kind when Theresa had died, Mirage was determined to return the favor. But he didn’t know whether or not Tracks had had organic, ephemeral friends before. Didn’t know how Tracks coped with losses like this. With loss in general. Tracks was such a hardshell, sometimes.

“Mouthy brat,” Tracks grumbled, holding Mirage tight but glaring at the crystal malevolently. “Even dead he’s still giving me a headache.”

“You strutless scraplet,” Mirage laughed, optics cycling wide. “You’re afraid you won’t be able to keep up with a mech with Raoul’s personality!”

“What?! Shut up!”

…

They installed the memories of course. Raoul’s spirit, if not his explicit verbal instructions, demanded nothing less. Tracks reflected that letting Prime “comfort” one into a merge wasn’t the worst way to go about it, especially after the second overload in “preparation”. 

Lying sprawled on Prime’s open chest, Tracks hazily watched Ratchet bustle about the tank. “We probably deserve whatever we get out of this,” he muttered. 

Ratchet laughed; he’d met Raoul. “You mean _you_ deserve. Your progeny. No turning back now.”

“Peachy.” Tracks shuttered his optics, recharge stealing over him, system by system. He sent a last, shining, singing glyph to Mirage.

~~~~~~

2082 – August 

Graham strolled into the hangar, trailing grandchildren on holiday in the States. As the kids dispersed, each finding their favorite Embassy Bot (including 10-year-old Estarra, who liked to go into the Security office and watch Prowl and Red at work. They didn’t mind, as she never spoke and carefully stayed out of their way, sitting on the small gantry along one wall, sometimes swinging her feet, sometimes reading off her contacts), Graham climbed up to the mezzanine to sit next to Maggie and Glen. They were all three about the same age, but Graham couldn’t help notice how much younger Maggie especially seemed. Graham hadn’t taken much augmentation, even after Perceptor had fine-tuned a set of nanites for him that didn’t set off an allergic reaction. 

Bots and humans passed, waving or calling greetings, as the old friends from NEST days chatted. 

And then suddenly the robots went still. It took him a moment to realize, for the human conversations continued another beat or two. Graham was reminded of the time a wild rabbit ventured down the ramp at the Oregon base and all the Bots had frozen, watching. Even Trailbreaker, the big lug. Rhosgobel rabbit. The Bots now were looking at him, optics bright and soft. Prime came out of the war room, measured tread and slow. Graham leaned forward to set the front legs of his chair on the floor.

“What is it?” he whispered, but he cupped a hand over his breast pocket, where his micro, Tiktok slept.

“Anthony, Tiktok’s spark has extinguished,” Prime said softly, touching his own chest. Graham shook his head. No. He took her out, the little gold pocket-watch he’d gotten from his great-uncle and had carried even in combat. She’d become a person by accident, like Chipchip and Icon and Scuffle and the others. His wee chippie. Her ticking had stopped, true, but she was still warm, how could she be extinguished?

Her warmth, he realized, was from him.

“Her pattern has joined with Chipchip’s.”

Graham nodded. “Good, then. Thank you.” It wasn’t like he could talk with her directly. He’d seen vid of the way Prime had to bend himself back, crack himself open to let others access the Allspark within. That kind of exposure would be like sitting around just outside Hiroshima when the bomb went off. Graham traced the chased pattern of leaves and berries, the fancy Victorian swirls of the initials of the watch’s original owner, his great-great-great uncle. He didn’t want to give up the family heirloom, even if the internals were no longer brass and steel gearworks; but would keeping her body be morbid? Or offend the Bots? 

_I can remove her obviously Cybertronian parts,_ Ratchet tight-beamed. _I could synthesize replica parts if you wanted it to be a functional timepiece again._

Graham nodded, acknowledging, not deciding. Would gutting the Tiktok parts of the watch be like pretending she had never existed? He pressed the little stud on the side to open the cover. He hadn’t done that for years. It had seemed rude. 

**You need not decide right away,** Prime said.

She wasn’t going to…rot, then, was she. Of course not. Metal and a little bit of carbon crystal. He flicked a rad filter over his vision for a second. She wasn’t even radioactive any more. “I think…I think I’d like to keep her. With me. For a while. If it’s all right.”

“Of course,” Prime said, touching his shoulder. 

Twenty-five years later, the robot custodian of Graham’s mindstate would have the watch imbedded on the inside of his chest armor. 

~~~~~~

 _What are they doing?_ Strake banked hard right, making Countermeasure whoop with delight, and came in low, transforming and landing on the road south of Wheeljack’s tower. Perceptor, Rutile and the Constructicons were spreading a glittering something out across the cleared space in front of the tower’s entrance. Thundercracker, carrying Prowl, landed beside Strake.

“We are testing the solar collection net we will use to power the space bridge,” Perceptor explained, smiling up at the young Seeker. 

From ten meters away, Perceptor heard as much as felt Prowl lock up.

Perceptor set his section of net carefully on the ground. He approached the tactician slowly, put strong- and fine-arms around Prowl, pressed their chests and temporal spars together. Prowl moved his head slightly, jamming his helm against the tip of Perceptor’s cannon. Prowl had been on the dayside when Cybertron’s sun had been destroyed. His experiences of star deaths had started bad and gotten worse. Perceptor’s optics spun wide and white. 

“You’re going to destroy a sun,” Prowl whispered. He’d known this was the plan for years. He knew the designations and locations of all five of the stars scouted by Skyfire and chosen by Perceptor. He had been thrown into flashbacks then, too; and again each time the plan to move Cybertron was discussed. But he was looping badly now, confronted with the mechanism by which they would harvest the energy from the induced novae. Coryx Primaris collapsing, leaving its planets and the civilization there in darkness and cold, over and over. Billions of sapient lives, trillions, maybe quadrillions of living things slain by his knowledge, if not directly by his hand. Prime’s work had attached other memories indelibly to this sequence, forcing Prowl to consider the whole. Though these were not pleasant memories either. Rutile and the other mechs around him whispered for him to share, to help them understand. 

It unfolded through the cloud mind. Sentinel cornering him on the bridge, every other optic turned away from the confrontation – except Trochar, whom Prowl had trusted until then, coming up behind and slipping in a medical override that paralyzed all of Prowl’s motor functions. Including all three energon pumps. Prowl could only stand there, locked down, locked in, Sentinel’s words – persuasive, poisonous – in his audials as his CPU slowly began to fade, his body cooling, chameleon mesh nanocells dying first, his spark spinning franticly in his chest. He should have erased the files long before Trochar got past his firewalls. He should have let them kill him, or sabotaged the _Rapacious_ ’ engines before they could construct the missile. A few hundred deaths better than billions. He’d been a coward. He’d wanted – then – to live.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker joined the layered cuddle around Prowl, shouldering between TC and Strake, flanking Countermeasure. “We suck,” the Twins said in unison. “We’d been giving you so much slag, then. We had no idea, didn’t care, what kind of pressure you were trying to function under.”

 _That… d-does not mitigate…_ Prowl struggled to transmit around the loop.

“But we sure weren’t _helping_ either,” Sideswipe growled into Prowl’s neck. 

_I’m so sorry,_ Raze transmitted from Bosnia. It wasn’t the first time he’d apologized for this, and it wouldn’t be the last. Prowl wasn’t the only one who needed to atone. The Twins hadn’t been on the bridge during that incident, but Impactor had. He’d turned away, like everyone else. Sentinel bullying Prowl had been turning into a normal thing as the battalion’s numbers dropped, and their missions became more desperate, and farther both spatially and philosophically from central Autobot command. No one wanted to interfere with whatever strife the officers had going – the conversation had not been aloud or over open comms. No one else knew what the dispute was about. But how would things have gone differently if Impactor, if anyone at all, had chosen instead to back Prowl up? Prowl was such a cool, collected mech, everyone assumed he had everything under control. No one had scanned, no one had seen that Trochar had been slowly killing him. 

Thundercracker tight-beamed Prime. _You haven’t put a stop to Sentinel yet why? You didn’t haul him in 500,000 years ago why?_

**You are correct. I have been gravely remiss, in this as in many other matters. 500,000 years ago I allowed him to continue autonomously because he was useful. Brutal, I knew, but useful. And as long as he aimed his brutality solely at the Decepticons it was convenient to overlook the excesses. Sacrificing the morals of one battalion to spare the rest – Wreckers aside. Now? How shall I stop him? I have ordered him to desist, to come to Mars and meet with me. So far he has ignored this directive. I do not want to send Kup or Springer or Highbeam after him; with those spark chamber modifications it is too risky.**

_Slag. But again you’re trying to avoid sacrificing a few Autobot lives while letting how many others die by Sentinel’s hand? He should be put down, Prime, like a…like a rabid dog. Let the Allspark sort him out._ Although that hadn’t worked so well with Jhiaxus. 

**Perhaps if I cannot compel Sentinel to come to me, I should go to him.**

_ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FRAGGING MIND???_

**It is a valid—**

_NO IT ISN’T! WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALPHA TRION WOULD MAKE YOU THINK I WOULD EVER LET YOU WITHIN TEN THOUSAND LIGHTYEARS OF THE CHAAR SYSTEM???_

**Thundercracker…**

_No! Absolutely not! Send the Wreckers. Springer would do it. Springer_ could _do it._

**And allow others to risk annihilation, when it is possible I would survive?**

_I don’t care what Skyfire says, you don’t know that for sure. And what if you were captured? Then Galvatron would have control over both halves of the Allspark. No. It’s an unacceptable risk. Prowl would agree with me. So would Ironhide._

Optimus grinned ruefully. **You would lock me in the Simfur temple, then?**

 _Once we’ve moved the planet,_ Thundercracker snapped right back, _that’s not a bad idea._ Prime might not have known for certain what that Allspark fragment would do to him, but he’d taken the risk freely. Nevertheless, the thought that Optimus might end up immobile in the temple wasn’t a comfortable one. 

**I could dispatch Springer with more strongly worded orders.**

_Oh yes, strong language. That’ll work._

**Delivered on a broad channel to ensure that the entire battalion understands the situation.** The wording therefore could not be too aggressive, merely firm. Sentinel would stand tribunal, and perhaps Trochar, if Ratchet, Hoist, Catscan, Lifeline and First Aid determined there was just cause to accuse him of violating his medical programming. The rest of the battalion’s guilt or innocence had yet to be addressed. It would be unfair to take an accusatory tone and provoke them needlessly. 

And if that didn’t work, he’d have Borealis take him out Sentinel-hunting.

“Prowl,” Perceptor said. They might as well all know. “Scrapper’s…innovations have made possible an alteration in our initial requirements.” Like many important discoveries, the modification to the nova net was a simple one. Perceptor was furious with himself for not having seen it. Scrapper was happy to remind him at any opportunity. “We are only going to destroy one star. A white dwarf that has already rendered its planetary remnants sterile. An old, dying star, not one that might develop life in the future.”

Prowl’s optics widened. He grasped at this desperately, chipping at the looping memories until at last the loop shattered and ceased. He sagged, held up on all sides. Irritated with himself, he flattened his chevron against his helm. His loops were tedious; interfering with his function, though at least the triggers were predictable and mostly avoidable. TC, Strake, Countermeasure and he all needed recharge. The desire to shoot himself in the head was strong. Nothing fatal, just a precise memory-core hit. It would not be against the letter of Prime’s sentence. 

“Come on,” Thundercracker said, tugging on the clump. “We’re too tired for this slag.” He completely understood Prowl’s hatred of the way his loops made him the center of attention. People wanted to help, yeah, but even better would be curling up with Strake and County in the nearest bunkhouse, or the medbay if Ratchet got tetchy about it. Whoops, and it looked like Rutile wanted in, given the way he’d clamped himself to Prowl’s side, daring Sunstreaker’s displeasure.

 _PROWL!_ all the Protectobots plus Spandrel, Breakaway and Polychrest shouted from New Zealand. _RECHARGE!_ Blades’ voice was loudest, but not by much. 

“There ya have it,” Jazz laughed, coming up with Prime. “Executive orders. Not gonna disobey are ya?”

“Would you mind very much if I…?” Optimus reached down into the cuddle-clump and Prowl hooked fingers into his arm, was lifted, uplifted, carried close against Prime’s chest while long strides took them deep into the embassy. 

Countermeasure and Rutile clicked in protest, but Thundercracker and Strake laid talons on them, chirring and nibbling; and the younger mechs conceded that a cuddle with Prime would do Prowl a world of good. It always did for County. 

Perceptor curled a strong-hand over the pintle of his cannon, shuddering, optics shuttered tight for a moment. Scavenger glomped him, willing him to do nothing impulsive. 

…

Jazz had been in a buoyant mood for months, as the estimated date for the moving of their homeworld drew near. Skating everywhere, doing donuts in intersections late at night, challenging the Lambo twins to races, tickling Mirage, snogging Gears and anyone else who got within reach. Prowl’s torment was a damper, but Prowl himself would not want his episode to subdue Jazz’s spirits for long. Jazz got it, that Prowl just wanted to be normal. In the sense of normal for him. Not unscarred, but not with open, sparking, bleeding wounds. At least functional without these inescapable interruptions. He hated disruption of his routine. Jazz loved disrupting routines, but not when they were integral to someone’s health. 

Prime hooked Prowl into his own, much larger, cooling system, and after a few moments Prowl went utterly limp in his arms. Jazz fitted himself against Prowl’s back, resting his cheek spar against the space between his door wings. Prime adjusted his arms around them both, opening his chest, going directly for sparks. When Prowl was this bad it was the fastest way to soothe him. Jazz petted Prowl’s sides and lower abdomen, lightly cabling to help track their progress. 

Prowl lay open between them. When his sentence was up, if he died, parts of him would live on in his progeny. Organic species that reproduced sexually, like humans, understood this instinctively, and many based a great deal of their social institutions around these kinds of relationships. His progeny would suffer briefly at his death, but it would pass. They would recover.

He was beginning to have the occasional, insidious thought that being embodied was a large part of his problems. As an AI he would not have these kinds of episodes. As an AI Sentinel and Trochar could not have coerced him as they had, he would have been able to erase the sun-killing file before they could have interfered. Jazz curled tighter against him.

 _Slag them,_ Jazz tight-beamed to Prime. _Slag them in the Pit. How could they do that? How could a medic do that?_ Outside, Ratchet was in a high fury. Ironhide was driving with him to White Sands, and putting in a request to the Army for a couple of junked old tanks they could violently disassemble.

**How could many things have happened in this war? As a species, we are supposed to have cleansed our programming to avoid such errors long ago. And yet they happen.**

_Slag._

Prowl knew dying, becoming an AI again would not in reality solve all his problems. He knew what would happen to Thundercracker and Strake if, in twenty-six years, he died. 

“Doesn’t take forecasting to figure that,” Jazz hummed against his back. “C’mon, Prowl. Recharge.” And Jazz sang softly, for all three of them, until Prowl at last and with great relief shut down. 

~~~~~~

The sea beyond the old wooden stairs sheeted foam-white and aquamarine across the cold pewter sand. The horizon blended with sunlight and mist and long streamers of clouds. Low, dark green plants clung to the steep rocks above the narrow beach. Miles walked down the steps slowly, listening to the dull, muted sound of his footfalls, almost drowned by the vast hollow boom of the surf. Beachcomber was waiting for him somewhere down there. 

His hair was so thin now he kept it cropped close against his melanocyte-enhanced skin. He wasn’t going to be one of those pathetic hippies still pretending he was twenty with beads braided into the few wisps left. Miles took strength from his age, like an oak, like the rocks, like the robots. 

Seaweed and dead fish had always overwhelmed the literary, legendary scent of salt in sea air, as far as Miles had ever been able to tell. Ocean tasted like salt, yes, and different oceans were saltier or sweeter, depending on season and temperature and acidity and underlying topography of the seabed, and the halocline. The fishy, decaying protein smell wasn’t repugnant, though. If that’s what you associated with being at the beach, having good times there, then there was nothing hardwired in the human response that insisted the smell was bad, even if in other contexts it might not be so pleasant. Miles never lingered in the seafood section of the grocery store. 

Sushi in Japan was one thing, but the selection and quality at the average Cheap-o-Mart where he tended to shop didn’t bear close contemplation. 

The wind caressed his scalp, tugged at his clothes, gusting around him as he followed the winding, footworn stairway down. Salt stained, rain roughened. Redwood if Miles wasn’t mistaken. Teak would have been too expensive in this part of the world. Redwood was a local commodity. The stairway had been here for at least a couple of decades. Funny that it was still a warm, comforting, rusty brown, instead of the silvery grey redwood usually weathered into. Someone crazy had stained it, over the years. Or the local mud had. Maybe they got teams of kids from the nearby schools to come out and work on it as a class project every year or so. 

An old book he’d been reading as much for the scent of paper and poorly preserved leather as for the contorted prose dug into his rib under his arm. Nice big pockets in this coat, but he tended to fill them with oddly and awkwardly shaped objects. His habitual zoris flapped against the treads and his heels. The soles were getting thin, he’d need to get another pair soon, or finally give up on shoes altogether and let his feet toughen. 

Beachcomber emerged from the surf as Miles reached the sand, and Miles wondered if Perceptor’s spark gave the same kind of little jump whenever the geologist came into view. Whatever into view meant to someone who could see through a few feet of stone, a few inches of steel, across millions of miles of space. Beachcomber said hooking into Perceptor’s senses made him, made just about everyone, dizzy. Or maybe he’d said giddy. 

“The sea urchins are having an entmoot,” Beachcomber said, wading up the beach toward Miles, sheeting water from his shields, turning up his heat as he reached and bent toward the human. “Urchinmoot. They found a dead crab, really, but it’s fun to imagine they’ve only just finished saying good morning. Oh, and there’s a whale fall about four miles offshore. I stuck one of the little remote cameras beside it. Perceptor will want samples.” Beachcomber would probably visit the site over the next several decades it might take for the whale carcass to be entirely consumed by the myriad, complex complement of organisms that would feast on it in various stages. Whale falls were lush islands of life, oases in the huge deserts of the mid-ocean plains. Miles liked the idea of them more than the images he’d seen. The exposed skeletons were a little macabre.

“What kind of whale?”

“Humpback. Big one. Old female, probably.” Their numbers were holding steady, despite several kinds of environmental stressors. The last few countries who had still permitted whaling had slowly given it up once Beachcomber had published – and Glyph had edited – the whalesong dictionaries and codexes. Greenpeace had flailed around for a couple of years, trying to decide what else to do with that sizable chunk of its resources. 

Beachcomber produced a small, pale something from a thigh cache and held it out to Miles. A turbo shell, recently vacated, with a clean drill hole where some starfish had gotten dinner. The outside was dull and rough, seaweed clinging to it here and there. Inside shone with subtle colors, smoother than skin. Miles held it up to his ear and Beachcomber smiled.


	79. Neighbors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Beachcomber and Prime have a snuggle and Miles scares the crap out of them; Airazor and Jury compare notes; Prime requests the pleasure of Barricade’s presence – and Barricade acquiesces; important devices are tested; Sam and Optimus discuss Prime mating habits; some Waterbabies hide; Skyquake and Turmoil make observations; Optimus meditates; General Strika returns to Cybertron and is not happy; humans go to Alpha Centauri; Prime gets dressed for a ball; humans meet more aliens; there's a good deal of snuggling; a planet is moved.

  
_I have come back to you broken_  
_take me home_  
_And my body bears this trouble_  
_take me home_  
_Take me back to my beginning_  
_Before the hell of night set in_  
_And I came to this border_  
_take me home_  
– The Wailin’ Jennys, _Starlight_  


2083 – June

Green waved seas of ferns, and the cheery cloverlike faces of oxalis, strewn with drifts of miner’s lettuce, in the summer breeze. Green and misty gold shone the sunlight through breaks in the immense trees. Second growth, but in this latter part of the 21st century the redwoods towered above like cathedral columns, though only a fifth of their eventual size. 

Their footsteps thumped hollow on the tuff lining the trail. Beachcomber kept to the trails, leaping the smaller streams with one arm firmly around Miles’ waist, natural as breathing. Miles remembered he’d felt it an imposition when he’d been younger. Now it felt like a dance. The same dance Beachcomber was always doing, whether he walked in high places or wriggled through hot caves halfway through the crust…or sashaying uninvited across Perceptor’s design desk. Birds chirped and warbled now and then, and woodpeckers knocked, but for the most part the only other sound was the wind catching in the upper treetops, low but strong. They felt only a whisper of it at ground level. 

The light grew brighter up ahead, less diffuse, and Beachcomber’s head went up, fields casting forward and whirling with colors and patterns Miles had learned to associate with deep happiness. Someone waiting for them in the clearing. They were four miles along the loop trail from the Oregon base. Perceptor was down in Nevada and Seaspray was in Hong Kong.

Miles could have pinged the cloud mind, but he didn’t, waiting until the curve and slope of the trail led them to the little meadow, and his own eyes could tell him who it was. 

Ferns gave way to grasses. The trees tucked their shadows well around their feet. In the center of the meadow, surrounded by trees that dwarfed even him, stood Optimus. Miles set his software to render Prime’s field as a mandala. It whirled slow and stately, reaching toward them, to welcome and enfold them, vivid and complex.

Armor gleaming, all his old dents and gouges healed, even his chameleon mesh had stopped mimicking scratches and worn edges. Knight, avatar, bodhisattva. Prime. His old alt mode was finally beginning to look out of place on the freeways of any continent, what with even the biggest diesels being replaced by fuel cells and the new electrics, and even a few solars, now that atomically precise manufacturing was really taking off, making solar panels cheap, super-efficient and easy to stick onto just about anything; and so he had chosen another. Longer, overlapping plates perfectly replicating truck body parts covered his shoulders and hips, lending him even more of a samurai air than his bodily movement style had always suggested.

Beachcomber ran to his Prime with a happy warble, leaping, caught, clinging to Optimus’ chest, cheek spar pressed to the central seam. He hadn’t seen Optimus in the metal for several years.

“Ahhh, Beachcomber,” Prime rumbled fondly, rearranging his chest armor to better accommodate him.

Miles ambled across the meadow, watching as blue fire threaded over Beachcomber’s armor as the geologist arched and shivered. A few thousand milliseconds was a long time to the robots. Plenty of time to overload once or twice. Miles was up for the climb – 92 didn’t feel a day over 65 – but when Optimus offered a lowered hand he wasn’t going to refuse it. The ride gave him a close-up pan of columnar legs, steely abdomen and sexy, shiny chest. He settled himself on Prime’s left shoulder, where Prime had contrived a space where an agile human might perch in relative security and comfort. 

The noble head – eighteen times the size of his own – turned toward him, optics whirling to macro setting. Miles gazed steadily into those optics, drawn in by their mechanical complexity, contemplating the mind behind them. Worlds enough and time, Miles thought. He leaned in, touching his cheek to the hard angled corner of Prime’s mouth. The metal plates moved a little against his skin and Miles smiled. He patted the edge of the cheek-guard.

“Good to see you,” Miles said. A lot of the usual greetings and small-talk was redundant when you were in near-constant contact already. He knew who was well and who having difficulties, who was newly decanted and which of the Graveyard Legion had been re-embodied again. Images flitted through his consciousness of Bee teaching Dani’s granddaughter to drive, even though she was only four; of Tracks stalking across the hangar floor closely pursued by Rapido, scolding him in a fluid mixture of Cybertronian, Spanish, and English; of Prowl in profile, lit by the cool hues of the holotable in the war room. But he could still say it was good to see someone he hadn’t sat on – or in – for a long time. 

“And you,” Optimus replied, careful not to dislodge Miles with a nod. 

“Who are you listening for?” Beachcomber asked. Prime had been peering intently through the atmosphere when he and Miles had arrived. 

“Kup and Springer are on their way back,” Optimus said. “Highbeam will stay with Cybertron, and the small garrison Elita left there, until just before the move. Sentinel has refused to leave the Chaar system, even for this.” The last was uttered with a certain sad resignation. Optimus didn’t know how Sentinel had justified the refusal of their orders to come to Enceladus to his crew, or whether he had even needed to at this point. Once the planet was moved and restoration underway, Prime would go with Borealis – they would protect each other, and neither would let the other do anything too aggressively rash – to meet with Sentinel personally. How he was going to distract Jazz, Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl and Elita (not to mention Thundercracker and Skyfire, who could fly after them) while he snuck off was a problem for which he did not yet have a satisfactory solution. 

As Prime tipped his head back, Miles noticed a wire-thin line of bronze, bright against the darker metal of neck struts and hydraulics. Had that been there before? He traced the bright inclusion with a fingertip, warm and alive with tiny threads of blue energy, eyes widening as he blinked in his macro lenses and saw the microscopic glyphs glowing deep in the texture of the metal. He could feel a faint tug, tides of the nanites in his blood and bones. Optimus' optics whirred, cycling wide and vivid. Something abrupt and very odd happened to his fields. If he’d been human, Miles thought, Optimus would have staggered, sat down; but Prime stood quite still.

“Miles?” 

“Did you feel that?” Miles kept his hand where it was. It felt good, that almost magnetic tug. Optimus was warm and comforting. 

“That is…possibly very dangerous.”

Oh god, Miles thought, yanking his hand back. Very dangerous. Definitely very stupid. He pictured every tiny machine in his body zinging merrily off in different directions, each now with their own spark and…oh god. Oh shit. Oh god that would have been messy. He was shaking. Optimus curled a hand around him, lifted him down to where Beachcomber clung, optics huge. Beachcomber hugged him rather more fiercely than usual. 

“Miles!” Beachcomber whispered, shivering.

“I’m okay,” Miles said, hugging back just as hard. “I think.”

“I would feel easier if we made certain.” Optimus swung around, arms around them both, heading by the most direct route, trees permitting, for the base, and Catscan. Miles heard Beachcomber’s faint squeak of protest, imagined the size of the footprints. Bigfoot. Well, the ferns would recover, there wasn’t a lot of other undergrowth anyway, and the robots tended to broadcast sonics ahead to scare wildlife out from underfoot.

What did you feel? Miles wanted to ask, but didn’t, afraid of the answer.

...

“If I understand previous incidents correctly, you have been very fortunate,” Catscan said.

The blue, green and yellow dots – different kinds of scans – disappeared from Miles’ lenses. “I’m okay?”

“You are.”

“And I’m not going to suddenly turn into a robot?” Not that there was anything wrong with turning into a robot, but he wasn’t done being human yet.

“Not suddenly.”

“Catscan!” Beachcomber yelped. Now was a fine time for the medic to find his sense of humor. 

“Do you not intend your mindstate to be copied?”

“Yes.”

Catscan bobbed his shoulder armor in the Cybertronian equivalent of an affirmative nod. “The nanometer-scale machines in your body have not, per the specs I have from Perceptor, been detectably altered.” 

“Thanks.” Miles grinned and hopped down from the table into Optimus’ hands. “No touchie Allspark, though. Just in case. Good safety tip, Egon.”

Optimus blinked, processing the reference. “Indeed. I am relieved that there were no unforeseen effects.”

What about foreseen effects? Miles wondered, but again did not ask. He suspected that he’d find out eventually, one way or another. 

~~~~~~

Jury landed on the helipad atop the Chau building in Shanghai and transformed. Airazor flew a tight circle around her then alit as well, neat and aerodynamic even in robot mode. Jury called up a brief memory of her sitting like a small falcon on Skyfire’s wrist. Jury herself would sit like a small falcon on Skyfire’s wrist any time, at the least provocation. At the moment, they were ostensibly providing conspicuous air cover for Tracks and Smokescreen, who were doing something diplomatically financial and complicated down on the ground, involving the Australasian battleship prototype. The Predacons had last been spotted in South America, so they weren’t an immediate worry. It would take ten or fifteen minutes for them to circle the planet, even catching a ride with Astrotrain or Blitzwing, but things entering or leaving Earth’s atmosphere were quite carefully watched. The Predacons continued to pose a threat because they were good at camouflage, and stuck to the ground for the most part, under the radar both literally and figuratively. The Autobots didn’t currently know where Starscream was so it was prudent to keep an optic on the sky in any case.

They had a nice view of the city lights from their perch; the famous Pudong skyline, still ornamented by the Oriental Pearl TV tower. The Decepticon attack of 2039 had seared a kilometer-wide diagonal trench to the south, fortunately missing the Yu Garden and the Bund, but altering the course of the Huangpu River, which was now split; emptying directly into the East China Sea as well as into the Yangtze River. The Pudong area was now an island. The Nanjing Road, to the west, leapt the gap as a wide bridge with shops all along each side, lights sparkling and shimmering off the water. 

Everything was so _small_. She was used to that, in the adaptive way Cybertronians were very good at, but sometimes the scale was striking, as now, with the tiny multitudes scurrying around below. And the number of floors in buildings of this height. All her proprioceptive and motor programs were adjusted for urban maneuvering with a minimum of collateral damage. With the Theresa memories, and adjusting her sensory inputs, she could look upon this city with something like a human perspective. Up so high, perilous, bright lights below, an infernal glow out through the rest of the city. Light from below was strange, eerie, to the human perspective, but normal to the Cybertronian. Primus Below. Well, not all humans had worshipped sky gods either. The skyscrapers in the immediate Pudong area were lit top to bottom, day-bright under a tropical-hazy night sky, reflecting off the bottoms of the clouds. Despite massive losses to Decepticon attacks, Shanghai was still one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. 

She’d hoped it would be weirder than this, but compared to the billion years of her previous, pre-Graveyard life, the human span provided little more than a translucent overlay. Fascinating, but the insights had not changed who she was. Perhaps after a vorn or three, she could look back and chart small alterations that might have lead to paths she would never have trodden, ideas she would never have had otherwise.

It was hot and humid, but the frequent summer rains had not yet fallen that night. The heat was fine, Jury thought. Reminded her of the Torus States. The humidity felt odd, adding to the thickness of the atmosphere. Jury, like a lot of the Graveyard Legion, tended to keep her shields up most of the time anyway. She rubbed her fingertips together as if feeling the heaviness of the air. 

Airazor grinned at her. The falciformer liked this heavy air, she was built to slice through it, and she had not yet been to Cybertron.

After her decantation, Airazor had allowed herself a period of regret for all the art galleries, museums and libraries she could not fit inside. She wasn’t large by Cybertronian standards – about Jazz’s height and rather less massive – but such facilities’ curators were understandably wary of allowing her entry. Hound had helped her assemble a very nice holomatter avatar, but it wasn’t the same. A feeling she could quantify, since an avatar’s sensory abilities were much reduced from those of her actual frame. She could travel the world easily, though, and draw on Autobot accounts to gain her avatar admittance almost anywhere. The Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Forbidden City, the Strahov Library in Prague. Even the Bodleian, where she’d met Rewind, immersed as usual in his own studies. 

Optimus had joined her at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya recently. She’d nearly fallen off her rooftop perch when she’d seen his avatar. Six-foot-six, statuesquely muscular, a deliberate mix of Kikuyu and Maasai features, bright blue eyes to make the avatar’s nature plain. Female.

That made sense, since much of Kenya’s – and indeed most of the continent’s nations’ – leadership was female. 

Theresa had been heterosexual, but Airazor had had a job of work to keep her avatar from pouncing Prime’s. She’d had a good in-the-metal snuggle with him once their tour of the museum was done. She agreed with the nearly unanimous Autobot opinions regarding shagging Prime. 

(Airazor had been surprised to learn that Ixchel Chase’s last lover, in her late 30’s, had been a woman. Carly had eventually realized that she would always play second fiddle to astrophysics. Which was a bummer but kind of understandable. Their intimate relationship had waned, but they had parted friends when Carly had taken a professorship at Oxford. Jury hadn’t been surprised, having snuggled Borealis a time or six. Ranger and Rain were rather coy about how long they’d known, and both insisted it hardly mattered now, with seven flavors to choose from instead of two-ish.)

Airazor did not share Borealis’ squeamishness about interfacing with her progenitors. Theresa had known Mirage and Hound as friends for a long time before they had kindled Airazor’s spark. And maybe in her most secret of hearts, Theresa had been a little bit in love with Mirage. Especially after Bobby’s death. 

_We’re finished down here,_ Tracks told them. _Meet you at the airport._ The plan was that they would all ride back to the Nevada embassy together in an old C-17. Or Airazor could hitch a long-distance lift with Jury, who was, after all, not an ordinary helicopter.

Airazor sidled closer and they exchanged arm cables. “I keep wondering if this is onanism,” she whispered.

“Pfft!” Jury snickered. _See you back at the mesa later, Tracks,_ Jury knelt and drew Rae into her arms. They watched over each other’s shoulders, slid home a single set of thoracic cables. Risky. Sweeter for it. Airazor’s practical, rational mind disapproved, but her spark spun hot and bright.

 _Ah. Enjoy._ Tracks signed off with a complex of Towers-typical glyphs whose context and connotations Jury had to explain to Airazor. Even in sharp-edged Vanadium, pleasure shared had been a virtue. And Tracks was hardly one to fire shots regarding perilous behavior. Hound would scold them later, but scoldings from Hound generally ended up in kisses and clang. 

After a swift, thorough overload that tasted of ultraviolet and platinum,they set out over the East China Sea, passed Japan, skimming the tropical waves of the Pacific. Sometimes Airazor flew upon her own wings, rising high above the clouds only to stoop upon her larger, slower friend; sometimes they climbed sharp and fast, entwining their frames, stroking one another in freefall, pulling up only just in time to avoid a dousing. Jury could follow the equator from landfall to landfall in nine hours, seven if she was in a hurry. They were not in a hurry. 

They were just coming in sight of the California coast when the cloud mind gathered, surged, towering into a thunderhead. Something or someone had seriously freaked out Prime. The thunderhead dispersed quickly, though, as whatever had alarmed him passed. 

_What the slag was that about?_ Jury wondered. Prime was up in Oregon. Visiting their scientific outpost – and, to put it bluntly, Perceptor’s spawning ground – usually put Optimus in a happy, sometimes joyful mood, but no one seemed to know what was going on. Ratchet was conspicuous by his silence, which Jury took to mean he was yelling at Optimus privately. 

As Jury and Airazor crossed into Nevada, Prime rejoined the cloud mind to explain. A nanites-augmented human had made physical contact with Allspark material. Nothing untoward had happened, but the potential had rattled Prime.

 _The only exposed Allspark material is that bit up on Prime’s neck, isn’t it?_ Airazor tight-beamed.

 _Far as I know,_ Jury said. _Which means that of the thousands of nanites-augment humans, it had to have been someone Prime felt comfortable having up on his shoulder._

_Of those in Oregon right now, who could have been irresistibly drawn to laying a hand on that shiny bronze line without thinking?_

They looked at each other. _Miles._

 _Hey!_ said Miles, as the same conclusion spread from a handful of foci (Prowl, Nightbeat, First Aid, Mikaela) across the cloud mind.

 **Sorry,** Prime said, even though he had not indicated either directly or indirectly which human. He’d been Prime-tier discreet, in fact.

 _Aw, forget it. I guess I deserve this._ Miles was getting a stern talking-to from both Ratchet and Perceptor, and a lot of ribbing from just about everyone else, Sam adding vid captures of the “Dewbot” from Mission City. (Before the National Guard had cornered and killed it. Optimus, reeling from the deaths of his twin and Jazz, had failed to intervene in time.) 

_You’re not putting a moratorium on human contact are you?_ Mikaela asked. Even if only augmented human contact, that meant quite a lot of people these days.

 **I am considering it,** Prime said. **Ratchet, Perceptor and I are discussing whether it would be feasible to simply remove and replace that cable.** The Allsparky bit might just grow back right away. The regular donation of protomass kept Optimus from growing in overall size, but they hadn’t yet come up with a way to halt the slow spread of the Allspark material through his body.

 _You need to find an alternative to palladium,_ Miles joked. Coming up with new elements would be right up Wheeljack’s alley, right? They wouldn’t even need to knock holes in the walls to build a particle collider. Wheeljack probably kept a desktop model beside his bed. 

**Heh.**

~~~~~~

**Barricade…**

Two patterns answered. _Optimus._

 **Secateur, Chaindrive?** They had been friends of Barricade’s before the war.

 _Yes. We’ve been collecting pieces of Barricade’s pattern. Gathering memories, resonances._ Their patterns billowed and swirled, overlapping each other and cradling a small, bright accretion disk. A spark on the verge of ignition. _We think it was the shock of his death, and of what he encompassed after, that caused his pattern to splinter. We would otherwise have supposed his personality to have been stronger, more able to sustain a selfness than most. We have enough information to attempt cohesion._

**If you would be so kind?**

There was a further gathering-in, a contraction; the pattern between Secateur and Chaindrive spiraled, flickered, boiled, rippled into coherence. Optimus ‘ spark pulsed in awe.

**Barricade.**

_Prime…? Hrrrrrngh._

**Barricade?**

_War’s not over?_

**I’m afraid not. Not quite.**

_Dragged me out of…slag, Chaindrive, what the Pit…?_

_Sorry, Cade. Prime’s been calling. We only put you back together so we could talk. You can disperse again if that’s what you want but we wanted to be sure._

_Thanks for that, I guess. What the Pit happened…? Oh. Was that Prowl?_ Barricade’s pattern assimilated eons and worlds of knowledge, expanding, encompassing the notspace within the vessel of the Allspark, contemplating the changes since his death.

**Yes.**

_Hn. You’re not yanking me out just to torment him are you?_

**No. Soundwave asked that you be reimbodied.**

_He did, huh?_

**Do you have any idea why? He was unforthcoming with me.**

_Maybe. Soundwave still a Con?_

**Yes.**

_And he asked **you** for me. He didn’t ask…Galvatron._

**Apparently not. I admit that fear of what Galvatron would do to you was part of my motivation for acquiescing.**

_Thanks for that too, then. Spark-merging. You’ve been busy._

**Mmmhmmm.**

_Don’t you purr at me like that, when I don’t even have a body!_

**What kind of body would you like us to prepare for you?**

_Smooth. All right. Find me a black Suburban…no. Wait, you’re using…yeah, give me about three metrics of you mass to play with I’ll build it myself._

**As you wish. And thank you.**

…

Optimus ghosted down from the mesa top, striding by the few night-shift folk in the hangar, slipping past Skids and Ratchet asleep in the recharge bay. The heavy door to the growth tank chamber opened to his shortwave code and locked behind him. With another thought he began the warm-up process in an empty tank. Protomass was injected into the thick colloid, sinking like the globs of wax in a lava lamp.

Kindling directly from the Allspark had gotten easier only in the sense that he knew now what to expect, knew how he had to break open, knew what it would feel like. Not dissimilar to being struck by lightning; an event potentially fatal even to Cybertronians if caught unprepared. (Cliffjumper had thought it would be tingly. He was lucky a number of frontliner failsafes had kicked in and nothing mortally important had been fried.)

When he regained consciousness, the occupant of the tank was well snuggled into its mass and Ratchet was peering down at him. Optimus sat up, groaning.

“Who is that?” Ratchet asked, with some asperity, indicating his dislike of Optimus doing things like this without medical supervision. He had every confidence in Prime’s ability to start a growth tank running; he had observed Ratchet or First Aid or Hoist do so often enough. But Optimus did tend to disregard his own safety in disconcerting ways. No amount of scolding for this would be too much, in Ratchet’s estimation. 

Optimus regarded the tank. He could no longer communicate with the spark within, not until the body grew a comm system. Strange. Clearly he had much yet to learn. Ratchet was scanning him. Quite deeply. **It’s Barricade,** he said, embroidering the tight-beam with harmonics requesting secrecy. At least for now. 

“Hmm.” Ratchet lifted an orbital ridge, turned to scan the humming tank, and the amber spark within. 

Optimus blinked. That had not been a cynical “hmm”, nor an angry one, nor even dubious. An interested, perhaps even hopeful “hmm”. That in itself was hopeful, Optimus felt, though he did not anticipate such forbearance from Bumblebee. As a Decepticon, Barricade had tortured Bee, for information it happened that Bee did not have. Bee had been freed, but the grudge between them was bitter and of long standing.

And then there was Prowl. That would be an entirely different species of problem.

~~~~~~

Six emitters floated in a circle thirty meters in diameter, halfway between the asteroid belt and Jupiter. At the embassy, Metroplex, and the Oregon base, crowds were watching on mist screens. Perceptor’s design or not, Sam thought, grinning, Wheeljack had been involved. The things would either work brilliantly or blow themselves to smithereens. 

The Art Deco butterflies unfolded, opening their wings. A blue-green glow spread from the “tails” of their wings, from each to each, and in to the center; a shimmering, coruscating expanse. A broad ripple moved from the outer edge of the disk to the center, as though the bridge horizon was made of some exotic kind of thick, viscous fluid. There was of course no sound, but Sam imagined he heard the Stargate whoosh and watery hum. The outer edge of the disk thickened briefly, then the whole thing winked out. A small side screen replayed the opening and closing in extreme slow motion for the benefit of human ocular equipment which did not naturally operate at something like a thousand frames per second. 

“That’s it?”

“My dear Samuel,” Perceptor said, transmitting via the screens from the staging area (a large asteroid that was stationary relative to the six emitters), “that was quite sufficient. We have data enough to analyze for several weeks.”

“One try,” Mikaela whispered to him. “No do-overs.”

Moving a planet, Sam thought. I guess so.

~~~~~~

2083 – July

As they passed Port Canaveral on the way to the Vehicle Assembly Building, (a very special launch was in the works,) Prime started honking back at the big freighters and mega cruise liners. He had always done this, so Sam wasn't sure why it suddenly struck him as odd. It wasn't Prime's usual semi-honk, either, but something deeper, a full-throated bellow that vibrated everything and everyone in the cabin, and probably buzzed everyone on the freeway around them to a half-mile radius.

 _Is there some significance to that?_ Sam asked. The "or are you just being a giant enormous alien dork as usual?" part he kept to himself. _The ancient Prime mating call or something?_

**As a matter of fact...**

_Whaaat?_

**I did not know why the sounds made by certain horns of your world were so compelling to us - to me - until Vector Prime explained it. The horn-sounds are not as rich in subharmonics of course, but even so they are very...stirring.**

_Oh my god._ All that standing around on seaside promontories with his chest lights on, booming back at lighthouses made sense now. Sam shook his head, giggling. _So, what, did only Primes mate? Like bees?_ He couldn't believe he was asking about this. Somewhere along the line the robots had become less machines and more biological in his mind. Why this was less weird to him he had no idea.

**Not at all. Spark merges took place among all genders. Vector indicated that at that early time, the genders tended to more or less "breed true", but that Primes could produce offspring of any gender, not only more Primes. The, er, mating call was utilized when two or more Primes desired congress with each other. Two "hives" if you will, blending or merging for the exchange of unique spark material. Sometimes they separated again afterward, sometimes not.**

_Thank you, Steve Irwin._ The unimaginably ancient mating habits of the first robots in the universe were kind of interesting, though. They had been created some 500 million years after the Big Bang by the Allspark – machina ex deus...or something – with collective intelligence, a rudimentary concept of language, and senses far beyond human range. And over the course of twenty billion years they had evolved. Very different from humans on many levels – eusocial autotrophs rather than tribal gatherer-hunters. Very similar in others – simultaneously emotional and logical, bilaterally symmetrical bipeds for the most part, in root mode anyway. The transformation that typified Cybertronians had evolved quite early on from their modularity and self-assembling habits. 

Bee had shown his human family pared-down memories from Vector (video and sound, without HUD overlays and the vid in human-visible spectrum only); and while Mikaela and Dani had found them fascinating, to Sam they were hard to watch. There was just so much _skittering_. 

~~~~~~

Dark stone glimmered above their heads, all around them; gold and blue and green lights reflecting on the smooth, hemispherical surface carved by Wheeljack’s nanominers. Goldfish had brought out her fireglobe to stand in for a campfire, Botanica had fireflies orbiting leisurely about her head and shoulders, and Snowline’s alt mode was a snow leopard, whose pale, inorganic fur could luminesce a silvery green to match her eyes. Both heavy doors were sealed and locked, the airlocks flushed and ready for a quick escape if needed. Perceptor had built the locks, and Red Alert had coded them. A hundred meters of solid stone – Beachcomber had chosen this site and all the others – lay between them and the hunters above, and twice that of ocean to the surface. Aside from the soft tick and hum of their own systems it was very quiet, and Prime was a warm, reassuring feeling in each of their sparks. They were safe. 

The Decepticons in general, and the Predacons in particular, sneered at the Waterbabies’ tendency to flock, and shot in broad patterns to try to scatter them. The tactic of running for salt water was also scorned; as though water could slow a Decepticon attack! But the Waterbabies often had very good aquatic modes, and they threw ink and slime and weird acoustics to muddle their trail, so even the Predacons, though they knew the general area of a handful of their underwater shelters, had never yet found one of the doors. This of course only made the Waterbabies even more the favored targets.

“I met them once,” Sleet said. The twenty Drift and Perceptor had made together were more fierce than the general run of Waterbabies, but they could be thoughtful too. “Springer and the Wreckers. Last time they came to Earth.” Might be the last time ever, with the moving of Cybertron so near. 

Worms looked up from watching diatoms whirl and divide in one of her sample dishes. “When Blurr came back?”

“Yes,” said Sleet. Blurr had gone out to join Kup’s crew, and then briefly joined the Wreckers, but now he was back. That made Blue and Bee happy, so this was widely considered a good thing. “The Wreckers are hard, and their eyes watch everything. Even the way they stand in a room is deliberate.” Fimbria, Sonora and Kaibab snuggled in closer against Sleet’s sides. Sleet narrowed, then opened his optics wide, letting his dentae extend slightly. “They keep their backs to solid walls, and watch all the exits – in case enemies attack!” Fimbria, Sonora and Kaibab shivered and meeped in semi-pretend fright. They were from Beachcomber and Perceptor’s second batch and were therefore older than everyone there except Parallax, their shieldmech, who was a first-batcher. Sleet hugged them and smiled, their fields mingling with rueful amusement and longing sorrow.

Firebreak snorted. He chafed at the waiting. His twin, Heatwave, was out doing stuff, working, helping people, as were their progenitors; Inferno – who was a big damn hero – and Red Alert – who helped keep _everyone_ safe; while _he_ was stuck in this hole telling stories and holding hands singing Kumbaya.

 _Better this than getting eaten,_ Avalanche tight-beamed. (Like Sleet and Snowline, another from the Drift and Perceptor batch. Decanted in winter, they all had cold-weather names.) She recognized Firebreak’s restlessness, feeling it herself. But she had seen the Predacons kill Longbow of the Graveyard Legion. She’d seen what they’d done to his body, before Sky Lynx had come thundering down. 

“They keep their fields in tight so you can’t feel them coming,” Sleet continued. “And their shields are always, always up, even when they recharge.”

Lightskein leaned over and touched the tiny dot of metal in the shelter wall. No bigger than the pinkie-tip of a human, the little cable had been nanoassembled through solid rock and shielding from here to the seafloor; an antenna. No one was in range yet, or they were too busy to send the all-clear ping. She folded her hands back into their loom configuration and continued her work on the non-Euclidian hyperbolic textile for Humboldt State University’s coral reef art installation. Divebomb had blocked transmissions from the first shot fired, but once the thirteen of them had dropped so abruptly out of the cloud mind the rest of the Autobots would have known something was happening. Beachcomber would know which shelter they had been closest to. 

“What will the Wreckers do after the war is over?” Fimbria knew soldiers often didn’t have an easy time adapting to civilian life. The humans were showing them how, though. Not everywhere and not all at once, to be sure, but veterans’ services had improved dramatically in the past seventy years.

Ryder looked up and shifted her chin on her drawn up knee. Speaking for the first time since they’d fled into the shelter. “Maybe they can be builders instead of Wreckers. If they want. Like the rest of us.”

~~~~~~

 _The last of them are withdrawing,_ Skyquake reported. _Ha! You owe me those extra rations, Turmoil._

_All but one,_ Turmoil replied. The rogue had disengaged for the moment, but Turmoil was 89 percent certain he was still in Chaar system. Kup, Highbeam and the Wreckers were all – correcting for maneuvers that were meant to throw any tracking off – heading for Cybertron. Strika had at last returned from the distant galaxy she had been assigned in the search for the Allspark, and had taken up her normal post as guardian of Cybertron; the Autobots there would meet their end. But what were they up to? 

Turmoil had also noticed that none of the others got within a certain distance of the rogue, Sentinel; either the ship or the troops when they attempted sorties against the entrenched Decepticon positions on and around Chaar. Springer had gone in close enough to tight-beam once, several voors ago, but since then there did not seem to have been any contact, and the other Autobots kept their distance. 

_That one doesn’t count,_ Skyquake said. _I still say we should destroy him and be done._

Turmoil considered. Skyquake was probably right; Sentinel was too good at killing, and they should exterminate him. Turmoil could make the case to Cyclonus, and then the two of them could convince Shockwave. Pull Bludgeon and Jhiaxus back from the human system just long enough to corner and eradicate Sentinel. But Turmoil was curious. An Autobot defection, even such blatant dissention in Prime’s ranks, hadn’t happened in vorns. The physical avoidance of Sentinel’s ship and troops set vague, uneasy alarms ringing in Turmoil’s processor. The other Autobots were afraid of them. Why? Turmoil wanted to know before doing anything precipitous. There were plagues that could spread even through the void of space. 

_Maintain position,_ Turmoil said. _I’ll report to Shockwave._ Or Galvatron, if the latter was…coherent. 

~~~~~~

It was easy to tell when Optimus was coming back online, rising unhurriedly through the many layers of Cybertronian consciousness. Not just in his fields, but the strengthening hum of his engine, the small sounds of hydraulics, facial plates shifting. The lighting up of the cloud mind as he rejoined it, and opened the backlog of email from the humans. The low, pleased hum when he realized who was up on the mesa top with him.

Elita smiled, stroking the cabling of his neck, her fields meshing and folding with his in long habit of close friends, Arcee finding herself enveloped as well. The look on Elita’s face had become familiar; _What have you done to yourself, dear friend? What have you become?_ Elita had known Optimus all his life, she the governor of Iacon, they had worked closely, as she had with Volant. It was strange to remember how young Optimus really was, brought to mind often on this planet of swift-living, swift-fading beings. Elita would enter her second billion soon, in about ten thousand years, while Optimus and his twin were little over nine million. 

Arcee resettled herself higher on his chest as his arms slid to his sides and he drew one knee up. His engine gave a rumble that thrilled through her frame. Elita gave him a cylinder of energon from a cache. Working with the Allspark might not be physically taxing, but he could be exhausted in other ways.

“She felt something this time,” Optimus said. “And I could tell she wasn’t on the planet…but nothing more specific.” It wasn’t the twin-code, severed by Megatron for so long Optimus wasn’t sure he could ever reclaim that feeling, but he was sure they could find some deliberate means of communication via entangled sparks; just as Wheeljack and Perceptor were planning long-range communications that bypassed subspace. They needed what the human writer Ursula K. LeGuin had dubbed “ansible” technology – instantaneous communication over infinite distance. Entanglement was fiddly, though, when one attempted to use it in practical devices, and there were problems with relying on exactly that idea – the fact that you had to physically carry the twinned set out to wherever you wanted to communicate with being foremost. He had every confidence in Wheeljack and Perceptor, but he thought it prudent to explore other options. He had asked Borealis to help.

“No engine unstarts this time?” Elita asked. Having one’s spark wobble, even minutely, was a bit unsettling. 

Optimus chuckled. “No.” He was trying to meld the sense of spark he had from both his own spark and those of his progeny, with that he had from the Allspark. In the beginning, when all he could feel was life or death, he had been desperate for something more, something less grim and utilitarian. He wanted a finer, more delicate sense, not just of place but of feeling. The Waterbabies, interestingly, had been the first to report feeling him as a presence in their sparks. Unrelated to him, they were, but perhaps more sensitive in the ways that mattered in this particular endeavor. He thought that sometimes he could feel more from those whose kindling by Galvatron he had turned, the Ravine kids. Again not related by spark, yet a tie had been forged. It filled him with both hope and frustration. He needed to be able to guide it consciously. 

Maybe, with his own progeny, he was trying too hard. 

“What does the Matrix say?” Elita had never been intimidated by the Matrix. She was intrigued by it, always had been, had been fascinated by the process of changeover from Volant to Optimus. She had admired Volant, but fell completely in bloom for Optimus, young spark, and that sexy twin of his. And the change it made in each Prime, the ways it made them all not exactly the same person, but with that continuity of experience, not just raw intelligence, but a weird sort of dynamic wisdom, the resonance of all the Primes echoing in their voices sometimes. 

“They all agree it’s a good idea to try, but since none of them had progeny in the sense we do they have no particular insights to share.”

“What does Effulgent say?”

“Hmm.” Effulgent’s utterances often took some translation. And other times all you could do was repeat the words and hope they made sense to someone. “’Short cuts,’ was all he said at first. Perceptor’s mulling that over. Then later he seemed to add, ‘Over the edge, yes, over the edge, flying in circles, a billion billion pieces, laughing with us forever, flying home.’” Effulgent’s pattern had sort of closed around itself, hugging itself, immeasurably happy. Optimus smiled, remembering, completely not understanding.

“Lost me,” Arcee said drily. Elita laughed, and both Arcee and Optimus were sure new suns were born to that sound. Optimus curled an arm around Elita, and a hand around Arcee, not to pull them closer, Arcee’s hands were already well under his chest armor, her cheek spar pressed to the open seam, but arching himself up to them. Arcee purred her engine, loosening her shoulder joints to send the vibration deep. Optimus rumbled and Elita sang a harmonic chord lower – Arcee partitioned charge like mad. Primus it was good with these two together! Prime couldn’t sing to save his life, but Elita could bring up the choir by herself and flatten standing armies with it. Arcee felt Elita’s big hand interlace with Prime’s around her; squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing; slowly at first, then faster, and faster, as pleasure thrummed in waves through them. 

Then Prime opened his chest, and nightfall on the mesa top was delayed a while. 

~~~~~~

“Who did this?” Strika crouched, digging her claws into the surface. Rising, she rotated her hand, sifting the corroded metal, shards and splinters, pulverized and shocked bedrock, slag dust. There was little sign left of what had been. Only a few pocked layers of sheared-off suburban layers near the edges of the vast plain. The world’s gravity had collapsed the initial crater, making Cybertron a sphere again, albeit one with a flattened southern pole. Where Kaon had been. 

Turmoil considered blaming the Autobots, but Strika had already been to Chaar, had seen the immense manufactory. And Cyclonus was here. Cyclonus tended to feel that lies among high-ranking Decepticons were beneath him.

“Shockwave,” Cyclonus said. 

“Said he needed the mass,” Turmoil added. Might as well. Strika’s fury was palpable, even without fields. He was enjoying this.

“There are plentiful materials on Chaar!” The cannon on her shoulder shifted, restless. She patted him, transmitting soothing glyphs. She had been to Chaar, reunited with Lord Megatron, now more than half mad and calling himself Galvatron. She had seen the old orbiting shipyard subsumed by Shockwave’s project. Massive, whatever it was. The details might be mysterious, but the overall aim was obvious. A planet-destroyer, to be aimed at this upstart Earth. And for whatever reason, Shockwave had decided that he must desecrate their already desolate homeworld. 

“There was probably enough exotic material worth salvaging in Kaon’s deeper levels,” Turmoil said. “And the separation caused massive planetwide quakes. According to Soundwave, a significant portion of Elita One’s battalion were killed. Worth a little remodeling.”

Elita One. If the former governor of Iacon had been among the dead, Turmoil would have said so. Strika smiled amid her anger. They had been dear friends once. They were dearer enemies now.

~~~~~~

2083 - September

Some felt that the first human spaceflight to another star system – closely attended as it was by a number of interstellar-capable Autobots, plus passengers – lost some of its cachet and Buck Rogers romance. If something had gone wrong, the Autobots were totally there to rescue your ass. It was like wearing floaties in a kiddy pool. However, the crew of the _Ghost V_ , whatever some of them might have felt privately, were more than happy publicly to have their robot friends along.

Some felt that continuing to name their exploration ships – still based heavily on Cybertronian technology, which humans understood much better now than they had in the 1960’s when _Ghost I_ had been built – _Ghost_ smacked of superstition, implied sneakiness, was in bad taste, or at the very least showed an embarrassing lack of imagination. Borealis, to the surprise of many, did _not_ join the lobby to call the ship _Enterprise_. She had the memories from Prime and Bee, and she felt the name _Ghost_ continued to honor that first crew, lost so far from home. Walker, Thompson, Clarkson, Gonzalez, Avery. They had saved Prime’s life, as undeniably as Sam had, and they were famous now like Gagarin, or the _Apollo 11_ crew, or _Columbia_ ’s, or Bowman’s Mars team. 

But _Ghost V_ had made it into Alpha Centauri B orbit under its own power, with no interference from the Cybertronians, and that was a watershed the other Milky Way Galactic civilizations who had been keeping an eye on Sol could not ignore. There were protocols, procedures, once a young civilization made its first hesitant steps out into the wider universe. The flight of _Ghost I_ had not been counted as that step because it was accomplished by a clandestine group unbeknownst to the rest of the population of Earth. _Ghost II_ and _Ghost III_ , built by Sector Seven, had blown up at or just after launch. _Ghost IV_ , built after the events of Mission City by a coalition of Western powers, had disappeared during its maiden flight and not been heard from again. 

There were two natural wormholes connecting the Alpha Centauri binary and Sol. One was very old, small and therefore very stable, but the entrance from Sol-side was past and “above” the orbit of Neptune. The other was much larger, considerably younger, only a million miles “north” of the orbit of Venus, and not expected to last more than another hundred million years unless modified. The human engineers, scientists and mission planners gave Perceptor the side-eye and chose the larger wormhole.

Alpha Centauri B, smaller and less luminous than Sol, is a main-sequence star of spectral type K1 V, with an rotational period of about 41 days. The two stars in the system orbit each other every 79.91 years. A handful of rocky planets orbit B, from Alpha Centauri Bb – a surface-molten, uninhabitable rock bigger than Earth but closer to its star than Mercury is to Sol – to AC Bf – a frozen mega-Earth that hadn’t quite acquired enough mass during its formation to become something more luminous. No gas giants, which was a detriment, in terms of easily accessible resources, but Cybertronians could make do with the plentiful rocks around. Helium and hydrogen weren’t hard to make if you decided you needed them. 

Commander Octavia Nyong’o gazed out the forward screen like the rest of her crew. The first humans to look so clearly at the Alpha Centauri system. The first humans to have deliberately piloted themselves to another star. The golden orb of Alpha Centauri B took up much of the screen – heavily filtered – with scattered patterns of dark spots and graceful prominences and loops, very like Sol. The ship’s AI, more primitive than its Cybertronian counterparts, but looked upon with something like affection by them, labeled and enhanced images of the system’s handful of small planets. 

Sol, Aldebaran and Capella formed a triangle in the background; Sol dimmer than the other two. Sirius was the brightest star visible from this system, just like from Sol’s, and the constellations were only somewhat altered. Humans visiting Cybertron would still be able to find Orion, the Summer Triangle and many others, during the half of the year when the sky would be dark enough for stargazing. Perceptor, Scrapper and their team were en route to Cybertron now, and would reach it in December, to move the space bridge components into their final configuration. 

They landed on Alpha Centauri Bd, third planet out, colder than Mars. Nyong’o’s boot the first human footfall in this, the nearest star system to Sol. The rest of the ground team followed. 

Nyong’o turned a circle. Cold, dark rocky plain, no more atmosphere than Earth’s moon, achingly clear starry sky. And an alien sun a handswidth above the horizon. 

“From the stars we came, to the stars we return,“ she said, to herself, her crew, those listening back home at Houston, at TsUP in Korolyov, and the BACC near Beijing, all of humanity. Most of whom were watching the live feed. 500 million had watched the Apollo 11 landing on television. Five billion watched her now on their visors or tabletops or wallscreens. 

They had chosen a site where Cybertronian survey teams had not set foot either, the only prints for now in the grey dust those of suited humans. Nyong’o raised a hand and waved to a pattern of flashing lights above – Borealis doing a flyby. Waggling her primary wings in reply. Behind the commander, her crew fanned out, setting up equipment and a shelter, preparing sample containers and mixers. 

_Come down, Lissi,_ Nyong’o called. _Come down and join the party!_

~~~~~~

Jazz came in, followed by Mirage and Tracks and Rio and Sunstreaker and Grapple, carrying trays of oils and unguents and polishes and gems and rare metal wire. Optimus lunged for the lip of the pool as if to heave himself out of the oil and flee.

"Ah ah ah!" Jazz scolded. "We're all dressing for success here. We're going to detail each other once we're through with you, and if you're very, very good we'll let you watch."

Optimus stood, placing his feet well apart, holding his arms parallel to the floor, lifting the plates of his armor, furling his chameleon mesh. And holding quite still, a deeply obedient expression imbedded on his face. Jazz and Mirage and Sunstreaker laughed. They drew him up out of the bath, and the four artists each took a limb while Jazz supervised. 

"You certainly know what buttons to push," Rio said, impressed, though of course it made sense. 

"I been pushing his buttons almost as long as he's had buttons to push," Jazz said, in a tone that did not have even a passing acquaintanceship with innocence.

“What are we doing, exactly?” Prime asked. 

Jazz shook a finger at him. “No getting sidetracked.”

“I wasn’t the one who brought up button-pushing. …Gold _and_ platinum? Really?”

“You’re trying to distract us.”

“Not yet. But I could…”

“Stop that.”

“I like the opals, though.”

“Good. Beachcomber and Hoist made about twenty kilos of them.” Most were deep blue or black, some were fiery red, a very few were pale, just for the contrast. Opal was fragile, however, and those would be inlaid last. Per Sunstreaker and Oratorio’s design, they would first inscribe graceful, swooping panels of intricate wirework across his armor. There was, to a human eye, a passing resemblance to circuitry, but the delicate angles, lines and circles formed more organic representations. Flowers, leaves, trees, starmaps; interwoven with the ancient Cybertronian glyphs, whose original meanings they now knew, thanks to Vector Prime. 

Ordinarily, a thorough cleaning and polish would be done before any other decorative work was begun, but Optimus hadn’t been in combat for some time. Between his self-repair and the Allspark, there weren’t many scars left. The deeper, interior ones wouldn’t show, and were for the most part filled in with Allspark material – a progressing development none of them much wanted to contemplate. He had been out in the rain with his shields down, but the oil soaking he’d already done had taken care of what little grunge that involved. Prime didn’t have Hound’s talent for getting astonishingly filthy in startlingly brief amounts of time.

“Hold still, we have a new program for your chameleon mesh.” Sunstreaker plugged in an arm cable.

“Should I be worried?” Prime asked Jazz. 

“Mmmm no,” Jazz purred. He’d seen the design. The whole design, mesh and armor, metal, opal, and crystal. Instead of mimicking the kibbly bits of an Earth vehicle, the mesh would be a shifting, shimmering, intricately patterned layer smoothing over his chest, shoulders, arms, back, and lower legs; noticeable mostly in certain UV ranges, subtly transparent in what humans called the visible spectrum. Optimus was going to look more like a proper Prime than he had since his first Ceremony of the Solar Flare. The hard part was going to be keeping him from picking at all the decorative bits until after the first meeting with the Milky Way galaxy involveds. Tomorrow. 

Mirage grew quiet as he laid the gold wire in complex crystal-leaf designs, remembering when Serendipity had given him his cloak. It was a complicated memory; the process enjoyable, the necessity for it horrifying. Serendipity’s loss… This was different, he told himself. This was taking steps, small steps, toward mending all the things they’d broken with their war. He leaned his helm against Prime’s thigh, drawing careful lines with the engravure tool with one hand, pressing soft gold wire into the groove while it was still hot with the other. 

Sunstreaker watched him surreptitiously. Mirage’s fields were dim and subdued, held close. He used to think Towers mechs were stuck-up, and their complicated social games were maddening. Too easy to set a wheel wrong and then spend the next six vorns with half of them laughing at you on private comms. But that was then and this was now, both of them inlaying the gold on Optimus’ legs, patterns mirrored, both of them working in almost perfect unison. And Mirage himself was so beautiful. Not just because of his Towers build, but the layers of scars on top of that. The white metal of the cloak. The bright copper spark, freely shared. Unquestionable courage.

If Sideswipe found out, Sunny’d never hear the end of it. Collecting Towers mechs was he? First Tracks, now Mirage… It was an intriguing thought, though. What would they get from his spark and Mirage’s? Polychrest had certainly been unexpected. He supposed that was more or less the point of spark merging. Maybe after the party. After the afterparty. Maybe after they’d gotten Cybertron moved. And shelters built. And growth tanks. 

Primus. 

Meh. The teasing he’d get from Sideswipe wasn’t the real issue. Mirage might not want to merge. Countermeasure had scared everyone, but Rain was all right, and Airazor was steady and sensible. But Sunstreaker was a frontliner, an aggressive, military spark. But soon they’d be off this mudball and back home, where they could dig in and start rebuilding, giving everyone plenty to do, even potentially warlike newsparks. The Cons could have Chaar. Maybe they could evolve into two separate species and leave each other alone. Maybe unicorns could fly out of his aft.

Well. In any case, he’d make a point of showing his appreciation of that hot little frame. Hound was a bonus; plain face, sweet spark. Hound and Mirage had been the first mechs other than Swoop to tap Prowl for a million years. Lucky slaggers. Sunstreaker had the memory off Hound. It had become one of his favorites, not just for how kind Hound and Mirage were, but because it showed so starkly how far Prowl had come. 

Sunstreaker un-cached another spool of gold wire. He and Mirage crouched now to work on Prime’s feet. No part of him would be left unadorned, yet the work as a whole was not gaudy or overwhelming. The idea had been to accent Prime’s features, to enhance the shapes and colors. From a distance, the whole was subtle, a glimmering on the edge of certain wavelengths. The closer you got, the more detail you saw. Like the Allspark. 

Grapple and Rio had finished his arms and torso and now Rio was working on face and helm. Sunstreaker and Mirage inlaid the platinum wire next, and as they finished an area, Rio and Grapple did the opals. Blue on blue, red on red, for the most part, with cabochons of the white and black, or the opposite colors, for contrast. They took their time, they were meticulous, but they were robots and the entire process only took a couple of hours. 

Not having the mirror from a large telescope handy, Jazz and Grapple gave Prime their vid feeds; Jazz skating a circle around him, Grapple, being nearly Prime’s height, able to supply a less foreshortened view. 

“I…I’m impressed,” Optimus said, touching some of the more intricate shapes carefully. “I don’t…” He felt strange. He hadn’t looked like this in…a very long time. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. “Thank you. All of you.” He colored his fields with appreciation and love, bathing them in his regard and a quiet joy; hope surging that they had time and inclination and resources to do things like this again. His fields intensified, warming, drawing them closer.

“Later,” Mirage chided him. “After the reception.” They’d find a nice radiation-shielded room where they could all enjoy each other. 

“Yeah,” Jazz agreed. “Now we gotta get tarted up, too!”

~~~~~~

2083 – September

Earth.

In June, Prime had warned his command staff, human and mech, that Galvatron would know whom he had rekindled. Decepticon attacks were indeed on the rise. Vegas was safe under its Aegis towers, but Nellis had been hit hard, one of their Aegis towers melting, the desert scorched, the Embassy’s defenses sorely tested. 

Wheeljack’s tower remained untouched.

“You should keep all your most important stuff in there,” the commander of the EDF said wryly. 

“We do,” Optimus said with a wink. “As long as it is resistant to explosions.” 

~~~~~~

Contact. 

Not First Contact – decades too late for that, but important contact nonetheless. Humanity’s old question, _Are we alone in the universe?_ had long been answered. Now came the part where they figured out where they stood in the pattern of the greater dance. Lots of comm traffic. Information sent and received, starting with math like the scientists all said it would; the universal language. The Val’Nainnamoinnen and the Essee hailed Earth first, from well outside the Sol system, aware of Cybertronian interpreters ready to hand. Optimus had been communicating with both civilizations remotely for decades. Negotiating the continuance of his own species.

Sam Witwicky, at 92, was no longer directly involved, except occasionally in an advisory capacity. He tried not to be resentful of this, and mostly succeeded. Passing the torch and all that. He was supposed to be enjoying his retirement, as his father had. But he had his mother’s restive nature, and it made him fidgety to watch others take up his former mantle. At least Bee stayed with him, rather than being posted guardian for the next ambassador, and the next. 

Dani was no diplomat and had immersed herself – in rather a physical way – in science. His daughter the cyborg. How had that become a thing? Nate had fled the family high-profile and pursued a quiet career in programming. Melissa, Dani’s daughter and Sam’s eldest grandchild, _was_ heading for an ambassadorial post, if she could learn to control her temper. Legacy, Sam thought, of her maternal grandmother. As it was, Melissa was determined to make her own way either in the EDF or the diplomatic corps, and she didn’t want her grandfather putting his thumb on the scale. Nope. Sam was well out of it. 

He still got to go to most of the coolest parties.

The Homomdans, acting as intermediaries between the M100 and Milky Way civilizations, landed in the center of the Atlantic, at the Equator – the aliens humankind had _invited_ – and settled their enormous ship down on the surface. Vast stabilizing pontoons were extruded from the ventral hull to minimize any rocking, though the sea was calm. Ten kilometers long, three wide; the outer hull a silky indigo, covered in flowing white script or knotted designs (Sam wasn’t sure which). The entire top surface of the vessel had been converted into a kind of park, including deep, serpentine pools for aquatic life forms (they’d be fishing Seaspray out of those, later), and about a dozen large, columned pavilions, roofed with stretched metal or fabric of some kind. (It rained the next day and the sound was more like rain hitting fabric than metal.) 

The ultimate patio boat. 

Champagne in hand, Sam cruised various groups of humans and… Okay, they had to stop calling everyone aliens. Once humans in numbers got Out There, _they_ would be the aliens, for one thing. And, well, it was just rude. Anyway, Sam and his tux (the vintage kind, with tails; Mikaela had licked her lips at him, so Sam endured the stiff collar without complaint) worked the crowd, at ease in his element. Everyone knew who he was so he was in position to make introductions, which he enjoyed. 

The Cybertronians hadn’t arrived yet. They’d come in later that evening, giving the human contingent time on their own to speak with the gathered ambassadors from Esse, Lorsin, Hom, and Moinne; and the aquatic Kuuukinye, who were mostly along for the ride. 

All those present had volunteered and had been cleared by the Galactic Council; pleased to meet with such a young species, and also able to cope with Earth’s environment with a minimum of bother. The Ishlorsinami took drugs to prevent allergic reactions, and the slightly higher oxygen content was making the Kuuukinye slightly giddy, though the Essee said one could hardly tell the difference. 

Prowl had been right, all those years ago, Sam thought, grinning. He schooled his expression as the Essee and Ishlorsinami ambassadors passed him, speaking earnestly with the Val’Nainnamoinnen ambassador. The tall, grey, somber Ishlorsinami, with their long, grey, somber cloaks, when confronted with human contrariness, had had frequent bouts of their second-mind CPUs crashing, until they had worked out a sneaky bit of programming that allowed them to ignore the most illogical behaviors. Poptart blowtorch, baby.

The Essee, on the other hand, seemed to think humans were very cute. Sam thought the Essee were cute _and_ cuddly, despite the complete lack of anything even resembling pelage. Mostly, he admitted, because they were a pastel shade of pink and had soft, rounded bodies and boneless-looking extensible limbs that curled up when at rest; a bit like octopi, though he hadn’t seen any evidence of suckers. Big green eyes with their lash-like attendant constellations of darker pink spots also helped. 

The Val’Nainnamoinnen were the opposite of cuddly. Three to four meters tall, if you counted their “hair” – Sam was in no way convinced it was anything other than leaves – lean, with rough green or brown skin, and a series of bright eyes arranged up and down the top fifth of their bendable trunks. Typically four-armed, they were renowned as musicians. Like the Homomdans and Cybertronians, they were from the M100 galaxy, here to vouch for the Autobots in general and Optimus in particular. Optimus and his team had met a Val’Nainnamoinnen ship in distress about 5000 years ago and had rendered assistance. Bee, Jazz and Ratchet were excited to see them again. 

_Trees in Space!_ Sam tight-beamed to Miles, who was somewhere on the other side of the deck. Who had gotten Miles into a tux anyway? Whoever it was hadn’t insisted on shoes. 

_I think I know where the Entwives went,_ Miles shot back, and Sam snorted into his champagne. 

_I am Groot!_ Borealis contributed from orbit. Miles almost spat his water all over the deck. 

Rather than construct an entirely new entity to represent the whole of Earth, over the years the UN had been revamped extensively. As such, it had the authority, granted by an overwhelming majority of nations, to appoint human ambassadors to each of the visiting civilizations. These were plummy positions, in the sense that the ambassadorial teams and their families could expect, once they left Earth, to be accommodated in high technological style, with all their physical and intellectual needs attended to. And they were leaving any risk of Decepticon attack behind. However, this wasn’t like being the Australian Ambassador to Japan, where the people you were living and dealing with shared a physiology if not a language. These ambassadors had been chosen and trained very carefully. Politics were involved of course, but actual qualifications and aptitudes took precedence. Most of the candidates had spent time as interns at the Cybertronian Embassy in Nevada, or in Metroplex in Morocco. 

Sam watched the ambassador to Hom introduce her family to the Homomdan Ambassador to Earth. Hadiza Azikiwe was from Nigeria; her wife, Nazli Bucherer, from Switzerland; and their children were the frighteningly bright tyros typical of their generation, raised with the latest in augmentation and the always-there connections to the Nets and the public levels of the cloud mind. The Homomdan ambassador, Ar Val-Ser iFferschlar, tucked all three legs under nemself in an approximate bow. Their three-meter-tall, pyramidal bodies were not amenable to flexion. Nir skin was a deep black so glossy the human family could no doubt see themselves in it. 

_Homomdans are sometimes mistaken for furniture if they sit still too long,_ Bee tight-beamed from wherever it was the Autobots were getting ready, waiting to make their appearance. Sam decided to give up trying to sip his champagne since everyone was determined to send alcoholic bubbles deep into his sinus cavities. 

A splash near his feet distracted him. Hydrodynamics dictated a high degree of convergent evolution among larger aquatic species on Earth. Sharks, marlin, dolphins, eels, plesiosaurs, and seals all displayed some degree of streamlining for moving through water efficiently. And then you had the craziness of the invertebrate world. That was where the Kuuukinye came in. 

Oh god, Sam thought, looking down at the being who had flipped a chitinous palp to catch his attention. Party Lobsters. 

They only vaguely resembled lobsters, but as far as Sam was concerned there were a lot of legs, a lot of brightly-colored, armored segments, a powerful swimming tail, and two enormous, wildly waving sensory antennae. Lobsters. The Cybertronians liked the Kuuukinye on what Sam felt was an instinctive level, and the feeling was mutual. Exoskeletal beings unite, or something. 

“Mr. Witwicky, how’s the champagne?” the Kuuukinya asked. They were semi-cybernetic, embracing their inorganic technological advances the way humans were beginning to, and had picked up human languages with the same facility as the Autobots. 

“Ptem Sl’ketekk.” Sam held up his half-full flute, examining the pale gold color and the sparkling bubbles. “Veuve Clicquot Chardonnay, vintage 2004. Good stuff.” He crouched – his back was a little stiff these days but his knees were still okay – at the edge of the channel. Sl’ketekk had a sort of watery smell, up close, but it wasn’t what Sam would call fishy. Too weird to be readily identifiable, it was simply the way the Kuuukinye smelled. Not unpleasant. “How’s the salad?” The floating arrangements of mixed Earth and Kuuukinye vegetable matter were so elaborate and colorful that Sam – avowed carnivore – was jealous. He wanted pretty floaty salads too.

(He had seen Mikaela filch one of those carved radish roses earlier. He loved those as much as she did, but she would spend the rest of the evening fending off armfuls of them from the enthusiastic Kuuukinye.) 

“A great sufficiency,” Sl’ketekk said. “And delicious. As your wife, I think, agrees.”

“You saw that, huh?”

“I do have six eyes.” 

…

As the band of pink along the western horizon faded into blue twilight, the giant alien robots arrived, Sky Lynx and all six deltas alighting just long enough to allow their passengers to debark, then all but Borealis lifting off again. (Borealis had drawn the short straw, Bee told Sam, but of the deltas she was most tolerant of big parties anyway, as long as they didn’t last more than a few hours.) Fashionably late to the party. More than politics, it was flagrant theatrics. Sam smiled. The fading sky made their optics and biolights more striking, and as they came nearer Sam resolved the full effect of their formal ornamentation. At some unvoiced signal, they stopped, with Optimus in the center of a long ellipse. Not a military phalanx, though they moved with a habitual unity that had as much to do with the cloud mind as with armed maneuvers. They stood close together, arranged by height, minicons foremost naturally enough, so that everyone could see and be seen. Even on so large a ship, fifty Cybertronians together took up a lot of room. 

Mikaela was the first to approach them, in her iris-blue Fortuny silk dress, her wrap a gauzy banner flying behind her, one end tugged loose by the warm breeze. Optimus took a knee, caught the errant wisp of fabric and refastened it. (A magnetic clasp. One does not _pin_ a Fortuny dress, Mikaela had informed Sam. She knew how much Bee had paid for it.)

Sam’s smile widened. Oh, Optimus would have done the same without an audience. That’s what made the move so smooth. Such a display of manual dexterity and gentleness, however, was not without a point, here and now. Sam couldn’t see Mikaela’s face, but he could well imagine the fond, amused, half-cynical smirk she tossed up at Prime. There, yep, Prime winked back. Those two. 

Optimus stood. He had the air of someone who was trying very hard not to tug on a too-tight collar. Sam empathized. Formalwear. Everyone looked great, no-one was comfortable. 

“Wow!” Sam made a production number of blinking sun filters over his corneas. “What, we humans never rated the full bling treatment from you guys? How much is all that worth?” Bee had yellow diamonds and citrines lined down his forearms and across his cheek-guards, amidst complex gold wire inlays. Even Hound had emeralds and turquoise and jade pasted all over him, though Sam searched for and quickly found Smokescreen’s betting pool on how long that would last.

“It was Jazz’s idea,” Optimus muttered. 

Mikaela looked Prime up and down, twice, with no remorse whatsoever. As though she wanted to trace every exoskeletal curve and softly glowing biolight with her fingertips. Or her tongue. Sam adjusted the collar of his tux. 

“Nice,” she said. Moving on, she beamed at a very shiny Ironhide and Ranger, (someone had held them down to stick star enstatites and black tourmalines on their helms; one suspected Chromia, who was rocking denim-blue sapphire chevrons, which served to make her look even more badass,) then stopped dead in front of Ratchet. He had actually made peridots to match. “That color. Still.” She’d seen pre-war vid. He’d always been that color. That upon landing he’d found an Earth vehicle so nearly matching his habitual shade had been pure chance. Horrible, horrible chance. Ratchet squarked something rude at her. 

Jazz and Rio had covered their plating in silver, intaglioed with branching fractal designs. Mikaela had been afraid they might have chromed themselves, but no, that was Sideswipe. (And with his stylish lines…well, damn if it didn’t look good.) Sunstreaker had showed more restraint, at least in terms of decoration. He’d had Tracks and Mirage working him over, together inlaying gold wire in deceptively simple but aesthetically precise lines. He’d enjoyed the process a great deal and hadn’t been shy about showing his appreciation. 

Beachcomber had covered himself in thin, continuous sheets of opal that somehow contrived to look like tie-dye. Sam wanted to blame Miles, but Beachcomber was perfectly capable of perpetrating that on his own. Especially with Perceptor gone for an extended period. It had been Beachcomber, no doubt, who had supplied the others with the requisite mineralogical data, storing the molecular structures of minerals not only of Earth, but from Cybertron and many other planets besides. His internal nanoassembly capabilities were fine for his own needs, but he was too small to support manufacture for everyone else. There must have been quite a lot of cabled cuddling – given the happy state of Beachcomber’s fields. 

Prowl had removed another layer of armor. He looked _de_ , his actual gender, now, instead of _he_. Wide-chested, narrow-hipped, long, long legs, deft hands. Gemmed with moonstones and titanium wire. Maggie was staring at him and making sounds Sam was trying very hard to ignore. Maggie was almost a hundred years old. She shouldn’t be making noises like that. It was disturbing. 

(Maggie and Glen were only seven years older than Sam and Mikaela. Back when they’d first met the Autobots, those seven years had seemed significant – the difference between teenagers and full adults. Once they were all adults, though, seven years hadn’t mattered so much. Now they were important again. Maggie and Glen would be centenarian geezers later this year, while Sam was a sprightly young ninety-something. Didn’t feel a day over 62!) 

Standing behind Prime, due to their height – an arrangement Ironhide reflexively did not like but tolerated fairly well – Thundercracker and Strake had declined to weigh themselves down with gems and unnecessary wire, but had honed their colors and set their mesh to subtle patterns, their armor glassy with polish. Elita stood between the alphas, equal in height and elegance, her colors shifted toward bright copper and silver , away from the matte carbon and steel she’d worn dominant for three million years.

The minicons, ranged in front, had adopted brilliant coloration in lieu of jewelry. Their iridescent plating shifted spectra according to viewing angle, putting amethysts and sapphires and diamonds to shame. They looked like gemmed scarabs or dragonflies. Spiral stood beside Arcee and Moonracer, just behind the minicons, each wearing wire and gem stripes of the others’ colors. 

By twos and fours and larger clumps, humans joined Autobots on their end of the deck (no small amount of teasing and admiration being lobbed about regarding both human and Cybertronian ideas of finery). Where Mikaela led, others followed, and once sufficient numbers were in a place, the rest couldn’t stand to be left out. After a while, once everyone had realized what had happened, conversations quieted and the merged group of humans and Cybertronians faced the visiting species from across a dozen meters of empty space. 

Autobots didn’t wibble in exactly the same way humans did. Optics glowed brighter. Optimus did something magnificent with his fields, the others joining him, unfolding coronae as though expanding their sparks without opening their chests. And without irradiating everything within twelve miles. 

“Eloquent as always, Optimus Prime,” Ar Val-Ser said, moving to stand at the forefront, between the two groups. Homomdans, Sam recalled, could sense EM fields without augmentation.

“Thank you, Ambassador,” Optimus said. He greeted each of the chief ambassadors by name, in their native languages. “We have come, upon your sufferance and by the good will of our human friends, to request the official resumption of diplomatic relations between the Autobots and the Involved Civilizations of this galaxy and those of M100.”

There was a great deal more speechifying after that. Sam didn’t doze off against Bee’s leg, no. He was just resting his eyes. 

…

Moonlight glimmered on the dark waves to the west. The afterparty had settled down to a low hum, the population on the top deck of the Homomdan ship thinning then burgeoning again as human dignitaries from different time zones returned to their own vessels or joined the assemblage. Most of the Cybertronians were sitting or lounging, even Ratchet and Thundercracker politely declining the Homomdans’ offer of having the ship extrude appropriately sized chairs. Sitting directly on the deck at least put their heads closer to a level with the Homomdans and Val’Nainnamoinnen, and kept them from looming quite so much over everyone else.

Sam wondered if Optimus knew he was posing like a Playgirl centerfold or if that was just the way limbs proportioned like his tended to comfortably bend. He was taking up a lot of floor space, with one leg extended like that, but given how many people were leaning on that leg (and the rest of him) probably no one minded very much. 

A number of the Homomdans stood about, looking – dammit, shut up, Bee – like scattered bits of architecture. Talking with trees. With the decorative lanterns and pavilions, the ship’s deck looked like a sculpture park. Sans lawn. The Ishlorsinami were determinedly diurnal and had all gone to bed, but the Essee were still rolling about, and a few of the Kuuukinye strapped on exo suits and clambered about on dryside, sampling hors d’oeuvres. The rest seemed to have crashed from their oxygen high and were bubbling away at the bottom of their pools. 

The circulating trees at last circulated around to Prime. Patterns of respect in their cultures suggesting that the lowest in status be greeted and attended to first, and the highest, most respected individuals were to be greeted last. Sam had gathered that most of the Val’Nainnamoinnen were in fact captain and crew of the ship Prime and his team had helped.

“Optimus Prime, it is a pleasure to see with you again,” said the tallest, and therefore eldest, Sam’s lenses informed him, gesturing gracefully with a single arm. Val’Nainnamoinnen never stopped growing; their old-folks homes must be _enormous_.

“Elder Galallalanellia, the pleasure is mine as well.” Optimus nodded and made a gesture similar in arc. Ratchet, Ironhide, Jazz and Bumblebee clustered around them, Bee bouncing a little, wanting to know how Gala’s latest batch of great-great-great-grandseedlings were doing. The rest of Gala’s crew gathered in, and for a while, Sam couldn’t see the forest for the Autobots. Or the Autobots for the trees. Something like that. 

Friends caught up, wider introductions were made, though everyone involved had some form of augmentation. This was a diplomatic function, at base. One of Gala’s crew, Bilafulajila, a particular friend of Bee’s, shuffled from the copse to settle beside Sam and Mikaela. 

“Greetings, Mr. Witwicky, Ms. Banes-Witwicky,” Bilafulajila said, waving three of its arms, Sam making notes regarding whether there was a correlation between number of arms moving and depth of emotion. “Bumblebee, I am joyful to see, has made steady friends on this world as well.” 

“Greetings, Bilafulajila,” Mikaela said. Ratchet had only needed to coach her through the names once. Listening to Cybertronian had given her a good ear. “Much to our own joy. It’s a talent he has.” 

From the other side of the extended clump, Bee’s antennae went up, wiggling at them and he squeezed his optical shutters. 

“How long did your ships journey together?” Sam asked. 

“Two…oh, let me see, yes, two hundred and thirty-four of your years,” Bilafulajila said. “We were in a hazardous volume of what you call the Perseus Arm, between Decepticon bases and Ferenx expansionists and several rather unstable supergiant stars. Heavy radiation load. We would not have been there ourselves if not for the Gestrel Library. Heavily shielded, of course, which is why it’s so difficult to find. Optimus joined our search after our ship was repaired, hoping to find mention of the Allspark’s passage.” 

Bilafulajila – Sam was having a hard time not thinking of them as Ents, thanks a lot, Miles – bent very slightly to murmur to him. “Their civil war is a great tragedy. They were once the most advanced civilization in the local cluster. Columns of peaceful coexistence. They mentored many a seedling species through the pangs of galactic social and physical navigation. And now. Well. Not all species develop in the same way. They discovered their aggressive potential much later than most. I have always likened it to a much delayed adolescence. Such a pity.”

“Your people have an adolescence?”

“No, but many animal species do. We are familiar with the concept.”

They were interrupted by a ripple of whispers through the crowd. At the far end of the deck, a floating platform had risen from within the ship and approached the Cybertronian enclave at the stern. Sam’s lenses displayed the name of the newcomer riding the conveyance. Ar Be-Ka iSchloear. So old now that nir skin had faded to dark brown, dull on the edges. 

“Ar Be-Ka!” Optimus could not rise without dislodging dozens, but implied a deep bow with a movement of shoulder and chest armor and an inclination of his helm.

“Lady Optimusa! Time may have altered me, but not so the Prime of Cybertron.” Gender among Homomdans did not correlate at all to that of humans or Cybertronians. Someone’s translation software from Hom to English had gone hinky in a couple of – fortunately – forgivable particulars. Mikaela was grinning in a way Sam knew meant he’d best not comment. 

“No indeed, old friend,” Optimus said, enfolding the ancient Homomdan in his fields, “time changes all.”

Ar Be-Ka settled nir platform at Optimus’ left elbow. “So it’s true then? You’ve done something irrevocable to yourself?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“After all this time you find the Allspark, but rather than return it to Cybertron you destroy it?”

“In…some respects.”

“As fond as we are of Cybertronians,” Ar Be-Ka said, tipping nir platform conspiratorially toward Mikaela, “they have always been vexingly coy about what exactly the Allspark _is_. No other species’ scientists have ever been allowed near the Simfur Temple, and let me tell you what a coup it was for us to even find out that that’s where it was kept! No-one is, to this day, certain what it was used for, besides demonstrably as a unique sort of power source.”

“Oh,” Mikaela said. “Um…”

“It was lodged in your planet here for some thousands of the local years, was it not?”

“Yes.” Mikaela folded her hands into her lap, carefully not looking at Optimus. “We studied it for decades, but didn’t make much headway. Then the Decepticons showed up, freed Megatron, and my husband pushed the Allspark into Megatron’s chest.”

“With, hm, semi-fatal results.”

“Semi-fatal.” Mikaela grinned. “Yes.”

“Instead of destroying your twin and yourself, the Allspark and the shard rendered you immortal.” Ar Be-Ka tipped nir platform toward Optimus, gazing at him rather pointedly. “Is that not a rather wide discrepancy between expectations and actual results?”

“It is, rather,” Optimus said placidly. 

“Cybertronians,” said Bilafulajila, rustling its leafy hair.

“Indeed,” said Ar Be-Ka.

Optimus laughed softly. “I had very much hoped to see you again, old friend.”

“A small hope, no doubt,” Ar Be-Ka said, smiling. “This will be my final outing, I think. I had planned to spend my last days at home, but fate has yielded a different reward.”

Sam bit his lips. Optimus looked as though he had been punched in the chest. Put Optimus, then, on the growing list of mechs who loved ephemerals and had to learn how to cope with losing them. Be-Ka was in danger of being hugged. 

…

Dawn opened over the sky, the world turning away from its own shadow, warm wind from the east blowing over the floating ship, humming softly in the pavilion canopies. Cybertronians watched over their sleeping humans, conversing in low voices with the Val’Nainnamoinnen, who hibernated for part of their solar cycles but did not sleep. A few Homomdans and Kuuukinye were awake, and the Ishlorsinami and Essee would be stirring soon. The handful of humans who hadn’t succumbed gazed blearily at the horizon with expressions varying from giddy to appalled. 

Oh god, thought Miles, how long has it been since I pulled an all-nighter? Decades? He wasn’t sure he hadn’t drifted off at some point, but here he was now, draped over Beachcomber, coatless, tieless, and the sun was coming up. Murmurs. He’d lost track of the conversation for a moment. 

“If we ask you to, will you make the Cybertronians leave?” 

Wow, thought Miles. Ambassador Azikiwe was punchy. Not drunk at least; Ratchet had worked his usual voodoo with the alcohol. No, wait. No, it was a fair question. Miles was more than a little punchy himself.

Ar Val-Ser blinked all nir eyes. Miles was fascinated.

“We would leave if you asked us,” Optimus said. 

Azikiwe waved her hand. “You Autobots would, everyone knows that. I mean the Decepticons.” She turned back to Ar Val-Ser. “If we asked you to, could you come down and eradicate the Decepticons for us? You probably have technology superior to theirs, since your development hasn’t been hampered by millions of years of a war of attrition.”

“But our technology is not geared so specifically to war,” Ar Val-Ser pointed out. “We might try, if we were so inclined to take so many lives, or any lives at all. But it has always been true that Cybertronians are very difficult to kill, and even more difficult to capture. Not without terrible collateral damage. One of the other Involved robot species might endeavor with somewhat better success, but that has been attempted, if I am not mistaken?”

“The Chime,” Optimus said, shuttering his optics for a moment. “That was…unfortunate.” Miles saw Prowl flinch, and Bee and Jazz touched his back. Prowl’s fields took on the sickly, uncoordinated pattern that meant he was looping. Wings restless, Thundercracker and Strake mantled around all three.

“For the Chime,” Ar Val-Ser said. “They only survived as a species because they were well distributed and therefore not all of them were on Aubera Secundus.” Ar Val-Ser made a gesture of negation – Homomdans were not built for head-shaking – “No, no, it would cause such a row, make such a mess of your nice little planet here. No, my dear Azikiwe, I think you are doing quite well on that front yourselves. In fact there are some on the Galactic Council who find your particular brand of martial resilience to be somewhat alarming. Not everyone has looked forward to your acquisition of space flight.” 

“The Atraxi,” Jazz said. “Passive-aggressive bastards.” 

Miles bared his teeth for half a second. He had read up on the Atraxi. Sanctimonious know-it-alls who thought they were all that and a bag of chips, and also thought they should dictate policy to everyone else for their own good. Rather like Americans. The Homomdans had taboos regarding implanting technological devices inside their bodies, but the Atraxi were outright robophobes who regarded Cybertronians as a plague. Ratchet had said that their point of view was understandable. The collateral damage in the Cybertronian civil war had often been messy, indiscriminate and widespread. They were not pleased at all by the endangered Cybertronians – whose extinction the Atraxi were itching to complete – allying with the numerous and robust humans. Who should probably be put down before they caused problems. 

(And Ratchet, by the look he was giving the anxious little cuddle to his left, was about three seconds from grabbing Prowl and taking him back to Nevada if someone didn’t change the topic soon.) 

_The flying eyeball people?_ Sam surreptitiously tight-beamed Jazz.

Jazz not so surreptitiously snerked. _Primus, Sam. Yes, the flying eyeball people._

_They wanna go, huh?_

_In the worst way. With our population so small, and hard resources so thin, they reckon they have a chance._

_Yeah, cuz that’s gone so well for everyone else who’s attacked you guys in the whole history of ever._

_…Yeah._

Jazz’s tone dropped, and Sam felt like a schmuck, but it was true. Taking on the Cybertronians militarily had proved catastrophic for everyone who had tried it. Starting with the Quintessons, whose near-success had resulted in the institution of the Prime/Lord Protector ruling diad, and in the Quintessons’ own essential extinction. Sam was just as glad about the latter, though. Bee had shown him and Mikaela ancient vid taken in that era, and the Quints were creepy as hell, not to mention pathologically and congenitally cruel. 

“Prime has been communicating diligently,” Elder Galallalanellia said, rustling its leaves, “attempting to convince the Atraxi, and some small number of others, that Cybertronians as a whole are not an invasive species. Not a hegemonizing swarm.”

A what? Miles thought. He’d heard Cybertronians called a lot of things, but not that.

 _Gray goo. Nanomachines run amok,_ Mikaela tight-beamed. _The concept of self-replicating machines converting all local matter into more of themselves can also be applied to macro-scale machines._

That would be bad, Miles agreed. He couldn’t blame the Atraxi for their worry. Definitely wouldn’t help, then, to inform anyone that the Cybertronians had been making babies. 

“This moving of their planet,” the Val’Nainnamoinnen ambassador continued, “has not settled anyone’s roots.”

“Indeed not,” said Ar Be-Ka. “Here they are, on the brink of extinction, and yet they manage this feat of astronomical landscaping? Alarming, Optimusa, quite, quite alarming. Exciting too!” Ne leaned nir platform at Prime. “May we watch?”

“You certainly may,” Optimus thrummed. 

…

The Homomdan ship would remain floating on the Atlantic for another week, facilitating human and dolphin visitation, (and exchanging merry horn calls, light shows, and occasionally passengers with the scores of cruise ships – and a growing number of private craft, seaworthy and not so – gathered around it much closer than the military generals of their home countries were happy about) before breaking for orbit to await the Great Moving. Optimus and many of his officers would stay aboard for at least that week, aiding the human interactions and continuing their own negotiations. The ship was easily configured to provide spaces scaled to Cybertronian standards, even for the deltas if any of them had elected to go inside. 

Borealis waffled for a good ten minutes, then contented herself with full-sensory feeds from Hound as he wandered around and talked with people. 

_I know they can do it,_ she said, _and I know it’s a big ship, but I’m over 30 meters tall. That’s a lot of floor-to-ceiling space._

 _Not to mention getting your wings through doorways,_ Hound agreed, patting her foot before heading below.

As their second night aboard drew to a close amid more heavy diplomatic maneuvering disguised as a party, Optimus gestured furtively, staring at the decorative gems on his left forearm. Jazz hissed and swatted at him. 

**But—**

_It does not itch! Leave it alone._

**I am going to make you take every one of these things off me, later. With your dentae.**

_Promises…_

…

Home was his parents’ old house in Tranquility more than the Embassy, these last ten years or so. Renovated now and then as technology advanced and things like water heaters and microwaves wore out, plantings in the garden shifting to xeriscape or low-maintenance because Sam had a black thumb and Mikaela was too busy. But the bones of the house and yard were still recognizable. The garage kept mostly empty to give Bee room whether in car or robot mode. 

Bee opened his doors to let Sam and Mikaela out. Slow, compared with the exuberance Bee remembered from so short a time ago, careful with aging joints, where the cartilage hadn’t held up quite as well as other things. In good shape for their age, sure; better than Ron and Judy had been, before Perceptor had gotten so good with the nanite cocktails and human medicine had started to accept those innovations. But the human aging process was more complicated than anyone had anticipated, problems cropping up because there had never been anywhere near so many humans worldwide living into their 90s or 100s – or 120s – before. Nothing worked perfectly. Not yet. 

They tottered a little, on the steps up to the porch. It had been a long night, up atop the Homomdan ship, and though they’d slept several hours the next morning, there had been more meetings, and a flight back to Nevada with Silverbolt, and yet more meetings, with different people, talking about the party. Debriefing, basically, and then a big press conference. The world wanted to know everything. 

“Aliens!” Sam said. “Real aliens! Starships!”

“What?” Bee squawked. “Chopped liver over here?”

“You don’t count,” Sam said, waving a hand. “70-something years, Bee! Come on! You’re hardly aliens any more.”

“Sam…” Mikaela said. Then she shook her head, patting Bee’s extended fingertip. She unlocked the front door. They were tired. Reminding Sam of the many important, but wonderful, differences between their species would be pointless. He needed a nap. She needed a nap. They needed to remember to pick the dogs up from the boarding kennel tomorrow.

Before they entered the house, into spaces he could not easily follow, Bee held Sam and Mikaela against his face and buzzed. A little hum, a reminder, not enough to get anyone wound up. They were going to Cybertron soon! He wanted to show them, craters and all. To see them walk on his homeworld, boots crunching on the rubble from which they'd build anew. 

_Bee?_ Mikaela touched his cheek spar. 

_Soon,_ he said, embroidered with glyphs, many of which she knew, though the subtler meanings in their placement, and how they overlapped in the three-dimensional ways even written Cybertronian tended to take up, were beyond her. “Months, not years,” he said aloud, clearer meaning. “And then you’ll have neighbors.” He had been resisting the urge to call upon the Pleiades to guard Sam and Mikaela full-time, especially when he had to recharge. He tried not to need to, basking outside the garage or wherever he’d driven them. He didn’t want anything to happen to them before they saw his homeworld. He didn’t want to miss a single moment of their lives – a sappy old song from 1997 played over his speakers. 

Sam groaned and Mikaela snorted, and the two humans stepped together out of Bee’s grasp and over their threshold. He warbled softly. _Sunrise._

 _You’d better not wake me up that early,_ Sam said. 

…

On the top deck of the Homomdan ship, Hound and Mirage were a tight little knot against Prime's side. Hound had thought of suggesting that Mirage could stay with Ultra Magnus and Metroplex, but he knew that Mirage, for all his dread of seeing Cybertron’s mangled corpse, would never want to miss watching an entire planet plus two moons be space bridged. Prime curled a hand around them, pressing them closer. 

Jazz had Prowl pinned to Prime’s other side – Thundercracker and Strake nested together behind them, against Prime’s back, watching with some interest but tranquil after their own overloads. Jazz had plucked out most of the gems burdening Optimus, indeed using his dentae in a most delicate manner. He had convinced Prime to keep a few of the nicer opals around his shoulders; they didn’t interfere with anything and looked fantastic. The wire inlay was being left alone for the time being, though Jazz knew Prime’s nanocells would begin devouring it soon. 

Prowl and Red were finalizing moving plans – shifting of security, tallying who was going, who was staying, who would come back, when and to where. The Cybertronian Embassy to Earth would remain in Nevada, with only slightly decreased human staff. Maggie and Glen still lived there. Metroplex would remain their secondary embassy, but she needed to be mobile if necessary. 

Optimus petted the friends around him contemplatively. He was heavily in communication with a large number of people, as was his wont, but the tenor of most of those conversations was somewhat more formal and cautious than his usually cordial relations with humanity had become over the past seventy-odd years. He extended cables to Jazz and Prowl, along with an inquiring ping. They accepted and replied via their smaller cables.

 _I’m fine,_ Prowl said. Jazz had door-wings these days and Prowl was having fun with them. 

_He’s hangin’ in,_ Jazz clarified at the same time, tilting his head to nibble and kiss Prowl’s neck struts, making sure Prowl could feel how much he was enjoying what he was doing to his door-wings. The Ishlorsinami were processing requests from the Chime, whose population had rebounded in the intervening millennia, the Atraxi, and a couple of other species, to try Sentinel, Prowl, the rest of Sentinel’s battalion, and a large number of other Cybertronians for war crimes. Jazz knew Prowl’s reflex would be to throw himself upon the mercy of the intergalactic court. Where he would probably be disassembled for the greater good, unless Optimus could make his prior sentence take precedent. _Maybe you should extend his geas to match TC and Strake’s? Buy us some time?_

 **I am considering it.** The Chime at least were so far being reasonable, accepting Prowl’s meticulous report of the Auberan atrocity (the entire planet had been glassed) as permissible evidence in their deliberations. Disconcertingly, however, the Chime wished to forego further Ishlorsinami mediation. They wanted direct contact. They wanted a full memory-copy from Prowl via hardline core download. And they wanted permission to hunt and if necessary execute Sentinel. Prime was willing to establish direct contact, but the other two stipulations were alarming, even if allowing them to take a shot at Sentinel might solve one of his own thornier problems. It wasn’t a solution he liked at all. 

~~~~~~

As the date for the great moving drew closer, the old debate flared up into lively and sometimes bitter contention again. If the Autobots deserted Earth, would the Decepticons rain down destruction upon the still technologically outmatched humans, or would they leave Earth in peace at last in pursuit of their ancient foes? It was a moot question in a sense, as Metroplex was not inclined to leave, nor did most in the African Union want her to. 

“Don’t you want to join everyone else to see Cybertron installed in its new orbit?” people asked Metroplex.

“No,” she said, fluffing her solar panels contentedly. “I’m useful here.” Cityformers liked staying put.

Also, over the course of the last few decades, six teams of Rescue Bots had been created, to pursue much the same function as the Protectobots, who could not be everywhere at once. This way there was at least one combiner team for each heavily inhabited continent – and someone could always get down to Antarctica in a hurry if the scientists there were having a serious problem. 

Like the Protectobots, the Rescue teams had no dedicated permanent base, and went where they were most needed, usually to aid the humans in natural disaster relief, whether this was local flooding or a major earthquake and tsunami. Landslides, hurricanes, volcanoes, wildfires, sinkholes; there was always something happening somewhere in the world. Trapped miners, gas pipe explosions, old nuclear fission plant meltdowns, city fires and even highway pile-ups could benefit from giant robotic assistance. 

…

“Last pipe, set,” Heatwave said, signaling to the humans waiting on the shore. Cheers rose up; now they would be protected from the deadly mazuku. Lake Kivu, on the border between DR Congo and Rwanda, was a large freshwater lake that experienced occasional limnal eruptions – sudden releases of dissolved carbon dioxide that suffocated livestock, wildlife and humans. The violent releases could also cause lake tsunami, and Lake Kivu was surrounded by many towns and villages. The loss of life would be catastrophic. 

As demonstrated in Lakes Nyos and Monoun, however, vent pipes driven deep into the water would release the carbon dioxide at a safe rate. Lake Kivu being much larger and deeper had presented economic and engineering difficulties in implementing a similar plan, until the Autobots got involved. 

Better to prevent a disaster than have to come in afterward. A huge carbon dioxide release would be the kind of unpredictable thing they could never arrive in time to save everyone from. All they would be able to do was help with burial of the bodies. 

Boulder, down on the lake bottom, shuddered. Then steeled his mind. The perforations in the pipe allowed the heavily saturated water down at the bottom to rise toward the top. The CO2 bubbled out, causing a fountain at the surface, like opening a shaken bottle of soda; but the diameter of the pipe limited the size of the fountain. The water down there was so acidic, a normal pipe would corrode quickly, but he and his team had helped forge an alloy that would last indefinitely. This was the last of seven such pipes. Boulder created a vacuum bubble in his chest and rose swiftly to the surface, almost 480 meters above. 

Chase and Heatwave hauled him up onto the barge that had been their staging platform for the project. Pinion, a light helicopter, flew circles above and relayed their success to Metroplex up north. 

“Party time!” Pinion called down, swooping low and doing a loop to the delight of the human spectators and the engineers on the barge, supervising the ebullient young Bots. They were going to spend the night in Goma, on the Congo side of the lake, and in the morning help out with road repair there after the last lava flow. After that they’d spend the next six months, between emergencies, planting trees to make up for the CO2 release. A company called KivuWatt was already doing large-scale extraction of the dissolved methane the lake also contained, generating so much power Rwanda could sell it to neighboring countries.

“Fireworks!” Boulder enthused, ignoring Heatwave’s grumbling about fire safety, and being in the middle of the dry season. 

“No more sampling local cuisine,” Chase reminded them, as the barge headed for the Goma wharfs. “I’m not helping any of you clear your intakes this time.” 

~~~~~~

Interstellar space.

The minute Skyfire had lifted from Earth’s gravity well, Scavenger had grabbed Perceptor and dragged him off into a corner of the hold for what he intended to be a long snuggle. They would have little to do on the six month journey out to Cybertron, though Perceptor had looked forward to spending much of that time in Skyfire’s cockpit, making astronomical observations and chatting with the delta.

Snuggles were also nice. 

Recharge, however, was what they all needed even more. Scavenger and Perceptor fell offline in mid-kiss, their faces rather comically smooshed together. Wheeljack and Hook arranged them a little more comfortably, then settled in themselves.

Skyfire was their main transport, leading a small convoy of Azimuth and Blueshift. The two young deltas were carrying their share of the nova nets, the minicons, as well as the contingent of engineering-inclined Waterbabies who were less sturdy, canny, or well-armed than Rutile and Avalanche, who were riding with Skyfire and the Constructicons. Perceptor didn’t really want any of his progeny in close quarters for six months with the Structies as a group. Scavenger and Hook were all right by themselves, but their gestalt groupthink still had lethal edges that Perce didn’t trust. 

…

48 hours later, Wheeljack woke in a very pleasant cuddle. Rutile and Scavenger nestled against his sides, Scav with Perce in his lap, Hook, Tread and Trample warm against Jack’s back, and Avalanche curled up on his legs. She was larger enough than him so that saying she was in his lap was a bit odd. Maybe humans would still say so, but Wheeljack felt it was more a case of his legs being wedged under her torso. Her big tank engine purring warm against his knees. Nice. 

He pinged Skyfire and received the delta’s gently amused status. They were heading directly for the intergalactic wormhole, far from Sol already – well past Lalande 21185, which was ironically in the opposite direction line-of-sight from M100. Wormholes were weird! Az and Shift reported all-well. 

_Thanks, Fire,_ Jack said. He opened up a number of project files to work on until the others came out of recharge. One thing he was thinking heavily about was a new super-long-distance communications system. The four second delay between Earth and Alpha Centauri B even via subspace was going to be maddening! Perceptor had been contemplating the message from Effulgent Prime in the Matrix – this blew Jack’s circuits a bit, even though it was pretty cool. “Shortcuts,” the ancient dead Prime had said. 

Subspace was already a shortcut, cosmic-geometrically speaking, but maybe there was a way to get at deeper layers of the substrate. 

Scavenger stirred. Wheeljack thought about the Perceptor he had first met three million years ago, struggling alone and burdened across a ruined landscape. Having scraped himself down to raw metal, a friable sketch of memory all he had left, outside his spark, though Jack hadn’t known that at the time. How much had his spark preserved? Those who willingly returned from the Allspark retained all or nearly all of their living memories. Or was that only because only those who did remember were willing to be re-embodied? 

Prowl had shot Impactor and the others he had executed in the CPU before extinguishing their sparks, double tap, and Raze still remembered his former self. Beachcomber had known that Perceptor was different after his sojourn to the Torus States, but even he, an intimate friend, had not been able to pin down exactly what had happened, what Perceptor had done to himself. The change, Beachcomber had shared, had been readily attributable to a vorn alone and hunted, and the traumatic deaths of all those who had accompanied him to Uraya. Now they also knew that Perceptor had been clever and left himself notes. 

Scavenger rested his helm – well, part of it, being so much larger – on Wheeljack's shoulder, cuddling in. 

_When did you first meet Perceptor?_

_Hm? Oh, yeah, you guys knew him from University right?_

_Yes._ A volatile association if ever there was one. 

_Yeah, I didn't hook up with him until about 650 years or so into the war._ He collected a handful of memories, spooled them through to Scavenger slightly edited for the classified projects he'd been working on at the time. 

He conjured the banged-up mech he and Springer’s team had picked up on the outskirts of Iacon, straggling through the rubble, missing the left secondary arm, chameleon mesh torn and phased to faded rust and grey, the armor beneath so dented and filthy he'd known from one glimpse that the mech had been running a long time on short fuel. (Scavenger made a small, unhappy sound.) Whatever hardships he had faced had not dulled the mech's disposition, though. That cheery wave and hail as Springer had touched down just long enough to pick up him and the cylinders he carried. Seven clanging nuisances, was what they were, but Perceptor had clung to them as if his life depended on them, shouting and cringing away when Jack had offered to stow them for him. War had been on long enough by then that he'd gotten used to people being strange about seemingly little stuff. There was always a reason, regardless of whether the reason seemed to make sense to anyone else or not. 

Once in Iacon, Perceptor had been sent to the medical facility, where Beachcomber found him – much relieved that he was alive after an entire vorn missing. Fermion, leader of the Autobot Sciences division made sure he was given as good a hab as could be found. A University survivor, and a well-known and important professor and researcher like Perceptor rated his own small suite. Two rooms, one of which was large enough to serve as a small work lab, so that was plenty. He invited Beachcomber to share it with him, and Beachcomber smiled, which was agreement as far as that went, since Beachcomber, even less than most people, kept nothing he couldn’t carry in his caches, and only occasionally recharged at “home” under normal circumstances. Circumstances being hardly normal, the geologist spent every off-shift in the suite, sometimes just watching Perceptor as he worked. Wheeljack stopped by a quartex later to make sure they were doing okay.

"Wheeljack, hello! Do come in!" Perceptor had cued the door open without rising, and waved Wheeljack inside the suite without even glancing from the screen he was monitoring. Readouts from a dozen experiments, and extracts from a score of papers collected while he'd been lost in Uraya. “Beachcomber is out gallivanting with friends. Well. Not gallivanting exactly.”

As Wheeljack picked his way through frighteningly organized if precarious stacks of equipment in various stages of repair or salvage, Perceptor did look up and came forward to take his hand. Behind him, the open door to the recharge cubby revealed the seven cylinders stacked on the berth. 

"Just wanted to see how you were doing," Jack said, looking around with a grin. "Not exactly your lab back at Xenon, huh?"

Perceptor waved a hand dismissively. "No, but one does what one can with what one has. I am quite well, truly." Glyphs and subharmonics embroidered formal language that was, Wheeljack learned, Perceptor's default, thanking him in perpetua for the rescue. Not an effort to put him off. Wheeljack wondered how many others never visited or talked to the great scientist; overawed or simply not having the time to penetrate his natural manner. 

"You look better than you did last time I saw you, that's for sure." Not rust and bare steel now, but burgundy and brushed aluminum and even a shadowy sort of teal on forearms and subtle torso stripes. There were a couple of ragged edges where his mesh was growing back, but those would fill in in another quartex or so. Jack uncached a vial of medical-grade. 

As soon as he offered it, Perceptor snatched it out of his hand and gulped it down, only catching himself as the last drop left the vial, falling onto his lower lip-plates. Apologetic, he offered the empty vial back, but Jack waved off the contrition. 

"Hey, easy, no problem, you went short for a long time, okay?" He reached out – how could he not want to touch that face? – and wiped the fallen drop away with his thumb. Perceptor's fields surged. (Scavenger's fields did similarly, and Jack wriggled a hand around his hip, finding a nice little wire plexus to stroke.) Like that, hm? Wheeljack knew the type. Work and work and work and work and forget to refuel or recharge or anything until stasis set in because the work was so _interesting_!. He gathered Perceptor close – Wheeljack was currently _de_ , too, though shorter; Perceptor had always been quite tall – and all three of the mech's remaining arms wrapped around him, the larger pair strong enough to dent armor. Wheeljack kissed him, letting his inner fields swing wildly, pushing Perceptor step by step toward the berth.

There wasn't room for one of them to lie down, let alone both, but Jack did not want to jostle the cylinders, nor even suggest they be moved out of the way. He just hipped between Perceptor's legs as the backs of Perceptor's knees hit the edge of the berth and he sat down, keeping their chests tight together, both of them thrumming. Three hands moving on him was interesting. He offered a cable, making no effort to hide his concern, and Perceptor accepted, making no effort to hide his gratitude. 

_Glad to help, yeah?_ He stroked the parted thighs, skirting sensitive hip gimbals, hooking two fingers behind the knee joint, finding the nice sensory plexus there. Perceptor shivered against him.

 _You are, aren't you. Very much._ Perceptor cupped his face with his fine-hand. His dainty little mouth explored head-fins, down a cheek flange, limning neck cables, nuzzling hard up under Jack's jaw-spar. Wheeljack shuddered, charge coiling high and hot in his frame, making him arch. Perceptor pulled him up, lifting him off his pedes, their armor creaking. 

“Hullo…?” came a voice from the outer door. 

Wheeljack turned as he and Perceptor untangled themselves. Both of them had scanned through the door, though it hadn’t been locked, and Perceptor had clearly recognized who it was. The look on the new mech’s face as he came in shifted rapidly from surprise to relief to sadness and back to relief. 

“Ah!” said Perceptor, optics brightening. “Beachcomber, this is Wheeljack. The one who found me.”

“Wheeljack!” Beachcomber cried happily, bouncing into the engineer’s arms. “I’m so glad you’re here!” From out of a cache he produced a small foil packet, which he presented to Wheeljack.

“Oof!” The small blue mech was heavier than he looked. “Hey there, glad to meetcha! Aww, you didn’t have to…whoa, are these from Skyline’s?” Inside the packet were six little glowing cubes which shaded from deep blue at one corner to bright green at the opposite, and had a solid layer of white minerals at the bottom, like a substrate. Gourmet treats from what had been a reasonably swanky Iacon shop. Wheeljack hadn’t known they were still in business, though Iacon had never yet been successfully bombed. He held them out to Perceptor and Beachcomber, then took one for himself. “Mind if I give the other three to a friend of mine?”

“Of course not, please do!”

“Towers survivor. I think he’d really like them.”

“Oh,” Beachcomber said, visor swimming into a blurry pewter gradient. “Oh.” He touched Jack’s hand. Radon University, harboring as it did a military studies academy and a number of weapons engineers and warframes, had defended itself and the other Universities long enough to let about a third of the residents get out and reach safety before the alpha wings could incinerate them. But the Towers…the Towers were just gone. “I’ll…I’ll try to go up there again tomorrow! Maybe they’ll have more then.”

“No rush, no rush. He’s…uh…deployed at the moment.”

Perceptor’s attention focused like a laser at that, but he simply nodded. Wheeljack was involved with all kinds of projects he couldn’t talk about, and so was Perceptor, even if he’d only been back for a few days. 

“Deployed?” Beachcomber looked at them aghast. A Towers survivor, and Command had sent him back out into…into Primus knew what. 

“Uh, oh hey, no, not combat,” Wheeljack said, waving his hands. “He’s in…not-combat. He’s really smart and fast, all right? And he has…um…well, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Beachcomber choked back a keen. He’d been so careful these past few days, trying to avoid upsetting Perceptor, not knowing what horrors his friend had seen during that long vorn alone; but Perceptor insisted he was _fine_ , aside from the obvious physical damage. The stump of the missing arm had been capped off, and he was scheduled to have the other three replaced with a more standard, medium pair, donating the mismatched trio for parts. So rational, so perfectly reasonable. But something was wrong, Beachcomber could feel it. Something to do with those cylinders on the recharge berth. Something was wrong and Perceptor wouldn’t talk about it, no, because Perceptor was _fine_ …

Perceptor knelt, watching Beachcomber’s face intently, arms at his sides but ready to embrace his friend. Beachcomber had never taken well to being restrained. 

Beachcomber paced a tight circle, fists clenched. “You disappeared! No-one knew where you’d gone, and then Shockwave sent word that he’d killed Valence, Essentia, Apogee, Farad, and Threadwinder in Uraya and they were friends of yours, only I couldn’t understand why you’d go to Uraya… and then this shuttle came in, Spinner, and she said she was supposed to meet you and the others there but there was an alpha Seeker flight and she couldn’t get through, and then half a vorn later she did but there was no-one at the meet-point and I thought…”

“Hush, hush now,” Perceptor said, gently taking one of Beachcomber’s hands. “If Shockwave had killed me as well, wouldn’t he have said so?”

“Yes, but…he might have captured you.”

“And _that_ he wouldn’t have said,” Wheeljack muttered grimly. 

“No,” Beachcomber whispered, burying his face in Perceptor’s chest. 

“I am sorry,” Perceptor said, wrapping two arms around Beachcomber and drawing Wheeljack in with the third. “I’m sorry.”

Wheeljack nuzzled Beachcomber’s helm. This was hard; friends on opposite sides of secret projects. People who were used to sharing every passing thought and suddenly couldn’t. Beachcomber lifted his head and Wheeljack kissed him as sweetly as he knew how. There were seven clever hands between the three of them, and no-one used cables, but they each found some sort of comfort nonetheless.

…

“The war swept us into separate black ops,” Wheeljack said, “but we’ve stayed friends ever since.”

Scavenger surged against Wheeljack, kissing and nibbling in thanks; then turned to Perceptor, nuzzling him awake. 

"Scav," Jack protested. "He needs the rest..."

"Yes," Scavenger said, kissing Perceptor's mouth open, pulling him more securely into their cuddle. "Rest after..." 

"Mmm," Perceptor said, blinking. "Hmm?" 

Scavenger disengaged his kiss, cabling to Perceptor as the latter opened ports, but smushing Jack and Perceptor together, more or less on his lap. Heated by his own memories, Jack leaned in eagerly, catching his mouth on Perceptor's. A fine hand cupped his face, the other being nibbled on by Scavenger. Perceptor curled, optics squeezing shut as the sensations zinged from his hands through his body, spinning his spark bright and hot. 

Hook and Rutile scooted around, shifting positions slightly; Hook wrapping himself around Perceptor's back, mouthing his neck, sinking cables into everyone, while Rutile snugged himself up to Wheeljack's other side, falling back into recharge with a contented sigh, Avalanche hugging him, too, before turning to press herself against Hook’s back, her clawed hands finding well-hidden places along his sides, making him hum and hitch. Wheeljack curled an arm around Rutile, kissed his helm, then extended a cable to Skyfire. 

_Let me settle my autonomics…there. Thank you!_

The rest of the Structies closed in. Fine by Wheeljack; Longhaul was a fantastic snogger, and Mixmaster could smell deliriously wonderful when he wanted to. Tread and Trample, like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, liked to use their twin-bond to enhance double-teaming people, to incredible effect. 

Around them, with them, flashing between the stars, guided pulsar by pulsar, Skyfire hummed to himself, well pleased.

...

2083 October

Earth.

The space bridge team was in M100, only two months out from Cybertron. On Earth, down in the Nevada embassy medbay, Ratchet looked up from his research and nodded. Prowl stood in the doorway, flanked as usual by Thundercracker and Strake. Though they were not in direct contact with the bridge team, the planned schedule was known. 

The supernova they would be triggering in a few hours would be visible from Earth with medium-powered telescopes. Or keen Seeker optics. A single star outshining its entire galaxy. 

Ratchet came forward and took Prowl’s hand, noting the slight shiver, swiftly repressed. Yes, this would be far kinder. He led Prowl to the repair table farthest from the outer door. They would keep him in stasis for a couple of weeks, until the nova’s light faded.

“You two can stay,” Ratchet said, glancing up at the Seekers. “Just keep out of my way.”

“Of course,” Thundercracker said. 

Ratchet attached the monitor leads to Prowl’s arms, caressed Prowl’s face, leaned down to kiss him before initiating stasis. Strake huddled into Thundercracker’s arms as they settled in to wait.

Sideswipe, Sunstreaker and Raze came in, taking up station on the other side of the repair table, earning subsonic growls. 

"It's our fault, too, sort of, that he's like...this," Sideswipe said.

Raze nodded, catching Thundercracker's gaze. Prowl had been different after the Coryxii incident, though Impactor had not made the connection immediately. In retrospect, Raze thought that that was when Prowl and Swoop had become not just assigned interface partners, but friends. They had even started using cute nicknames for each other. “Gruesome” and “Deadly”.

"You three can stay out of my way as well," Ratchet grumbled. Spiral was sensibly keeping herself busy with Nightbeat and distracted by Mirage and Hound. Blades and his brothers, and Afterburner, Strafe, and _their_ brothers, Tideline, the Pleiades, and Highwire had all been prepared. All reported no more than slight “spark-wibbles” as Tideline put it. 

Prowl’s children. 

Mikaela had liked to complain that children didn’t exactly come with user’s manuals, but there were in fact tens of thousands of books written on the subject, even if most human parents had read exactly none of them. Cybertronians had no such resource, and no traditions. No grandmothers to ask for advice. 

They had had no idea what they were doing with Borealis, but she hadn’t turned out badly, and she was no more odd than any other delta. Ranger, their fine officer, son of Ironhide. Had they chosen that celadon spark or had it chosen them? 

Thinking about those two like this made Ratchet feel strange. Wasn’t it wrong, somehow, to love them so much just because he had helped make them? Was he biased toward Catscan in the same way? Catscan was so much older, and Ratchet had therefore known him for so much longer, it was hard to tell.

 _We…we haven’t done too poorly, have we?_ Ratchet tight-beamed to Optimus.

 **No, old friend, not too poorly.** Optimus’ harmonics were fond. 

…

M100 galaxy. Star system Wd-8655269.

 _Launching...now._ Perceptor had crafted this part of the project entirely solo. Evil things enough had been done with this knowledge. No hands but his built the missile. No code but his primed it and sent it on its fatal task. Scrapper fumed behind him, but Perceptor had been unbending on this, and Wheeljack – the eternal peacemaker – had supported him. 

In freefall some small distance above their asteroid observation site, which was well outside the blast radius, Rutile watched the missile fly toward the solitary, carbon-oxygen white dwarf with wide open optics. They were, through exotic Cybertronian science, going to trigger a non-standard Type Ia supernova. This would be memory he would have to firewall carefully the next time, and every time, he was intimate with Prowl. He wanted, nevertheless, to bear witness. 

It was an ugly death; the star blowing its guts out into the void with a roaring scream, turning itself inside-out, and for what? For power. Because they could. 

_We will not do this again,_ Perceptor tight-beamed. _There should be a way to harvest the requisite energy more slowly and still store it in this manner._

 _Will we really give up that knowledge, though?_ Rutile asked. He knew Cybertronians had no cultural history of relinquishment. Once they knew a thing, even if they did not use it right away, the knowledge was kept, stored, with the assumption of potential future use. 

_We – meaning I – know of three ways to destroy stars. Prowl, by the way, destroyed his own knowledge right after Sentinel and Trochar got the one missile out of him._ Prowl had set a self-deletion into the matrical code, both in the ship’s assembler and his own memory core, and activated it before Trochar could get at the data himself. An AI trick. _He expected to die for that, but for some reason Sentinel chose not to take issue with it._

_He’d have to explain to the crew why._

_Precisely. In fact it is my understanding that Sentinel explained to the crew that the Coryxii star suffered a natural mishap._ Perceptor jetted up behind Rutile, put all four arms around him, kissed the top of his helm. _Now. As I said, I know three ways to destroy stars, thanks to the Archive. We have here employed the middle way; where Sentinel was crude and Megatron elegant, we are merely efficient. And while I am…reluctant to delete data of any kind… I…oh, Ru, I really must, I think._

 _Leaving Galvatron as the only one who knows how? Unless he told Shockwave, or Shockwave’s figured out his own method._ Rutile leaned back against him, lacing fingers with Perceptor’s fine-hands. 

_There is that, although I doubt Galvatron, or Megatron, would have shared that knowledge; he would much prefer to be sole possessor of such an asset. Perhaps knowing how to kill stars ourselves would help us defend against such an attack._ Though that was basically about being able to fend off a missile, or destroy a beam emplacement before it could fire. Nothing arcane about that. There was no air to blow through his core vents, but he huffed his fans. _I could leave the files in the Archive, perhaps in only one of the backups, and merely delete them from my own memory._

Perceptor’s fields wobbled, and Rutile pressed his hands tighter, turning and lifting his head to kiss his progenitor’s jaw. 

_I thump-scanned that planet as we were setting up the launcher,_ Rutile said. _Tideline’s going to go crazy over the caves._ It had been a cindery little world, all that was left of a much larger planet’s core when the star had gone through its red giant phase. Riven and thrawn, the scorched metallic surface bore fascinating, ropy blobs and frozen pools, and twisted formations of nickel-iron, like mixed a’a and pahoe’hoe lava, sheened with iridescence in some places, Widmanstätten patterns in others. Rutile had taken a number of samples, both for his own study and to give to geologists on Earth and Mars. The interior had been cracked, shattered, and recompressed by gravity, leaving the entire metallic planetoid at about the same density as Cybertron. Their supernova had now destroyed it utterly, scattering its atoms to interstellar dust.

It was a beautiful death; plasma and matter and energy commingling, spangling so bright across the cosmos the denizens of planets in distant galaxies would see it in their daytime skies. In a few hundred years it would become a spectacular supernova remnant. 

_She certainly will,_ Perceptor agreed. _Beachcomber will appreciate your scans as well._

 _Yes!_ Rutile jiggled against him happily. 

Tideline had been on Mars with Rutile for years, studying the remnants of Martian rivers and lakes, but a week or so before Moving Day, Borealis, Silverbolt and Polaris would ferry all the Bots – except three of the Graveyard Legion – from Mars to the Homomdan ship in orbit at Earth. 

His first and so far only progeny. He remembered the merge with exultation, relished it, watching this terrible, beautiful, irreversible death. He had hoped to merge with both Prowl and Silverbolt at once, but Silverbolt could not in good conscience merge without the full consent of his brothers; and they were wary of the effects; ties that might bind them to vulnerable civilians. When the war was over, Skydive had said. Prowl, however, embraced those ties, clung to the restraints they placed on him. Freed from its old, deadly, constrictive chamber 66 years ago, Prowl’s spark had now grown powerful enough to run a Seeker body. Even using the Vector protocols, and with Prowl taking most of the backlash, Rutile had merge-scars to be proud of. 

Skyfire watched the matter, energy, and gravitational shockwaves blaze through space, toward a "nearby" diffuse nebula. He smiled, anticipating, joyful, as the nova's shockwave stirred and compressed the nebula into a stellar nursery. 

_Azimuth,_ he sent. _Blueshift._

_Yes?_

_Let’s meet here, with Borealis and Polaris, and Silverbolt if we can get him, in ten million years, to watch the new stars ignite!_ It had been so long since he had made a date like this! All his previous such were null, the other deltas he’d known long dead. There were, Prime thought, five others somewhere out in the universe, but Prime wouldn’t say who, if he even knew, and didn’t know where. 

_Yes!_

_Yeah!_

The nets had been deployed before the missile launch. Now the star’s energy was being caught, converted, stored in the nets’ cells. For five days they watched the paroxysms, both ugly and beautiful. 

Perceptor held Rutile close, thinking about Prowl. About Beachcomber, about Borealis, Hoist, Seaspray, and Drift, and all their children. 

When the nets were full to capacity, the three deltas carefully drew them into skeins. These they would tow the rest of the way to Cybertron – a dangerous venture. All that power, and if they were fired on… 

~~~~~~

2083 – November

Milky Way galaxy. Interstellar space.

 _Hello?_ She had never met another Cybertronian out in the black, not someone she didn’t know at any rate. This one’s IFF said Autobot, but she wasn’t familiar with its frame type.

 _Hello,_ it answered, harmonics baldly curious, a little wary (she was much bigger than it, and possibly much better armed), with a tiny, buried, silvery thread of shyness. It was adorable. 

_Are you looking for Optimus? Prime, I mean? I can give you the coordinates; although they haven’t changed since he sent that Allspark-related message, if that’s what you’re going by?_

_Thank you, yes,_ the other said. _I…was checking up on Cybertron, but it wasn’t where I…I mean, it’s gone. I thought Prime ought to know._

_Ah. The trajectory changed when Shockwave chopped Kaon off the planet. See?_ She sent the corrected course and the other responded with a simple thank-you glyph embroidered with shock and dismay. 

She did a lazy roll around it as it digested the rest of the news packet she’d piggybacked on the signal. _What’s your name, by the way? I’m Borealis._ It would be nice to be able to tell Prime who she had run into. This one might be a long-lost friend of Skyfire’s, and that would be especially lovely – and rare – news to be able to convey. 

_Oh. Um, sorry, I’m Cosmos._

_Cosmos! Is that really your name?_

_…Er, yes?_

_Eeeee! That’s wonderful!_

_Thank you?_ The little spaceship followed her loop, then did a fancy little twirl of its own. _You’re…new, aren’t you?_

_Yep! Are you going to Earth? I’m in the middle of a run out to Alpha Centauri A, but then I’ll be heading back. It’s not far. I wouldn’t mind company, but if you don’t want to that’s fine too._

_I…I’d like that. To come with you, I mean._ He took up a wing position off her port side, settled into a comfortably matching vector. _I’ve been alone out here for…a long time._

They talked about the stars and moving planets and engine specs – in fits and starts, because Cosmos really had been alone for a long time and hadn’t remembered the knack of conversation, and Borealis didn’t want to push him. Skyfire had times during their shipping runs where he went quiet and slow to respond and that was normal and fine. She knew she would become that way, too, could feel it in the way her CPU settled sometimes. Give her a few thousand years out here, run out along a different arm of the spiral? Yeah, it would be hard for her, too, to hold on to threads of something moving in the short, chopped arcs of words the way realtime conversations did. 

She’d never scanned engines like his before. He’d had to self-modify a lot; no one nearby to fix him if he was hurt, when he’d been so unfortunate as to run across a band of rogue Cybertronians – faction mattered little. He could flick through wormholes slicker than an android’s behind, skate insanely close to massive stars and sip up wisps of their coronae, coast through cooling post-nova nebulae and debris clouds in semi-stasis for 500 years without refueling. Stare in wonder back in time to the distant reaches of the universe or run an alarmingly thorough recon scan on a Decepticon outpost only a million kilometers away.

The reverse was also true. Like most deltas, Borealis liked to tinker with her engines, always seeking new ways to go faster, to see more of the universe. Unlike Skyfire and Silverbolt, though, she and the other young deltas did not mind incorporating ideas from Wheeljack. This tended not to please Ratchet overmuch, but no harm done so far.

…

Borealis made sure Cosmos got through the EDF’s IFF nets all right, made the introductions, so to speak, although Cosmos was only in provisionally until Prime spoke for him. Between Neptune and Jupiter, they found Kup and his ship on patrol. 

_Good to see ya, Cos,_ Kup sent. _Been a while, wasn’t sure you were still out there._

 _Cosmos?_ Springer cut in from the Xantium. _Cosmos!_ It would be worth another haul down to Earth just to see Arcee’s face when she found out Cosmos had finally come in. 

_Springer!_ Cosmos replied, laughing. _I can’t believe you’re still alive._

_Yeah, yeah, that’s what Cee said._

_And Arcee too!_

_Sure! I know Lissi won’t have gone two sentences without mentioning Skyfire. Tracks is down there planetside, and Seaspray and Powerglide. Wheeljack’s out with Perceptor and Skyfire on their way to Cybertron. You want the whole list now or wait to get it from Prime?_

_Oh…I…well, I haven’t tried landing on a planet for a while, I’d better wait so I can concentrate. But thank you, Springer!_

_No problem! See you on Moving Day!_

They landed on the mountainside and scrambled their way down – not the peak, since too many heavy landings would alter the elevation and then the local humans would fuss. Hoist led the Oregon base’s contingent out into the sunlight to meet them, Waterbabies wandering in from the forest and the beach until there was quite a crowd, smiling and chattering and patting his elbows or shoulders. Cosmos had an official welcome and a rather intense conversation over tight-beam with Prime, getting his clearances worked out and receiving the unedited update; news, antivirals, comm channels, the basic merge procedure, and the survivor list. Optimus was in New York, getting things in order with a rather nervous UN.

It was a lot to process. There were a lot of people. Some of the humans had come out, too, and Hoist was passing out samples of his latest energon brownies. (Borealis liked the brownies all right, but snuck down to the kitchen in search of macarons.) The Waterbabies had so many interesting shapes; some he hadn’t seen in kilovorns, some he’d never seen, and he wanted to talk with them all, but he’d been so lonely for so long he…he supposed he’d gotten used to it. He pulled his fields in tight. The chatter quieted some and people drew back a little so as not to crowd him. Frustrating, though, because he kind of wanted to be crowded. 

Another mech ambled up the path from the beach. “Hullo, Cos.” 

“Seaspray!” Cosmos hurled himself into his friend’s arms and they whirled together joyfully, causing all the fields in their vicinity to go all squooshy and lavender with tenderness and affection in a massive, collective electromagnetic _d’awwwwwwww!_ “Been…a long, long time, Sea.”

“Heh, sure has. Still in one piece, I see.”

“Just about. My timing’s still pretty good, too.” 

“What, you mean being 50 years late? We thought everyone had come in who was going to.” 

…

Down on the beach, where they had to maintain shields to keep sand from getting into bad places, but where the sky and sea made a broad horizon to minimize Cosmos’ claustrophobia, they found a sun-warmed dune to bask on. They had cabled arm-to-arm walking out there, completing their personal data exchange after 20,000 years apart. Now their cables were thoracic, cervical, and for pleasure. 

At the first gleam of Seaspray’s sparklight, Cosmos rolled them over, grasping at Sea’s body, rolling too far in this unfamiliar gravity, opening himself wide, green as emeralds, eager to touch Sea’s blue-green, waves meeting, strong currents crashing together. Cosmos overloaded fast and hard, but Seaspray held on, bringing him up to the heights again and again, until the edge of his loneliness was worn transparent. They nestled in the sand, resting, as wind from the northern Pacific cooled them, and the sun mellowed over the waves. 

“What are these?” Cosmos traced the branching lines of bright melted metal across the edges of Seaspray’s spark chamber, protoform and even a little on the seam of his armor. They were kind of beautiful, like lightning, but he hated to think what kind of weapon could have made such deep grooves in their strongest metal.

 _Merge scars,_ Seaspray said, amused. Cosmos’ face and fields showed his every thought plainly to anyone who knew him as well as Seaspray did. 

_You…You’ve made a new spark?_

_Quite a few, actually. 47; mostly with Perceptor – Perceptor does them in batches – but also with Beachcomber and a couple other people._

_Was that one I met out near Alpha Centauri A…?_

_Oh no, that one’s Prime’s and Ratchet’s. She was the first, actually. Prime’s proof-of-concept._

_Which ones are yours?_ Cosmos had understood certain things very quickly. He didn’t use the “yours” that meant ownership. He used the “yours” that meant made by you. Seaspray hugged him and kissed his sharp little beak. 

_Well, there’s 40 with Perceptor, here’s the list… And then Bee and I made Salamander and Clipper, Hoist and I made Siphon, Beachcomber and I made Thalassa and Dunerunner, Powerglide and I made Peregrine, and Prime and I made Broadside. We needed the big tank for him!_

_They’re…Seaspray, they’re all so beautiful._

~~~~~~

2083 – December

Cybertron. Luna 2.

The ping was sent, and answered by the thousands. Pallet by pallet, they homed in on the hidden caches of emitters that had been ferried there for decades. Each emitter was inspected, fitted with a power cell from the nova nets, inspected again and tested, and then set free. They were self-propelling, which had made them more difficult to build, but would be highly useful in the long run. It would take them three months to fit all the power cells and get the ring of emitters into place. 

In the 4.6 decades since the Constructicons had come to help build the space bridge, Scrapper and Perceptor had often nearly come to blows, but weapons had never been fully drawn. They battled verbally, as they had since their University days. Until now. 

With the completion of the project looming, and catastrophic failure or success hinging on minute parameters and immensely complex devices constructed from less than ideal raw materials and with a new, unusual design, under the hopeful optics of a third of their species, the two had squared off, dentae fully extended, weapons powered up but not target-locked. The rest of the Constructicons, Wheeljack, Rutile, Avalanche, and the handful of other Waterbabies there on Luna 2 with them froze in horror for several astroseconds. 

Gingerly, the Constructicons surrounded their enraged leader, soothing him over the gestalt bonds, while Wheeljack and Rutile snuggled up to Perceptor, both of them happily short enough to duck under the barrel of the light cannon. Rutile started to press himself to Perceptor’s chest, but the flare of protective fury through Perceptor’s fields had him sliding around behind him post haste, and he sent a fast tight-beam ping to Sonora, Reticle, Cascade, Focus, Axon, Kaibab, and especially Avalanche, who was moving to flank Scrapper, to stay away. No knowing what Perceptor would do if he felt he had progeny to defend. 

Rutile wished his other progenitor was there. Beachcomber was determined to stay on Earth with Miles until Cybertron was moved. Rutile understood exactly what Beachcomber was afraid of, but no-one was as good at calming Perceptor (or getting him to recharge regularly) as Beachcomber. He was Perceptor’s tangible anchor to his pre-war self. 

_Easy, Scrap, easy,_ said the Constructicons. _We’ve had high-profile jobs before. This one is important, though, really important. And we’re not really safe out here._ They had set up on Luna 2, at the equator. Cold because Luna 2 was large enough to have kept a little bit of atmosphere, though not enough to make vocal comms of any use more than a few paces away. Hopelessly dark. But from here they would be able to see the entire ring of emitters once they were in place, and could therefore send a single, simple signal to trigger the bridge. There would be a delay before the bridge was fully formed – enough time for them to reach the meticulously chosen site on the planet where they would ride out the transit. 

_Hush, Perce, hush,_ said Wheeljack and Rutile. _If things go wrong, yes, it could kill us and any last few survivors left on the planet, or things living in the deep levels. But we’ve done everything we can to make this work. We’ll have a sun again when this is over. People can live happily here again when this is over._

The two clumps swayed close, cables slipping among them, then between them. Comforting, soothing, intimate links warmed them. And then Perceptor and Scrapper found themselves cabled to each other. This they had never done, not in this way. Everything was back on knives – intellects as powerful as theirs could injure each other, and the rest of them. But Hook’s mind was sturdy, and Mixmaster clever, and Wheeljack was not easily subdued, and Rutile was smart enough not to take a blow directly if he could deflect the worst of it.

Perceptor and Scrapper were invited to examine their rivalry. To admit to jealousy, envy, admiration. Anger was permissible, sadness, fear. But jealousy? Envy? Near to sins in the broad strokes of Cybertronian culture. The strengths of others only added to your own strength, was that not ever so? Had not the firstforged hives known this? 

They strove against one another in the link, firewalls up, struggling in the embraces of their friends and gestaltmates. 

_We’re lucky,_ Scavenger said. _We have friends from University. Perceptor, Beachcomber. Most people don’t. Most people from the Universities are dead. We Structies have each other, we always will. We can – we hope – always take that for granted. But wider connections used to be a good thing, remember? So few of us have friends from before the war._

Perceptor gave in first, relaxing his outer firewalls, opening in the link, waiting, optics dim. Scrap was pleased initially, then angry that Perceptor had reached that level first.

 _I hate you!_ they both said.

 _We don’t care,_ all the others said. _Shut up and deal with it. You don’t have to kiss or anything, but stop trying to hurt each other!_

Firewalls shifted, blades of thought flashed in the light of the link; fragmented into shards, reformed in new shapes, refracted. Laser-sharp, moving at speeds fast even by their species’ standards. Had they not, these past four and some decades, set aside, more or less, their long antagonism? Now for the final effort. Stress, lack of recharge. Was the math good? It was, assuredly, collected and collated in the several minds for which the math was a delight and a great beauty. Charge shifted with the emotional chorus, cables thrummed. Heavy, not-diesel engines rumbled, then roared. Their bodies ached, and the Waterbabies, clever-handed, moved among them, encouraging; they all needed this. They had this moment, with a Drift-Perceptor triad, and the deltas, and out in orbit Highbrow on the _Sparkreaver_ guarding them. They were safe for a small time. 

_Let go._

It was a struggle and a wave, overload stuttering and crashing through them, their cries faint in the thin air. 

…

 _Those were good days,_ Scrapper said quietly, as the group came back online in twos and threes, and first memories began to be shared around. _At the Universities. Remember when old Minestele used to jump out the main rampway window, catch one of those bars between the Xenon tower and Radon’s east buttress, flip around it, and land on the loggia roof in order to get from her office to the Applied Dark Energy classroom faster? Longhaul once greased the bar. Never laughed so hard in my life._

There were giggles among the Structies and Waterbabies, and Wheeljack snorted so hard he almost slipped a cog, but Perceptor rested his cheek against Scavenger’s shoulder and shuttered his optics. 

_…No,_ he said. _I…I’m afraid I don’t remember those days. Not really._

 _Perceptor?_ Rutile said, suddenly nervous. Wheeljack watched Perceptor intently but said nothing. Security breach or fair trade for services rendered? It was Perceptor’s call, out here in the black, far from Prime.

 _What do you mean?_ Scavenger asked. _Your first memory—_

_Retrieved from Beachcomber, with whom I had shared it. All of my personal memories from kindling to 500 years into the war were deleted. I deleted them._

_You WHAT?!?_ A sevenfold chorus.

_I had to, to make room for the data in the University Archive._

_But the Universities were destroyed…_

_He said Archive, not Library, dumbaft._

_Beachcomber said you’d been shot in the head,_ Longhaul mused. Maybe there were still aftereffects. 

_That is true. Dreadwing shot me, and my memory core was slightly damaged. But it was repaired, and 400 years later, I traveled with friends in secret to Uraya to retrieve the Archive hidden there._

_Wait. What? What archive?_

_Who the slag would archive anything in Uraya?_

_They just kept the Archive there, you idiot. Because no-one would suspect something so technical and intellectual there._

_Why didn’t I notice this before?_ Scavenger muttered. _A lot of these memories are from Beachcomber’s point of view. The optical alone is clearly from a much shorter mech. And…yeah, if you look close, these are remnants of Beachcomber’s tagging…uh, can’t really call it a system…_

Rutile laughed. _Not exactly._ Keen spotting on Scavenger’s part, though, bearing in mind that Perceptor had had three million years to fiddle with the tags and filing. He thought of the people who had died getting Perceptor to the Archive. Had they lived to join him there, would they too have erased part of their own memories to help bear the burden? Or would they not have needed to?

The Constructicons were silent for a moment. Messing about with one’s own memory systems like that wasn’t done. It wasn’t _smart._ Yes, they knew indisputably now that the spark somehow recorded and retained memory, not just personality, but one couldn’t access this deep knowledge while alive. (Perceptor had contemplated having someone kill him and Optimus re-embody him. He knew what the reaction to the very idea would be and wasn’t about to suggest it. The effect on all his progeny, not to mention Beachcomber, wasn’t pleasant to contemplate.)

Then the yelling began.

 _You unbelievable, arrogant, self-centered…!_ Scrapper raged. He stopped. That was just it. Perceptor had given himself up, his experience, his knowledge base, in order to preserve something everyone thought was lost. Scrapper’s gestaltmates jiggled around him. Everyone wanted access to the data. Perceptor gave them the catalog, which told them what he personally had on board and what had been lost forever in the destroyed eighth cylinder, and what was stored in the big memory shards at the Oregon base and elsewhere, safely backed up now in several ways. Rutile giggled as the Structies muttered and exclaimed over the catalog, comparing curiosities and compiling a grocery list.

 _You realize if the Cons get hold of any of us now, they’ll take us apart,_ Tread grumbled.

_They would do that anyway. This doesn’t change anything in that regard,_ Hook said. _We should make another copy and hide it in our…in Norway,_

_Beachcomber could come with us,_ Longhaul suggested. Beachcomber and he had cast each other friendly optics since University days, and even on Earth, Beachcomber never passed without patting Longhaul’s tires. 

_All right, all right, you grease-stains,_ Scrapper said. _These things won’t assemble themselves._ The cuddle pile broke up and they got back to work, though there was a great deal of comm chatter over private channels. 

_A few hours later, they were about to open another pallet of emitters when Perceptor stopped, abruptly staring at a point in space off beyond his right shoulder._

_What is it?_ Wheeljack asked, instantly on alert. He knew that look on Perceptor’s face, knew that tension in his frame. 

_Decepticons. Three ships, bearing one-five, seven-nine._ He leapt up the steep crater rim behind them and crouched on the edge, digging in with all his limbs, powering the light cannon to maximum. _You will not. You will NOT!_

_No! Frag them to the Pit,_ Scrapper hissed. _They’ll see us! Kill them, Perceptor! You have to kill **all** of them!_ Scrapper wouldn’t let his brothers be taken back to Galvatron. They’d rather die. He would rather everyone else die. 

_Perceptor…_ Wheeljack tight-beamed. Afraid. Especially for the thirty newsparks deployed around them, and of what Perceptor might do to protect them. 

The ships approached, soon entering standard weapons range, and visibility even to those without Perceptor’s acuity. Two were familiar, the third less so. Cyclonus and Turmoil, and the third was General Strika herself, aboard the _Indomitable_. 

Perceptor hissed, the sound faint in Luna 2’s thin atmosphere, but as the hiss dropped into a growl those nearby could feel it through the ground. It was a bad sound, Rutile thought, like something one would not want to hear while hiking on a volcano. 

Scavenger took a step toward him, trying to piece together a rational reason for this extreme reaction. Normally Scrapper goading Perceptor like that would tend to have the opposite effect. 

_Kill them, Perceptor!_ Scrapper shouted. _Trample, Hook, get a fix on their shield modulations, feed the specs to Percy. Aim for the engines!_

No, Rutile thought. No, they’d all worked so hard, for so long, to put such a huge wrong right. It couldn’t…this couldn’t happen. Someone had to do something. What would Prowl do? Perceptor’s cannon whined, the barrel heating. His fields were terrifying. The other eight newsparks with light cannons, Focus and Reticle and the others, looking frightened but determined, arrayed themselves in firing position as well, and in threes the unarmed Waterbabies were hooking their power systems up to those with cannons. Rutile’s progenitor, his siblings. Against three battleships. Two such ships would have been enough to raze Earth if it hadn’t been for Metroplex. The Light Brigade might have enough firepower to take one out, and damage the others before they were…before they made the human poem appropriate again. Not 30,000, only nine no oh slag no… Skyfire, Blueshift and Azimuth were already angling away, to take flanking positions. And then what if the Constructicons formed Devastator? How much longer would the fight last? 

No. Now Highbeam with the _Sparkreaver_ was coming around the curve of Cybertron. Another battleship. More guns. Signal and the other minicons had not retreated. A battle here, now, with who they had…it couldn’t go well. Losses would be so heavy, on both sides; and what good would it do? Someone had to stop it, before shots were fired. 

Before he had fully realized what he was doing, Rutile found himself running. Sprinting, to give himself a boost before he transformed. 

_Nooo…_ Perceptor moaned. 

But as Rutile passed Wheeljack, he felt approval and encouragement from the engineer’s fields. He curled into cometary mode and flung himself into space. 

Oh slag oh shit ohslag ohshit what was he doing he shouldn’t be doing this he shouldn’t be out here. He’d been on Mars when Thunderwing had come. He’d been on Enceladus. He’d almost died on Enceladus, would have except he’d known the geology better than Snare had. Oh slag oh slag… 

Wheeljack chirped him a précis on the three generals ahead. Generals! Oh shit oh slag… Wheeljack kept a line open for him because Perceptor was…Perceptor was geared up to slag the lot. Turmoil, Cyclonus, Strika. Rutile remembered Cyclonus from Mars, fighting side-by-side with Ultra Magnus on the very back of the winged terror. Cyclonus who wielded truth like a triple-bladed knife. He had killed with it. Turmoil they knew a good deal about from Drift, and, more recently, from Countermeasure. Turmoil the ruthless, with shadowy, subtle ambitions and motivations of his own. Strika…those were old data compilations. She had been gone a long time, looking for the Allspark. On Starscream’s orders she had been sent in a direction that turned out to be exactly opposite the correct one. The feeling, at least as far as anyone knew or remembered, was that she was loyal to what she felt were _Cybertron_ ’s best interests, more than to Megatron himself. Primus knew how she’d reacted to Galvatron. But she was here, now, with the other two, both of whom were considered rational, intelligent adversaries. Her…consort – it was an odd word to use in Cybertronian – Obsidian, had once been a bipedal mech, but had spent so much time perched on Strika’s left shoulder he was now one of her mounted guns, integrated with her transformation protocols; a living, sentient gun, almost a symbiote, but something stranger. Cybertronian notions of aliveness and independence and modes of being were notably fluid. 

Haha, thought Rutile. And here I am making inane anthropological – cybertological? – notes in my head, trying not to think about where I am and what I’m doing. Oh slag… 

He stopped halfway to the ships, terrified. They could have shot him already, he knew that. They still might. But they hadn’t yet, he kept telling himself, and uncurled from cometary. He extended his hands…no, dammit, that was a human gesture…he pulled his hands back and flattened his palms (where weapon ports might be kept) over his chest, leaving the central seam exposed. Different gesture, same meaning – I come in peace. Trembling (the mechanism and pathways different from human, but again same meaning in this context). I don’t want to die, he thought. The Legion, some said, didn’t mind it, coming back in wave after wave, ex-Wreckers, ex-Decepticons, determined to end the war for good. But Rutile didn’t like fighting at all, he didn’t like being hurt, didn’t thrive on his own or anyone else’s fear. 

Heat was building in his frame because of his trembling, in sensitive inner structures, even with no star nearby; the vacuum insulated him and he had to open radiative vents and plates along his back to keep his core within normal limits. He was afraid, too, because Perceptor was back there, ready to unleash a Pyrrhic holocaust. The Decepticons had to listen. They _had_ to. 

_We’re going to move the planet,_ he broadcast, using the frequency Hook gave him. _The planet and both moons. To a solar system in Barred Spiral Galaxy 84.23. Yes, it’s near Earth, but the star is very like Cybertron’s was, before…before. We’re…we’re trying to fix things. Please, please let us mend this._ It wasn’t as though the new location would remain a secret for long. The operation of a space bridge this size would be visible to anyone with proper scanners over the entire quadrant in both this and the receiving galaxy. People were going to notice… 

Movement on the center ship. Cyclonus, who had an interstellar-capable flight mode, emerging onto the dorsal hull. Strika and Turmoil’s vessels remained immobile, impassive. Cyclonus transformed, flew to meet Rutile, transformed again. Easily three times Rutile’s mass, despite the sleekness of his jet mode. 

_I see no space bridge,_ Cyclonus said. 

_It’s a new design. I can sh-show you._ Shaking harder now, Rutile opened an arm port, extended a cable. Cyclonus could kill him; worse, could torture him if his firewalls didn’t hold. Hack him, change him. The memories and thoughts he had from Wheeljack indicated that wasn’t a tactic Cyclonus was apt to use. Cyclonus was old-school military, when guardianship had been as much a religion as a function. The old Decepticon values; honor, discipline, obedience, strength. Rutile tried to take comfort in the thought that he was not a worthy adversary. Cyclonus approached. Rutile couldn’t read any fields off him at all, no expression crossed his austere, skull-like face. No harmonics or elaborating glyphs had adorned his transmission. 

Cyclonus opened only a port, lifting an arm. A two-way connection was not necessary. Rutile swore at himself and closed his own port, extending the cable farther. He could just chirp the basic file, but a hardline connection was a gesture of…of hope and good faith, Rutile thought, if not of complete trust. The connection went live. Nothing strange about it besides the lack of greeting. Nothing threatening. Just cold. Rutile pushed through the file he’d prepared. Not blueprints, more like an architect’s drawing. Space bridge technology wasn’t new, after all, but there was no sense in giving the Decepticons Perceptor’s new math. No telling what Shockwave would do with it. He added the coordinates for the Alpha Centauri binary. That wouldn’t be a secret either, for long. 

_Stop rattling, young one,_ Cyclonus said, grasping Rutile’s forearm with both hands. A firm grip, with taloned fingers, but only firm. The link disengaged, Rutile’s cable ejected, and Cyclonus let him go. Nanoseconds of silence passed, no doubt in furious, three-way consultation. 

Rutile held very still. Trying to read _anything_ off Cyclonus. But there was nothing. No IR, no fields. Not even a faint shield-echo. Rutile found himself trying to enfold the ancient warrior in his own fields, because being that blank couldn’t be healthy. He wondered what the generals were saying. What would they do? What if they – oh he hoped they did – what if they decided to let them go ahead? That would be a betrayal, though. How could they do that and still go back to Galvatron? They’d all have to defect, and that wasn’t likely. What would it feel like, Rutile wondered, to betray your faction, your leader? What would it be like to betray Optimus…? 

Which. Was sort of what Rutile was doing. Talking to the enemy. Giving them their plans, or at least the outlines of the plans. 

Rutile shook harder. 

_Very well,_ Cyclonus said at last. _Proceed._

_!!!???_

_Turmoil believes that you will fail, and in so doing destroy yourselves. Problem solved. Strika calculates that the redoubtable Seekerbane will succeed, and Cybertron will no longer be the barren graveland she sees before her._

_Yours was the deciding vote, then?_ Decepticons voted? Did Cyclonus have seniority, or did Strika? 

_As you say. I see no disadvantage in letting you make the attempt, succeed or fail. The resource and time expenditures, the risks, are all yours. Whatever benefits accrue we may procure for ourselves afterward if necessary._

_Oh._ Logical. On the surface of it. Rutile wondered. Maybe the Decepticons wanted to see their homeworld in the light of a sun again, too. 

Without another word, Cyclonus returned to his ship, and all three ships turned about, heading for the nearest wormhole. Rutile dashed back to Luna 2, crashing so hard in cometary mode he nearly bounced off. 

**_Rutile!_** Perceptor caught him up tight in all four arms, sank to his knees. 

_Scared!_ Rutile broadcast, shivering, his face tucked hard under Perceptor’s chin. _I was so scared!_

_Ru!_ the Waterbabies cried, converging on them. 

_Oh my Primus are you out of your mind?_

_You were so brave!_

_Crazy mech!_

_Well That was something._

_Oooh. Okay. Guys?_ Wheeljack interposed himself physically between the Structies and Perceptor’s ball of progeny. _Let’s give them a moment, okay?_ Give them space, or time, or spacetimelove. _We’ll…we’ll just get back to fitting the energy cells, how’s that?_ He looked up. Highbeam was taking the _Sparkreaver_ into a polar orbit. Keeping an eye on the departing Cons, not pursuing. Ultra Magnus had left a sensible mech in charge. No surprise. 

The Constructicons muttered among themselves and turned away. Work to be done, and they were good at that. 

_Wheeljack? Is he all right? Are they all right?_

_Aw, yeah, Scav. They’re fine._ Wheeljack patted his shoulder, aiming him toward the next pallet of emitters. He gazed off in the direction of the departed ships. _I think we were very, very lucky just now._

Hook looked at him. 

_One,_ Wheeljack said, _… **one** of the reasons the Cons never quite wiped us out is that they’re always busy fighting each other. Not that we were totally unified or anything either, but, ya know, nothing like the kind of infighting going on behind old Megs’ back._

_Lord Megatron was well aware,_ Hook said. _Galvatron remains so._

_Yeah. Always proving yourselves. Culling the weak. And you always presented a unified front to us. To your enemies. But down at the core…? How much must you have hated us, to overcome your hatred of each other?_

Hook stared out at the stars. _It was not hate,_ he said. _Not for many of us. Contempt yes. Revulsion, later. Autobots were the degenerate elements that needed to be purged. A sickness._ Curious at himself, borrowing an organic concept to evoke the fitting level of instinctive disgust. _Gangrene._

Wheeljack dimmed his optics. This wasn’t news, but it made him sad. _And the Terrorcons?_

Hook had the grace to shudder. _A weapon._ He moved closer to Jack, touched his shoulder. _We wanted to kill them ourselves, my brothers and I. Once their usefulness had ended. If we thought we could._

Wheeljack approximated a sigh. Habit now. _What’s it like for them, huh? I think even Jhiaxus hates them._

_I think they hate one another. I think death would be a …kindness._

_Maybe._ Or it would set five rapacious sparks loose to feed upon the innocent dead, as Jhiaxus had done. Primus below. 

Halfway to the next pallet of emitters, Scavenger stopped to watch the group around Perceptor and the young geologist. Perceptor was hardly visible, and Rutile was completely buried, the collective fields a panoply of soothing and admiration and distress. Weird. Perceptor was stressed, sure, weren’t they all? But his reactions seemed extreme, especially once the new kid had taken off. What the slag had all that growling been about? Was Perceptor in bloom for the kid? He wasn’t, was he? He just liked newsparks, which was kind of odd, but Scavenger could at least sort of wrap his mind around that. New people, with new abilities, some of them; very shiny, and Perceptor was terminally curious. And so many of the new ones were science mechs. And civilians. Not even armed, some of them. Maybe that was it? Just echoes of the war, things they’d done, not wanting to see any of it happen again? It was certainly unusual for so many new people to be around all at the same time. That never used to happen. You used to know some old, old mech somewhere had faded and fizzled out when the Allspark spat out a new one. Maybe that was part of it, too. Now Prime was using the Allspark to bring out a lot of new people, all at the same time, not because old ones were dying, but because so many had died over so long a time and they were making up for the losses. 

He set it aside. There was far more important work to be done now. 

~~~~~~ 

2084 – March 

Earth. 

Sideswipe swung around one of the aerie columns with one arm. “AND I SCREAM FROM THE TOP OF MY LUNGS WHAT’S GOING ON!!!” 

The party was in full swing; had been for some days, really. Or more like two weeks if you counted the trickling influx of Beachcomber and Miles’ peripatetic friends from all over the globe, cadging rides and flights and hopping trains to get out to Morocco. The border guards grumbled, but they got updates and security okays from Metroplex on the regular, so they weren’t actually upset. Besides, a good number of them would skive off into parties of their own, turn and turn about. 

Optimus had finally settled things with the UN and the Earth Defense Force, and currently had Ultra Magnus shoved up against a wall in one of the command nodes, both of them cabled to Metroplex and each other, chests open, hands clutching, mouths raking over each other. Ultra Magnus was going to stay, even for the moving itself. The mass Autobot exodus would give the Decepticons too good an opportunity to test themselves against hardened but now largely human defenses. 

Throughout Metroplex’s body, people embraced, sang, danced, talked seriously in quiet corners, played instruments, folded origami and thought about space, ate and drank, soaked in sunlight, rested in their beds and listened contentedly, wrote long letters, called distant friends, performed maintenance and accommodated bodily functions, composed poetry, and told stories. Metroplex observed or interacted, keeping her drones busy, chatting on thousands of channels at once, her consciousness expanding joyously to encompass it all. She would stay, she would be a node, an anchor for all her people here and on another world that would soon be close-by, in galactic terms. She loved everyone so much! 

Bluestreak came flying up the stairs out of the Kalis garden and tackled Prowl. Strake reflected that Blue was one of the few who could do that with impunity. Blades and Afterburner and the others of Prowl’s progeny might, too. They could, but Strake doubted Blades would, or Afterburner. 

_That’s because Blue actually asks him first,_ Thundercracker tight-beamed. _”Prowl, I am going to tackle-glomp you, okay? Yes? Ready?” Or something like that._

_Heh._

“Hello, Bluestreak,” Prowl murmured, between kisses. “How is Kalis?” 

“Quiet,” Blue said. He wrapped both arms around Prowl’s waist, finding the nice plexus just to either side of his main spinal struts. Having that outer layer of armor off Prowl was lovely! “But it’s a different quiet, if that makes any sense. I think he’s thinking, now, instead of, like, sitting there in his pillar silently freaking out. Whatever Vector Prime did maybe is helping him rewrite the parts of himself that went bad? Maybe? I hope so. Can AIs do that? Embodied people would have to have help doing something like that, wouldn’t they? But AIs twiddle their own code all the time, don’t they? Tel does! Oh, but maybe Ven doesn’t, unless there’s a process upgrade she decides she wants. It sounds very unpleasant and risky to me, but if it’s normal to them, then I guess they’re used to it?” 

“Yes, they’re used to it. AIs overlap.” 

“They’re each other’s backup.” 

“More than that, but yes.” Prowl settled a pair of thoracic cables into him. “Are you coming with us or staying to watch from here with Magnus?” 

“I’m going, but I’ll come back as soon as anyone feels like flying me over.” A one-system hop wasn’t far. He could do it by himself in cometary, if he wanted to be forty years at it. Which he didn’t. His friend Aziz, who worked in one of Plexie’s labs, probably wouldn’t live that long; he was already ninety. “You’re going with Prime, right?” 

“Yes.” Prowl laughed softly, and Blue shivered, core temperature spiking. Thundercracker and Strake curled around them, hands and mouths and fields and wings, touching and touched, mingling, spirals within spirals. “We go with Prime.” 

… 

“Uh oh,” said Rewind. Beside him, Tailgate and Eject sat up, a bit tangled in their cables. “Jazz has the silver guitar out.” 

“Ooooh!” 

Below them in a lantern-lit plaza, Jazz and Oratorio sat cross-legged on human-made Moroccan rugs, closely surrounded by children of both species. The parents formed a loose ring, standing or seated on planter edges and benches. Rio had out the djembe that he had built himself, scaled to fit, so that the tones were much deeper than usual. Jazz’s silver guitar – another of Rio’s make – sounded like the great-grandmama of all bass, so that was all right. 

They had been taking requests, and during livelier tunes, Bee and Beachcomber danced, in a linked courtyard beyond the clustered humans, where they had their own audience, and a number of children had gotten up to dance with them. 

“Belly dancing, huh?” Sam raised his eyebrows. “I blame you, Beachcomber.” 

“Hey, your species invented it,” the geologist laughed. 

“All right, but if he starts in with the seven veils I’m out.” 

“Mischief,” Rewind said, recording everything. 

“It’s the guitar,” Tailgate agreed. 

… 

“Ratchet?” 

“Ranger, you know you shouldn’t be down here.” They were in the observation bubble just above Metroplex’s spark chamber. 

“I let him in,” Sixgun said. Ranger had not been unaccompanied. 

“Hmm.” Ratchet disconnected from Metroplex’s systems, amused by the not-so-subtle mental shove she was giving him in Ranger’s direction. He had wanted to run one last check before leaving her more or less alone. “All right, all right, I’m going. I had no intention to miss the party. Satisfied?” Sixgun took his hand and tugged. Ranger grinned and took his other arm. 

“She’ll be fine, Ratchet,” Ranger said. “Come on, Mother Hen. I thought you were the Party Ambulance.” 

“Who told you that?” 

“Ironhide,” Ranger, Sixgun and Ratchet said together. 

They went up into the city and found Rain and Ironhide tucked into one of the Cybertronian-scale apartments overlooking the central plaza. 

“Started without us, huh?” Ranger said. Ratchet tucked himself in beside Ironhide, fitting together with the ease of very long practice indeed, while Sixgun wriggled his way between Rain and Ratchet. 

Rain reached up and took his hand. “’Hide waits for no man.” 

Rain had been game from day one. Ranger wasn’t hesitant exactly. It was just a little weird to him. He thought, like Borealis, that he _ought_ to feel certain things, and he kind of felt the edges of those things, but so much had happened since he had decanted. He’d learned so much, and his body was so wonderful and so were the bodies of the people around him. His senses filled him with such wonder and happiness and pleasure. And Rain was Rain. And even if he had never felt this kind of love for Ironhide before, he had loved Ironhide in a different way, and had for much of his life. No, for Will’s life. Will had loved him like a brother, a fellow Ranger, like Epps, more or less, with those differences in subtle hues of emotion that happened because people were individuals, each different and so one felt differently for them. Even when the word used in each case was just “love”. And even the ancient Greek words were only a handful, when love could mean a thousand different things, or a million. 

Fields brushed his edges, feathering his fields; enquiry without expectation. Rain would simply scoot to the other side of the cuddle if asked to. Ranger knelt, held his friend’s hand to his lips. Rain tilted his head, unblinking, optics vivid. Maybe it was good they didn’t look like the humans in their memories. Maybe it didn’t matter. 

_You do look like Will,_ Rain tight-beamed, adept at reading fields, young as he was. _Just a little. The way your face put together. You move some like him, you talk like him even if your voice is different. It don’t matter._ He shivered as Ranger kissed his fingertips. 

_No, it doesn’t._ Ranger’s spark spun hot and fast, and he let Rain draw him down, and in, becoming part of their ever widening circle. 

… 

Optimus was content. Now was a time to wait, to just be, taking things in and letting them settle. He rested his head on Ultra Magnus’ shoulder, listening to the party, and the City, slowly winding down toward dawn.

…

Just outside the Alpha Centauri B system.

“No,” Starscream ordered, from the bridge of the _Harbinger_. His new ship. Cruiser-class, deadly and sleek, crewed entirely by alpha and beta Seekers. “Fall back 13 light minutes. Let them attempt whatever it is they think they’re doing.” Soundwave’s report that they were gong to space bridge Cybertron and both moons to this piddling star system within firing distance of the human mudball and its mundane sun was obviously absurd. They had had neither the time nor the materials, nor the massive manufacturing capability to construct a bridge ring large enough to contain the planet, let alone the orbit of Luna 2. A ring that large would have been seen before now. Seen and destroyed, if Starscream knew Turmoil. And Turmoil would not have failed to report said destruction. With Cyclonus at hand, Turmoil would be trying extra hard to maintain his status. 

Besides, there were three other ships in addition to the handful of rag-tag Autobot vessels and the massive Homomdan craft. Aliens. It would be impolitic to attack now. Not that Starscream personally cared what inferior species thought about them, but for practical purposes it made no sense to antagonize them needlessly. 

Skywarp strode onto the bridge, lean and polished in his new body. He and Starscream had gotten Knockout to aid them with upgrades last time they were on Chaar. Sharp-keeled, their true colors gleaming warmly on their armor and mesh. 

“What kinda slag is Sounders on about now?” 

_Skywarp,_ Starscream chided gently via tight-beam. “There has been an unusual amount of scouting behavior going on in this system. Now there are four alien ships, plus the last few spaceworthy scows the Autobots have managed to scrounge together.”

“Aliens?” Skywarp glared at the screens. “Ew, Homomdans. What do _they_ want?” He sidled closer. Starscream maintained position as though he hadn’t noticed.

“What they want is of no consequence,” Starscream sniffed. With any luck, when this endeavor of Prime’s failed, the resulting explosion – Wheeljack was reportedly involved – would destroy the Homomdans and the rest of the organics as well. Skywarp leaned in and bit him. Starscream grabbed him by the face and dragged him off the bridge. “Maintain patrols. Alert me if there is any change.”

Down a short corridor, up one level, past his small but private lab/office. The door to Starscream’s suite opened as they reached it and they tumbled inside, heavy locks re-engaging the moment they were clear. 

Mine, Starscream thought. Mine alone. Skywarp was faithful, had always been so, had been made so, made for him, Starscream. A complement, a gift. They crashed each other around the recharge alcove, claws raking sweet cries from metal, mouths fierce. Reading Starscream’s mood astutely as ever, Skywarp was the first to open his spark chamber.

…

Cybertron. Luna 2.

Wheeljack had built a little box, with a button on the top. A number of them knew the trigger frequency and code, but it wouldn’t do to have more than one person cue the bridge at once. This led to the argument over who should push the button.

 _It was Perceptor’s idea,_ Rutile pointed out, reasonably, he thought. _His design._

 _A design Scrapper had to modify,_ Trample growled

 _And you’d still be building emitters for the next vorn and a half if we hadn’t come to help,_ Tread added.

 _Wheeljack made the button,_ Fimbria whispered to Kaibab. _He should push it._

 _They should just stack hands and push it together,_ Pulse grumped, arms crossed and scowling. Bulks. Always making everything so divisive and difficult.

 _Like Musketeers!_ Orris said.

Signal grinned, though none of them expected to be listened to. It would be nice if _someone_ pressed the button sometime this vorn, however.

 _Too bad Prime isn’t here,_ said Blueshift. Prime would either do a fine ceremonial job of button-pushing, or could at least decide definitively who should do it.

Azimuth was about ready to reach down, pluck the thing from Wheeljack’s hands and do it himself. Skyfire narrowed an optic at him, as if he could read his mind, and Azimuth settled with a huff from his core vents.

 _Better yet,_ Perceptor said, smirking, altogether pleased with himself as he hooked a strong-arm around Scavenger’s waist and pulled him into the center of the dispute. _Scavenger, if you would do us all the honor?_

 _Uh._ Scavenger kept that from turning into a meep with some effort, but refused to wilt entirely under Scrapper’s glare. Scrap couldn’t do more than rumble, though. Scav accepted the box from Wheeljack, amid cheering and laughing, and then silence. All optics on him. He touched the button. A simple circle of raised bronze that would change their world forever.

He pressed it.

All optics went to the sky. The metal butterflies in their hundreds of thousands opened their wings. A thin blue line faded in, as the energies were gathered, emitter to emitter, licking out like plasma streams, connecting, widening, drawing inward toward planet and moons. There was a ringing sound, like a vast titanium hoop spun on a smooth granite surface, transmitting clear and deep. Sound does not travel in vacuum, but this was a song of space itself vibrating. 

A slash of light opened beside the gathered mechs on their lonely moon, a small harmony in the greater chorus.

 _What the slag?_ said Longhaul.

 **Come with me!** Vector Prime called, one hand held out to them, Rhysling in the other, a glimmering, whirling green portal just beyond. 

_Yes!!_ Perceptor and Rutile and Wheeljack shouted together, and leaped into Vector’s arms. The Constructicons lost no time, leading the charge into the portal, followed by bounding, dancing Waterbabies and the ecstatic, cheering minicons. 

As they made the transit, Vector could feel Perceptor reaching out with all his senses, active and passive, grasping for the edges of the way Rhysling worked, and how it was connected with Vector's will and his spark and his understanding of how the universes worked. It was knowledge Perceptor had long coveted, but Vector was no more going to allow Perceptor to skip steps in the discovery process than Perceptor was with the humans. It was too much fun to find out things for oneself, and too much fun watching bright students do so. Why spoil it for anyone?

 **Now, now,** Vector admonished, laughing.

 _Sorry, not sorry,_ Perceptor giggled. More than a little buzzed out by lack of recharge, who he was with, what they were doing, and what was about to happen.

The sword-portal opened onto the main viewing deck of the Homomdan ship, in an open space on the far side from the windows. The ship and its multi-species entourage was running closer in to Alpha Centauri B than Cybertron was about to be, at the same speed, and near the point of entry. There were a few astonished cries from the Ishlorsinami and Essee and Kuuukinye, and the cloud mind flashed and flipped like an aurora for a moment, then settled as much as it ever did when Vector Prime was physically with them. 

Safeguard unwound from Vector’s wrist, flying up to land on Skyfire's shoulder, much to the big delta's surprise and pleasure. Vector himself came in behind Optimus, smoothing his hands over the young Prime’s hips. Everyone’s eyes were on empty space. Faces filled every window and observation bubble. Hands and noses and other appendages pressed to transparent hull segments. 

Perceptor held up a fine-hand. “And… _now_!” 

Between one breath and the next, a world was there, filling the view, auraed with butterflies and a vortex of blue; mottled grey and pitted steel and dull bronze, scarred with rust and acid and ancient bomb craters, the tenuous atmosphere smudged and smoggy with ancient fallout. Uraya dark and glassy, flickering with blue radiation even hundreds of thousands of years later. Vos and Praxus lurid red with unnatural oxidation. Iacon like rings of smashed and broken crystal at the northern pole, raw edges marking the flattened southern pole where Kaon had been. 

“The whole planet,” the Kuuukinye Sl’ketekk murmured, in an exo-suit beside Sam. Horrified and fascinated equally. 

Sam nodded. He’d seen images before, of course. Not the same, really, as seeing it out a window. Like Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Haiti, and New Jersey combined, only it was the whole world. The home of his dearest friends. He had also seen images of Cybertron before the war, at the height of the Empire. The contrast was stunning. He couldn’t imagine what the Bots were feeling. Their fields at that moment were complex well beyond his ability to read. 

Some sort of kerfuffle broke out behind them. Scrapper and Perceptor of course. Who let those two stand next to each other? 

“Axial tilt!?! You botched one simple equation—!”

“Nonsense. It’s only ten degrees. A miniscule taste of seasonality. It will be good for us.”

“Primus below,” Ironhide whispered, exchanging a wide-opticked stare with Ratchet.

The deltas flung themselves ahead of the planet – and how had people that huge gotten outside without anyone noticing? – Skyfire leading; swooping and riding the gravitational bow wave, their shrieks and whoops of laughter broadcast for all.

Sam heard his mother’s words coming from his own mouth. “Oh my god, that is so dangerous.” 

“You ain’t kidding,” Wheeljack said. “Even deltas would get completely mashed if they got that insertion angle wrong.” 

“Crazy brutes,” Thundercracker muttered. His wings vibrated, though; envy or excitement. Or both.

“They will be fine,” Safeguard murmured, perched now on Vector’s shoulder. The other minicons clustered around both Primes’ feet. “Skyfire knows well what he is doing, and he will teach the others.”

Sam glimpsed a glittering arc at the edge of his vision and zoomed in. "Whoa. The gate came _with_ it?" That wasn’t how gates usually worked, was it?

Wheeljack nodded. "Yeah. Gives me the surges, and I know how he did it. Sort of." Mostly, Wheeljack had stared at the math and felt dizzy. 

"Okay,” Sam said, generally willing to play the straight man when the Science Bots were involved. “Then how'd he do it?" 

"I asked the warp field nicely," Perceptor said. (Vector Prime threw back his head and laughed. Half the mechs around him had to stifle overloads. It was glorious.)

"Oh god." That was probably about as much of an explanation as Sam could understand anyway. Grinning, he watched Perceptor and Wheeljack hug and jounce each other in triumph.

The transit complete, the orbit deemed safe and stable, threescore human and hundreds of other non-Cybertronian observers suddenly found themselves alone on the ship. Every Cybertronian poured from the airlocks, somersaulting into cometary mode and diving for their homeworld. Streaks of silver and then fiery red-gold lit the silent dark. They orbited, and aimed for the night side of the dawn terminus to watch the first new sunrise. 

“Oh, Perceptor,” Beachcomber murmured, almost too happy to speak. The planet had been inserted into the point in its new orbit where Alpha Centauri A would illumine the nights for the next half-year, providing them with a liquid blue twilight instead of full dark. Had they not had enough of midnight? And yet the brightest stars shone through the ultramarine sky. It was almost too beautiful to be real.

Sunrise came gossamer through veils of smoke and jagged, high clouds, punctured by the outlines of destroyed cities on all horizons. Here on what had been the Hydrax Plateau there was nothing much, just ruched and canted hills, hundreds of meters lower than it had been before the war. The world creaked and groaned, shuddering under their feet as it rolled through the spheres of dawn, sunside expanding again after so long in the dark. Cold mists rose and sudden winds blew, stirring the smoke and rust of million-year-old battlefields. Plates and layers tore, buckled; the few standing towers and bridges shifted. Some fell. But they had chosen this landing site well, solid ground, miles deep at least; shifting some, bending rather than breaking. Frost sublimated, mists crept and tendrilled across the broken ground. The robots swayed and thrummed, holding each other up. The cluster around Prime grew as people found their way to him from their landing craters. 

When the amber disk of the sun rose through the haze above the distant husks of abandoned cities, and the sky was brighter than their optics, a great cheer rose up from powerful throats. Perceptor and Wheeljack and the Constructicons and the minicons and the school of bridge-duty Waterbabies were lifted and bounced in triumphant circles. Skyfire was tackled en masse by the rest of the deltas, who were really the only ones big enough to get away with it. Until the Aerialbots combined, and Superion grabbed Skyfire by the hips and swung him around and around, stopping their orbital dance only when the kissing got heated. 

The quakes and winds continued as the planet turned, and it was too dangerous for the organics to go down yet, but they watched from the Homomdan vessel, via their hosts’ scans, and sensory feeds from the Cybertronians below. 

…

“Open a level-six coded subspace channel to Chaar,” Starscream said. He stared at the main viewscreen, giving nothing away, fields leashed to millimeters over his armor. The Autobots had done it. They had actually done it. Impossible. 

The fools. 

They would not have left the Earth unguarded, but the report from Lockdown corroborated Starscream’s supposition that the vast majority of the Autobots were in _this_ system at the moment. And so would be the attention of the alien interlopers. 

…

Six hours passed before Optimus called up to the Homomdan ship to say that the landing site was deemed safe for visitors.

 **Come down, dear friends,** he said. **Come down!**

“Yeehah!” Dani shouted and sprinted for the nearest airlock, slapping down the latches of her helmet and diving out the second the outer door opened. She was cyborg enough at this point to not need a pressure suit – her dermal cells fanned out overlapping sheets of chitin, hardening in half a second. (Her own idea, with help from Perceptor in the implementation.)

 _You can’t land!_ Mikaela scolded via tight-beam, in that “I don’t care how old you are, I brought you into this world and by god I can take you out” parental tone of voice. 

_Yes, Mom, I know, Mom, oh look, here comes Breakaway, Mom._ The little jet opened his canopy and let Dani in, then adjusted his glide path to set them down on Hydrax with the others. Hot Rod met them and took Dani up on his shoulders, giving Breakaway a grateful smooch. 

Humans, Kuuukinye, Essee, Ishlorsinami, Homomdans, and VaI'Nainnamoinnen took Homomdan shuttles down to the planet and emerged in suits and helmets or respiratory masks, or just the latter in the case of the VaI'Na, whose skin was resistant to the caustic elements in the current Cybertronian atmosphere. Mikaela understood the air wasn't what it had been before the war. Still mostly nitrogen and noble gases, but there were enough sulfides and residues from chemical weapons to make things interesting. Perceptor had sent collected data to scientists on Earth. Implied warning: don't let this happen to you. Or, as Miles put it, acid air is Bad. 

Mikaela rechecked her seals. They passed through a variable-permeability shield, down a ramp, onto the cold, dust-blown stone of the plateau. The sun was high, but the light looked later, autumnal to her Sol-accustomed eyes. The gravity wasn’t enough different to feel right away. She had been to Mars once, and this was much more like Earth; blue-skied, clouds hued by the sunlight. Buildings in the distance. Radiation meter in the green. For now. The suit was shielded. Cold seeped through her boots and the suit, until the heating elements kicked in. 

Thousands had died here, but long ago, when the plateau had been undermined, toppled, then righted by the Constructicons. Civilians. Fliers had lived – until being shot down by Starscream’s elite alphas. Grounders had spilled off and died in the canyons separating Hydrax from Tarn. There were no bodies here now; those that had been easy to get to were therefore salvaged. She spotted Ratchet – no one else was that color – and ambled slowly toward him. In no hurry, taking it all in. He was busy looking at the sun. 

Air, water, food, shelter. Of these, the robots only needed the last two, and their food was, potentially, sunlight. First thing, even before many of them had cooled from reentry; the robots had begun burrowing into the hill behind the landing site, facing sunrise. Rain shelter. The deltas and Cosmos could shrug off the rain here, but everyone else looked deeply unhappy whenever a certain kind of cloud approached. It hadn’t actually rained there yet, but the winds were stirring everything up. 

Mikaela looked out over the rough plateau. Glittering in the sunlight, sharp-edged shards, drifts of metal dust. Bad stuff to get in lungs. God, everything here was toxic. Everything but the people, the friendships. Ratchet knelt beside her. A blue dot winked on and then off in her lenses. He couldn't help himself. 

“I suppose you and your family will soon grow tired of us telling you how we wish you could have been here before.”

The old grump. “No,” she said. “And we won’t get tired of wishing we could have.” She leaned into his hand, hugging his lateral thumb. “And I’ll never get tired of hearing about what you’re hoping to do from here on out.” Even if she couldn’t live long enough to see most of it. 

Ratchet bent his head and touched his lips to the top of her helmet. Humans didn’t need full pressure suits – there was atmospheric pressure to be had, though it was moutaintop level, by Earth standards – but the atmosphere wasn’t anything most respiring beings could breathe, and Ratchet had decreed that prolonged exposure to human skin wasn’t recommended. So there they all were, wearing alarmingly white Kevlar-bonded-plastic overalls, gloves, boots and transparent aluminum Flash Gordon helmets. Thank god the oxygen supply was in efficient, tiny packs instead of heavy tanks, and would last for days, not minutes or an hour.

“The shelters are being flushed out and oxygenated now,” Ratchet said. “They’re not pretty – Grapple is about to short himself out – but we’ll have a full, working base by tomorrow morning.” 

Mikaela had seen them build things before. She had seen how fast things went once they had a design. (Turn away for a minute and when you turned back, Jolt was finishing off the wiring.) It was like a time-lapse sequence. Not much to see this time, as their bivouac was mostly underground. To their minds it was easier than shielding surface structures from rain and Seeker attacks. The Autobots had taken to the tunnels from the beginning. The undercities of lacon had never been fully mapped, certainly not by the Cons. Between Beachcomber and the Towers survivors, though, the Bots knew a lot of them. 

Here at the equator, though, there were no intact undercities. Polyhex, Tetrahex, Tarn, Vos, Helex, Tesarus, Praxus, Hydrax, Uraya, the skeletal basin of what had been the Rust Sea, all of it bombed down to bedrock. Or what served as bedrock on this peculiar planet. A basement layer of very ancient stone, more than four times older than the Earth, in what would be called the mantle of a normal rocky world, with metal layers above and below, and open passages down to the core; which also was not the kind of planetary core one would expect. Though Beachcomber was evasive about what was actually down there.

“Morning,” Mikaela said, beaming at Ratchet.

“Indeed,” he said, his voice low and purry. He lifted her to his shoulder; Sam was already perched on Bee, Dani on Roddy, Nate on Arcee. “Morning. On Cybertron.”

…

The next day.

Overnight camping on an alien planet. Who had thought that was a good idea? The cots were very good, but they were still cots. Sleeping on Bumblebee’s complicated topography had gone the way of her youth. Mikaela levered herself upright-ish. At least they hadn’t had to sleep in their suits. She sniffed the air. Someone was making coffee. The temporary shelters were Spartan, if not monastic, but separating Maggie from her morning joe was more than even the Autobots were capable of. 

“Morning!” Maggie chirped, handing Mikaela a big mug of strong black. Somewhere in her late eighties, Mags had up and decided to become a morning person. It was probably Hound’s fault. “The menfolk are still in bed. How’s your back?”

“Okay for now, but if I’d slept in…”

“Yeah. I feel ya.” Perceptor had confirmed the theory that humans were not done evolving into bipeds. Too many things went wrong with feet and knees and hips and backs. There were other bipedal organic species much older, and while Perceptor was trying to introduce musculoskeletal innovations to human medicine, the trials would always take longer than anticipated. 

They toddled outside, carrying their second dose; squeeze-bottles of coffee this time, sipping them through fancy straws poked through equally fancy ports in their helmets.

“God,” Maggie said. “You’d think I’d be used to how fast they are by now.”

Cybertronian tools – terrifying to most humans, being weapons or tools depending only on their settings – cleared the rubble down to stone, then shaved the stone down to the shapes they wanted. The noise was appalling. But all the shouting and arm-waving was good-natured. 

“No permits,” Mikaela said, deep in envy. To build they simply _built_ ; following plans shared in their heads. Humans were starting to learn this, but it would take more generations than had passed yet. A terraced hillside took shape over the afternoon, shield-tower bases going in at the same time. The tower shafts and emitter-heads – cityformer dildos according to Maggie, but at least they were pretty – had already been assembled and waited in rows, casual against the hillside like skis when the skiers have gathered round a campfire. Campfire they had, too; Perceptor had gone down one of the tunnels, bustling under a load of exotic parts, trailing Longhaul and Scavenger, and Chromia carrying something solid and blocky. 

“What’s that?” Maggie asked.

“Shielding or core, I’m not sure,” Mikaela said. “For a fusion reactor.Just a little nuclear camp generator.”

“First Aid and his cohort’ll be down there with marshmallows the second they get that thing running.”

“Even though Groove and Streets are the only ones who can eat them.”

Maggie craned a look upward, where the sky was deep blue through the thin air. “Don’t they have solar?” Mikaela tapped her shoulder and pointed back toward the hill, where vanes and sails were flying, their bright surfaces adding to the festive air of the encampment. A real renaissance fair. But Cybertronians were past masters of fusion power; their toy, their plaything, their hearts’ blood, and that would boost them to reclaiming the more esoteric power generation techniques appropriate to a fully Kardashev Type I or II civilization. 

“Where’s Optimus? Oh.” 

He, Vector Prime, and Elita came out of the central tunnel, carrying ... god, it was like the building of the Embassy. Ants carrying boulders bigger than they were. Leaders of the planet doing manual labor. Because they were too big not to. That was frankly a lot of fun to watch, although Mikaela had never been able to decide if the fact that Optimus never got all sweaty and out of breath was a good thing or not. She wasn’t the only one enjoying it either, judging by the sounds Jazz was making. (Jazz liked to ping her at the most inopportune moments with images of Optimus walking slowly up out of the oil bath, gleaming and sleek, steam rolling off him in Earth’s water-laden air.)

They weren’t building with fragile human materials, in what was to them miniature scale. Their temporary bivouac had been hollowed into the hill in an eyeblink; the sturdier, more permanent structures they were assembling now took only a few hours more, one level down into the ground and three rising up against the hill, each storey with a ceiling tall enough for most of the Seekers, and the ground floors tall enough for the deltas. (She remembered long ago wondering if deltas felt excluded, like people in wheelchairs in places without ramps. Skyfire had explained that most deltas weren’t that interested in hanging around planetside, and generally didn’t like being indoors anyway. All the major buildings on Cybertron had been built to imperial scale; if you couldn’t fit inside the occasional hab block dedicated for minicons, so what? And minicons didn’t like big, echoing spaces very much, so why not let them build to suit their own tastes?)

They were using the mined stone to build a wall, a parapet. Out beyond the first phase of the planned city. More a visual and conceptual boundary than properly defensive. Cities went up as well as down, here; the horizontal footprints were often deceptively small. Thinking in three dimensions. (Twenty, if you were Perceptor.) 

…

Survey and scout teams were sent out. Large groups, with several heavy-hitters and at least two shieldmechs each. The Homomdans maintained basic surveillance, and the Autobots had deployed four satellites. They were thus aware of the single Decepticon ship just outside the Oort, but there had been nothing spotted close in so far.

Beachcomber keened softly. New minerals had been formed, entire new strata stretching in broken fields across entire city-states, where impacts from nukes and tactical asteroids (used, eventually, by both sides) had shocked and melted stone and metal, where whole city-states had collapsed, impact loading pancaking them level by level down to bedrock. The acid rain had played its part as well, corroding, engendering new compounds as the atmosphere became caustic even to the native life-forms. Some of the new minerals, crystals and alloys were very beautiful. Others made even Ratchet shudder, when fracture planes were found to be the outlines of crushed three-million-year-old body parts. Layers of the dead in compressed residential areas. Most of the bodies had never been processed, even later when replacement parts and raw materials had become scarce. There had been too many bodies, too few survivors. 

…

That evening the six deltas landed in front of the encampment, somewhat dented, punctured here and there and liberally splashed with carbon scoring. They had been out clearing Shockwave’s remaining sentry towers in a hundred kilometer radius.

“It’s like clearing minefields back on Earth,” Azimuth said, “except now with weapons that can actually kill you. It was exciting!”

“Oh my god,” Maggie said, perched on Hound’s shoulder. They had been cuddling with Mirage, Glen, Dani, Roddy and County, sharing Towers memories, but had all come out to watch the big jets face Ratchet’s wrath. 

“They were just gravity-surfing yesterday,” Mirage pointed out. “I don’t think we can yell at them for being reckless now.”

“One day!” Ratchet hollered up at Skyfire. “One day on the planet and you get yourselves shot up!” Skyfire knelt and Ratchet climbed into his arms. 

“Yes, Ratchet,” Skyfire murmured, nuzzling his friend’s helm. “When did Hoist say the oil baths would be ready?”

~~~~~~


	80. New Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Optimus could use a distraction; Starscream plots; Bluestreak could use a distraction; the Homomdans offer help with the radiation; Longhaul takes Beachcomber on a special tour; and Galvatron takes a long bath.

2084 – March

The hilltop, for now, rose above the new city, affording long views, between the sails and vanes of solar collectors, to the edges of the plateau, sunset polishing everything gold and russet and misty purple. Optimus did not ask Vector Prime how long he could stay. The answer could change in an astrosecond. It was difficult to stand next to him and not touch him. Vector was understanding about this, and unfurled a solar sail across Optimus’ aft and thighs.

On Earth, humanity was jostling to know the city’s name. The Cybertronians were in no hurry. “New Iacon” was briefly offered, but Iacon was firmly rooted in the north polar region, and the name carried as much cultural and emotional weight as Kaon, that was gone. Given their location, some suggested “New Hydrax” and others said “Hydrax In Memoriam”, and Oratorio said they could shorten that to “Hymm”. The cloud mind was mulling that over. There was no rush. City names might emerge naturally out of use, like memes, for cities that weren’t alive and thus couldn’t name themselves. 

Vector lifted a hand, projected a small holo from his palm. “The name on the bow of the new ship is ‘Harbinger’.”

“A new design,” Optimus said. Not a reassuring name. New design, new fleet, most likely.

“I slipped Safeguard aboard. He reports it is commanded by Starscream, crewed entirely by Seekers.”

“That must please him.” If only giving Starscream the power – the lordship – he craved was enough to stop the war. Optimus supposed a good military commander would ask Vector if Safeguard had gotten specs on the new warship; engine configuration, structural weaknesses, shielding modulations. 

“Safeguard gave a full report to Prowl,” Vector said. 

“Ah. Thank you. Prowl, Jazz, and Elita will make best use of it.” At his pinged inquiry, he learned they were already fashioning primary plans and branching trees of contingency plans for sabotage or destruction. 

Optimus didn’t like this. Reacting instead of acting. That had always presaged the most desperate times, when, exhausted, they tried most frantically to jump whatever rut they’d worn. The pendulum of the war had swung in wide ellipses; from aggressive to defensive to stalemate to regrouping and back to aggressive, over and over and over. But pre-emptive strikes were dangerous, and – counting the half-deads – the Decepticons once again had them very much outnumbered.

Had he been a good military commander? For three million years – a third of his lifetime – Optimus had struggled both with and against his core programming to lead the Autobots, to be the commander they needed. Or had he, despite following as best he could the advice of experienced generals like Ultra Magnus and Deepforge and Ironhide, simply dragged everyone through one near-catastrophic engagement after another? He couldn’t even claim that he had kept most of his people alive. 

_He’s wallowing, isn’t he,_ Jazz tight-beamed to Vector.

 **Only a little.** Vector was about to gather Optimus in, but an equally suitable distraction appeared. **One of the youngsters is coming up. That should cheer him.** Rutile was 58 and fancied himself quite the elder sibling. Vector could hardly think about the miniscule span of sixty years without laughing.

 _And if that don’t do the trick I’m sure you’ll think of something._ Down in what was shaping up to be a large plaza, Jazz peeked around Elita’s leg to see Rutile bounding up the hill. 

Optimus knelt and held out his hands, wriggling his fingers at Rutile. Ru hurtled into his arms and Optimus cuddled him close, nibbling affectionately on his shoulder armor, kissing his forehelm. The firstborn Waterbaby, so very like both his parents, odd as that still seemed. Vector thrummed at them, pleased. 

“Bravespark,” Optimus hummed, as Rutile pressed his face into his neck. Everyone was calling Ru that, though it had the feeling of a nickname, not a Change of Designation. Rutile sighed. 

“I know you’re not angry that I blabbed about the space bridge, and I’m immensely relieved things’ve worked out the way they have so far,” Rutile said. He had thought of asking Prowl what he should have done, but he was too frightened of learning what Prowl thought would have happened if he hadn’t done what he did. “But I’m worried, Prime. What will Cyclonus and the others do? What’s Galvatron going to do to them? To us?”

“There was a time,” Optimus said, “when I thought I could have predicted Megatron’s responses to nearly anything. That time is long gone, and Galvatron…”

 _Galvatron’s got a mind like a box of rabid weasels,_ Borealis provided helpfully from orbit. Rutile nearly threw a cog. Vector decided that a hundred-thousand-year-long flight with Optimus and Ratchet’s progeny would never be boring. 

“Be that as it may,” said Optimus, having honed his ability to keep a straight face through a lifetime lived with Jazz and Ratchet in proximity, “Turmoil, Cyclonus and Strika are resourceful and intelligent. I am sure they would not have withdrawn as they did if they had not already formulated a way to explain their actions to Galvatron.”

Rutile nodded, pressing his helm to Prime’s chest, shutting his optics and feeling for the thrum of that great spark. He was going to fret more about this later, he knew. Moving the planet had been a game changer, how could it not have been? Had he expected the war to end entirely? No. But the shifting possibilities in what the Decepticons would now do were disquieting. He would fret about them, even though he was technically a civilian. He couldn’t help it. The Beachcomber in him wasn’t strong enough, perhaps. But until that nebulous “later” he had two Primes wrapping arms and fields around him. 

Sunset deepened, swallowing shadows on the ground, turning the sky crimson and damson, the air waning cold. Silverbolt climbed two-thirds of the hill’s height, then laid himself along the last third, resting his chin on his folded hands, gazing at Rutile. 

“Bravespark,” he murmured. Delicately he rubbed his cheek spars against first Optimus’ left shoulder, then Vector’s right, effectively nuzzling them closer together. 

The buzz and giggle in the cloud mind grew louder. Silverbolt felt Skyfire approach, transform, land, crouch over him, nudging his legs wider so Skyfire could get his hands down into Bolt’s hip gimbals; vast strength behind tender stroking, and Silverbolt shivered, arching his back, splaying his wings as their powerful fields meshed and swept outward to engulf the others like gas giants sweeping up clear orbits to protect the life-bearing planets nearer a sun. 

At the same moment, Rutile kissed the line of Allspark-stuff running up Optimus’ throat, shivering at the electric bloom of recognition and welcome and joy; connection/belonging/unity sang through him, and through Optimus. He felt Prime shudder deep, and he’d slipped in a line, and through the cable he felt Prime’s swift assessment, comparison: not like Miles. Rutile was about to pursue that, but Skyfire climbed over Silverbolt, mouth open, wanting a taste of Vector’s ions, and the space between Primes and deltas burned with bodylights and ardent fields and hot vents from cores grown molten; and Optimus drew their energies up and up, the galaxy-scale passion of the two deltas, arching and flaring into each other, magnified, refracted by two immortal Prime sparks; he gathered the emotions of his tribe, his hive – Vector intoxicated by inclusion, Rutile caught amid them, half surrendered, half observing – weaving a vast skein not of matter this time, but bright powers, a storehouse of immensity from which they could all draw, awestruck. The pattern did not explode, freeing them each to their singular overloads, but spread and redoubled, stabilizing in ways even Vector found astonishing, Optimus’ spark the keystone. 

He opened and Rutile, fearless, opened, and the brushing of their coronae touched off at last a supernova that rippled through the Allspark itself, leaving living mechs strutless and steaming under an ultramarine blue night sky. 

“Oomph,” Silverbolt said, optics off and a silly little grin on his face. Skyfire’s weight felt good, even with all four of his brothers on top of that. When had they showed up? 

_While you were busy snogging Rutile,_ Skydive informed him. _Which I know feels nice, but it looks hilarious from the outside._

 _Don’t some fish keep their babies in their mouths?_ Fireflight asked.

 _Cichlids, among others,_ Beachcomber said, laughing. 

_He wouldn’t actually fit,_ Hot Spot and First Aid assured Groove. Rutile was in the neighborhood of twelve feet tall – about the same height as Silverbolt’s entire head, if one didn’t count fancy antennae and things. 

Fancy antennae that Optimus was idly petting. Silverbolt rather wanted to wriggle into this attention, but his body informed him that he was quite thoroughly pinned, so he’d just have to enjoy the little EM shivers that were running down to his shoulders by themselves. 

**Shall we,** Optimus offered, very content and very amused, **once the Greenhouse is done, have a Dance?** Their last Dance had not been so long ago, but it had been on Earth. This would be the first on Cybertron in a very long time indeed, and the first under their new sun. 

_Yes! Yes!_ the cloud mind cheered, those not fallen into recharge. The sentiment would be unanimous by dawn.

~~~~~~

An incoming long-distance message bleeped in his queue. Starscream glared at it. What good was the requirement to ask for orders before engaging if it took so long to get an answer back? He was given a ship! Was that not an implied gesture of autonomy? Had he not proven through long eons his ability? Did Galvatron truly think Starscream would do something rash with the Homomdans still in the area?

What game was Galvatron playing now? 

_I am already aware of Cybertron’s relocation,_ the message played. Galvatron’s glyphs languid and amused. Subharmonics skittered away at the edges, too fleeting to catch entirely. A game indeed. _Turmoil informed me some time ago. I should like to know why my supposed second in command has been so slow to inform me of current strategically important events. Do try to keep up, Starscream._

Starscream wanted to know why Galvatron, if he’d known about it some time ago, hadn’t bothered to tell his supposed second in command about such a strategically important event. But it would not do to say so.

Skywarp poked his head into the room. Hastily retreated. Starscream seethed as he composed his next message. Asking permission for each step, when _he_ was the one who could best assess the tactical situation! When would Galvatron get off his landing pads and quit slouching around Chaar? Kill the humans. Subdue the Autobots. Reclaim their homeworld. That’s what the troops wanted! Starscream regarded one rocky planet as easily manipulated as another, but he understood the pull tradition and history had on the pride of others.

He must be patient. Let Galvatron’s minions bide their time. Let Shockwave’s manufactories continue to build. The defeat of Optimus Prime and his pitiful remnant band would be all the more crushing. And final. Very well. 

_Request permission to establish a base at Vos…_

~~~~~~

The wind blew. High, thin clouds flickered across the sun, etching faint shadows over the metal world. Bluestreak stood on the parapet wall, one hand outstretched. Frozen. His optics aimed at his hand, the sequential, fitted segments of his fingers, but he saw other things. Heard something other than the hum of the wind. Felt the ghosts of long-collapsed fields. A different structure supported his feet. 

The gravity was the same as in memory, the angle of the light, the composition of the air through his filters; small things, but enough.

Maggie, appropriately helmeted and suited, leaned on the railing of a human-scale balcony on the first aboveground building completed so far, a level above Bluestreak. She watched Prowl and Ironhide approach him from opposite directions, step by step. Her filters were up so she could see the way they extended their fields, gently brushing against the edges of Blue’s. 

They were all like this. So gentle. So torn apart inside. Even Thundercracker and Ironhide and Chromia, the old veterans; they moved despite the pain, old scars they’d gotten used to. 

The physical embrace had only closed for a few seconds when Blue stiffened, crackles of St. Elmo’s fire dancing over his armor, snapping off the edges of his door-wings. Then he sagged, caught by the other two even as they shuddered and threw sparks of their own, optics guttering.

Maggie had only the vaguest notion of what overload was really like. “Orgasms” that knocked most mechs unconscious! Someday a mech with her memories would. 

Prowl began to withdraw, slowly reshaping himself out of the cuddle, but he was caught. Ironhide curled a hand around the side of Prowl’s helm, thumb drawing a slow arc across one angular cheek guard. Optics met optics, unblinking. Maggie held her breath. 

Slow approach, Prowl bending, Ironhide lifting his face. A silver hand, not clawed but graceful, smoothing up Ironhide’s arm to press that blunter hand, turning it so Prowl could kiss the palm. 

Ironhide huffed hot vapor through his vents, and yanked Prowl into a down and dirty kiss that probably had teeth in it, and left them both about 40 degrees hotter than they’d been. Prowl managed at last to disengage, leaving Blue with a forehelm nuzzle and Ironhide with a considering look. Ironhide swore in Cybertronian – Maggie’s software just about ate itself failing to translate – and sauntered off, hips rolling. 

“Hnngh,” Blue said. Maggie agreed. 

~~~~~~

The Neutral Territories had, over the course of the war, become a sea of fiercely radioactive slag, though they did not glow as bright a blue as the glassy bowl of Uraya. The Tagan Heights were now a canyon, slowly sloughing into an ever-widening fissure. Iacon had fared little better than heavily-bombed Polyhex and Praxus, and had the additional hazard of the most extensive undercities on the planet, whose stability would take a great deal of time to establish. The city body of Kalis had suffered greater damage in the moving without its guardian AI. Where Kaon had been was now a vast, flattened plain as the planet reasserted its spherical shape, flexing in the new gravitational environment of the Alpha Centauri system.

Surface mapping was already complete, thanks to satellites, and Wheeljack had released flocks of Libbies to do more detailed scouting for accesses to whatever lower levels were still intact. 

Homomdan scientists aboard their vessel had immense loads of new data to play in. Not only was planet-moving rather a novel phenomenon, but Cybertron itself was an odd planet, and they’d never before had such free license to study it. Ar Be-Ka spent most of nir time down on the surface, near Optimus, though concerns for nir waning health meant ne had quite a retinue and a number of medical machines had been moved into a hollowed out suite deep in the hillside.

To the east of what would be the central plaza, Hoist was making a mosaic; floor for a small courtyard. Circles and circles in circles. The pieces were scrap from the surrounding landscape. Ratchet had assured Sam that none of them so far were pieces of _people_. Not dead ones at least, though Hoist was apparently contemplating asking the home-come refugees to donate bits of plating for the central hub. 

Sam, Ar Be-Ka and Optimus stood – or in Ar Be-Ka’s case floated – off to one side, watching as Hoist shaped and placed each part, welding it to the metal ground and the surrounding pieces. Fast. Precise. Methodical. Hoist was already a quarter done and this was no simple design. 

“Optimusa, my dear,” said Ar Be-Ka quietly. “We realize that immense tasks of this kind are well suited to machine-life like yourselves, but we could aid you – at the least – in radiation mitigation.”

“We are more grateful for your kind offer than I can say.” Optimus knelt beside his friend. “But this is a calamity of our own making. We must rectify it ourselves. We must earn anew our place among the galactic community.” Not all the intelligences observing relocated Cybertron were benign.

“Optimusa, no one who can read your fields would think you and your people were anything but truly remorseful for what you have done. You need not punish yourselves unnecessarily by refusing simple aid.”

“We will remain under close scrutiny for some time,” Optimus said. “We must therefore allow our actions to convince those who remain concerned regarding our peaceful intentions.”

“Correct,” said Serr Innsis, who had joined them, the Ishlorsinami ambassador to Cybertron. Or watchdog. “Vessel 1139 will remain in geosynchronous orbit around Cybertron until such time as a final judgment is reached.”

Optimus nodded. “As you say.” 

Sam could tell that Optimus had bristled very slightly at that, but the fact was, the Bots couldn’t actually do anything about it. The Ishlorsinami’s defenses and weaponry did come under challenge from time to time, from civilizations that decided they weren’t happy with an Ishlorsinami ruling. They were quite capable, if the Cons showed up, of defending themselves. Though they would not help the Autobots, either. Not against the Cons anyway. Sam wasn’t sure whether they’d step in if the Atraxi got trigger-happy. 

The Homomdans _would_ , though, and Jazz was confident the Atraxi wouldn’t try anything while the Homomdans were around. It didn’t look like Starscream wanted to go, either; just lurking around out there in his fancy new battleship, waiting for easy pickings. 

~~~~~~

2084 - May

The Constructicons had years ago stopped hiding their affection and love for Grapple or Beachcomber. Most of them had found the dropping of the pretense relaxing, though the layers of façade seemed to suit Scrapper, who drew them around himself like an old comfortable blanket. (He was, however, nonplussed by that particular metaphor when Beachcomber presented it to him. Beachcomber had laughed and patted his knee.)

_Comber?_

_Mmm? Hey, Longhaul._

_You're going back to Earth?_

_Yeah, tomorrow morning._ After dawn. Borealis would be taking the rest of the humans and a couple of the Waterbabies back. Most of the human visitors had gone back to Earth three weeks ago, but those who intended to spend a longer time on Cybertron would return once the Greenhouse was completed. The Homomdans and their various passengers diplomatic and otherwise were not on a set schedule and would probably hang around for another month or three. Or a year. However long Ar Be-Ka wanted to stay, basically.

_Can I...come with you?_

_Sure, Long. Just meet us at the landing pad._ Beachcomber wasn't sure the added mass would be welcome, but it wasn't a long flight, Longhaul could just hang on to Lissi’s dorsal hull if there wasn't enough room in the hold. He chirped a tight-beam query to make sure she didn’t mind. Her reply was wry, but she didn’t. (She extracted a promise for him to play footsie with her later, though. Beachcomber’s seismic radar + delta feet = bliss.)

_I wanna show you something. You like rocks, right?_

_Yes, I like rocks._ He leaned in and hugged Longhaul’s knee. _You want to take a copy of the Archive down there too, right?_

 _Oh. Um. Right._ Longhaul crouched down and put an arm around the geologist. _Why’re you leaving so soon? I’da thought you’d be…well…not glad exactly, but…survey? Yeah?_

_I do want to help. I do. But Miles…can’t really stay, y’know? Not yet. And there’s a lot of Earth we haven’t seen._

“You really like that squishy, huh? Is it…is it smart, though? Forming emotional bonds with squishies?”

Beachcomber grinned. “I note you didn’t deny that they’re sophisticated enough to form emotional bonds with us.”

“Scrapper says they just imprint.”

“Like ducklings!” Beachcomber laughed.

“Scrap said turbofoxes, but yeah.”

...

After discharging the rest of her passengers, Borealis dropped Longhaul and Beachcomber off at the Tromsø airport in Norway. Miles she took to Seattle so he could visit nieces and nephews; grand and great-grand; and then she settled in with Metroplex and Ultra Magnus for a large-scale exchange of news and thoughts and a little bit of nookie. 

Longhaul and Beachcomber drove south on E8, then took a left on the 91, catching the Svensby-Breivikeidet ferry because that was better than crossing the chilly Ullsfjord underwater. At night they slipped off the road north of the little town of Lyngseidet, transforming to root mode and being careful about leaving tracks. No one was sure where Lockdown or the Predacons were. Up inland and into the mountains they went, glad of snow and storm to hide them. 

Urkjerringa. The Constructicons hadn’t known their mountain was called that when they’d built their hidden city. Longhaul and Beachcomber both scanned their surroundings thoroughly, and Beachcomber pinged Metroplex with a satellite-scan request. Once they were as sure as they could be, Longhaul zeroed in on the camouflaged door. It had been tampered with.

“Can you open it? Is it safe?”

Longhaul scuffed a little more snow off the seams and out from around the lock. “Yeah. It’s mostly just a lot of claw-marks, and someone wired a trip-mine over here, but I disarmed that already. I don’t think they actually got the lock panel open.” 

Beachcomber smiled. People – including their fellow Decepticons – tended to underestimate the Structies. Especially Longhaul. Well, Tread and Trample were a little thick, but only by comparison, and that was kind of unfair, given how brilliant Scrapper and Hook and Mixmaster were. A moment later, Longhaul had the door open. 

The tunnel sloped down sharply, high-ceilinged enough to accommodate Scrapper or Hook, who were tallest in bipedal mode, wide enough for Mixmaster or Longhaul. Longhaul had Beachcomber climb onto his back. The next set of alarms and defensive systems were ground-based. The set after that was keyed to the Constructicon team’s energy signatures. Longhaul transmitted the three bundles of codes that ought to defuse everything, but to be safe, Beachcomber stayed where he was until they reached the central cavern. The Predacons had left a scatter of spy motes during their incursion, and although Scrapper and Hook were 90 percent sure their own hunter motes had swept them all up, there was no sense taking chances. 

“Lights,” Longhaul said, and the grand plaza hall was illuminated. Golden lamps shone above, and blue lit from below. The mercury fountains were still and silent. Beachcomber climbed down, giving Longhaul’s aft a friendly swat on his way.

“He reinforced the attachments, right?” Beachcomber said, looking up and giggling at the bigger-than-life statue of Scrapper, in a flying pose, arms extended, fists clenched. 

“Probably,” Longhaul sighed. “Scavenger told him there were fracture planes in a couple of places. Just had to open his mouth…”

“At least it’s up out of most people’s eye-line,” Beachcomber laughed. “The fountains are really nice, though. Do they still flow, do you think?”

“I just pinged that system and something’s not working. We kind of had a fight with the Preds in here and…” Longhaul wandered over to the largest of the fountains and examined the base. “Yeah.” He yanked a sliver of metal free. “Shrapnel. Not _Shrapnel_ , just shrapnel.” He grinned over at Beachcomber, who was sauntering in a big circle, peering all around, sending sonic and radar pulses down through the floor and into the radiating spoke passages. 

Something churned and gurgled, and then the heavy quicksilver in the fountains began to circulate, spilling and sliding, the golden light from the above-lanterns shimmered and rippled, throwing bright reflections on the cavern walls and across the metal bodies of the two mechs. The mercury made a gentle _thunk-shussh-grrgle_ as it poured from one basin to another; like water but heavier, deeper.

Beachcomber put a hand to his mouth. “That sound,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Longhaul whispered. It had hit him, too, the first time Mix turned the fountains on. A sound they hadn’t heard for almost three million years. A simple sound. A common sound. But the fountains of Cybertron had long been silent. 

Longhaul led Beachcomber down a tunnel next to the one he eventually wanted. They’d come back around. Most of their delving did. Lights came on as they went, staying on behind them, the lamps fashioned like those of Crystal City that had been smashed long ago; white or blue or gold crystal in wire-caged dodecahedra or icosahedra or octohedra. 

“Who did the mosaics?” Beachcomber asked, sliding his feet along them, feeling them, tasting all their metals and minerals. The designs were abstract, mostly geometric, but some seemed to echo the curves of river or cloud or the arch of a leaf, the coil of a shell, though all of those shapes were mathematical, too. Beachcomber could hear Perceptor’s voice, reciting the formulae. 

“Scavenger,” Longhaul said. “We each picked projects, we just wanted to build stuff uninterrupted again, y’know? But all he did was build the tunnels to connect everything. Nice work, for what it’s worth.”

“‘Nice.’ All right.” 

The tunnel curved without rising or falling, the floor slightly but not uncomfortably concave. At the end was a plain door that opened in three sections. Very typical of architecture during the last era before the war. Beyond was a spherical cavern even larger than the central one with the fountains. Beachcomber had been studying the mosaics and looked up only just in time to avoid running off the balcony. Longhaul steered him to the left and over a slender bridge as Beachcomber gaped. 

Bubbling through the center of the cavern and taking up nearly all that space was an intricate three-dimensional fractal construction. Seven large spheres with clusters of smaller and smaller spheres looping and branching away into improbable spindly quills brushing the cavern walls. All metallic, etched with swirling patterns of matte on glassy polish, all grading in color from a warm amber, through violet, to vivid burgundy. Veins of light in the cavern walls glowed pale gold, illumining every fine detail of structure and pattern.

“Who…?” Beachcomber murmured, as Longhaul drew him the rest of the way across the bridge and into the nearest of the large spheres. There were oval windows and doors, placed in accordance to the necessary math. The interiors of the large spheres were sparse, but rimmed with a spiral ledge, suitable as seating for mechs of various sizes. In the center the floor rose into a small pool or large vase, though there was nothing inside, and five doorways led to slightly smaller spheres. 

“Hook,” Longhaul said. “Made it all by shaping.” By hand, the humans would say, though Longhaul thought that was a little odd. By tools, didn’t they mean? But by “shaping” Longhaul meant that the Mandelbulb structures had not been “grown” in the way many buildings had been on Cybertron, where you programmed your assemblers, set them in the base shape you wanted and fed them raw materials until they got to the top. Or “grown” like crystals in enormous vats, Longhaul supposed, but that had been obsolete a billion years ago. Modular preassembly and onsite fitting were actually more efficient and faster, but people liked doing things in the traditional ways. “We made some small manufactories, but mostly we had to build stuff down here by shaping.”

Beachcomber stared at him, stared around at the apartments inside the spheres. 

“It’s…kinda soothing, actually,” Longhaul said, scratching an imaginary itch on the back of his shoulder cowling. “Building things the long way. Gives you time to think about what you’re doing.” Beachcomber wandered farther in, finding a set of spheres that each rose slightly from the last, like room-size stairs, though the thresholds were all smooth. Off to the left were Tread and Trample’s rooms. Their stuff – datapads and mineral samples and empty energon cylinders – was all over the floors just the way they’d left it. “Gives you time to think about a lot of things.”

“Did you all …live here?”

“Nah. Well. Yeah. Kinda. We recharged here. We’d talk about stuff here sometimes. I mean, we were usually all busy with our own projects, y’know?”

“This is amazing, Long. Beautiful!” Beachcomber turned in a circle as they came back down to the first large room, the meeting room. “I remember you guys built such wonderful things, before. I remember Crystal City, and Pellucivane, and the Fardawn Station.” He caught Longhaul’s hand and held it. “I’m so glad to…to see that you still can.”

Me too, Longhaul thought, leading Beachcomber through a side connecting tunnel to Mixmaster’s caves. Twenty years ago he would have said aloud, of course we can, we never stopped, just you _Autobots_ kept blowing our stuff up! But both sides had blown stuff up, and it hadn’t mattered who built it.

They heard the streams and falls before they rounded the curve. Mix had left the door open. Not like him to be that sloppy. On the other hand, the entire complex was so deep, and sealed off, what or who else would have come in here? There wasn’t even dust on the floor or anything. Just darkness and undisturbed air and memories of a brief, happy time when it was just them, together and alive and no one giving them orders except Scrapper. 

“Ohhhh,” Beachcomber said, in that deep, thrummy tone of voice Longhaul had hoped he would. “Arnanra IV? The Ii caves!”

“Yep! Mix always liked the sound, the echoes.” Water wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as mercury, but it had its uses, and was in plentiful supply. 

The entire Ii cave system had been reproduced in 1/1000th scale; the natural stone around it shaped to fit. All the light came from beneath the transparent or translucent formations, colored by whichever types of corundum Mixmaster had used. Each section tended to be in three harmonious colors, built up in centimeter-thin layers. Yellow, blue, violet. Red, orange, blue. Green, violet, pale grey. 

“Humans call red corundum ruby, and all other colors sapphire,” Beachcomber said, walking through, not touching – hands firmly clasped behind his back because ooh _water_! and eeee _rocks_! – admiring how perfectly the various formations had been reproduced. Mix must have had the hi-def scans that Orthoclase had made during the reign of Zeta Prime and Lord Protector Empyrion. 

“Why single out the red?” Humans were so weird.

“I…don’t know. There’s a pinkish orange corundum called padparadscha.” Maybe because red was the color of their blood. And the word “sapphire” had referred to different kinds of stone, through history. Glyph would know more about that. Beachcomber resolved to ask her next time they were both in the cloud mind.

“What do they call the far-violet ones?”

“They lump them in with black sapphires. They can’t see that color.”

“Oh.” 

The un-augmented ones couldn’t, anyway. Augment humans called far-violet “bee-violet” which Beachcomber thought was adorable (and near-infrared was “viper-red”). If Longhaul hadn’t been paying attention to how humans had been modifying themselves lately, perhaps it would be more fun for him to discover that on his own. Beachcomber grinned. 

At the far end of the wandering path, past stalactites and ripplestone curtains, past stalagmites and interconnected pools, was a natural parabolic half-dome. A sort of amphitheater tilted on one side, so that the stone arched above those in the center – and in the original caves it had been used as a gathering place and stage. Beachcomber stood with his back to the curve and hummed, experimenting with volume and pitch, adjusting his harmonics and subharmonics. Longhaul scurried to the other end of the cavern and knelt, putting his audials in the best spot. 

Humming turned to singing. Beachcomber’s singing programming and vocoder weren’t set for anything operatic, and he was no Gene Autry, but he had a nice baritone for singing around the camp heater out in the middle of nowhere on survey. He and Hound tended to know the same kinds of songs. 

Longhaul was silent, listening; the Ii caves did odd things to voices. More than simple echoes, the physical topography and the water forms changed voices and harmonics in pitch and tone, creating multiple harmonies sometimes, or quieting a burr to pure notes. The topography was precise, but scale mattered, and Beachcomber’s voice echoed and gained resonance, but was otherwise unaltered. Longhaul huffed, though, when the simple, brief song was over.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Beachcomber said, joining Longhaul back at the entrance and following him down yet another corridor. “Mixmaster always has been a music fan, hasn’t he?” 

“Ironic, though,” said Longhaul. “He sings worse than Prime.” They both snickered as they emerged again, closer to the main plaza this time, into Ruckus’ untidy experiment with gear-driven, steam-powered architecture. Over-elaborate and massive, and somewhat precarious in places, the movable towers and rearrangeable rooms were more artistic than practical. 

“Any particular lever I _shouldn’t_ pull?” Beachcomber asked, standing on tiptoe at the master control panel. 

“Oh. I…dunno. Could get exciting.”

“Oh boy.” _Power on_ was marked with the usual glyph. There was a dull, gurgling roar as geothermal vents far below were opened, and steam rushed through convoluted pipeworks. Choosing more or less at random, Beachcomber pushed a button. Walls, windows, doors, vents, roofs, entire rooms shuffled about, some spinning, some lifting, others lowering, or rolling, accompanied by a chorus of wheezes and moans, clanks and groaning, creaking and whistling as excess steam was diverted once the assemblage settled like an ancient mech into its new shape. The copper and bronze surfaces had been worked into multifarious textures, and embellished with bright enamel designs that appeared to be abstract at first glance. Beachcomber pushed another button, and Longhaul reached around him to pull a lever at the same time. 

The whirling and shuffling and clanking was more frenzied, but after a moment everything settled again, in a completely different arrangement. Longhaul placed both hands on the controls, his arms to either side of Beachcomber, the inner surfaces brushing the geologist’s shoulders now and then as they experimented, trying various permutations, playing the console like an organ one minute, switching to simpler variations the next. Trying to work out what each lever and button and knob did because surely there must be some kind of mechanical order to it. But the workings were even more complex than they seemed at first glance, and no obvious pattern was emerging.

“Wait a minute,” said Beachcomber, after their latest combination had thoroughly disproved their latest theory. “Is that an optic? Look at the enameling. Is this a puzzle?”

“Huh.” It was part of an optic, obvious now that Longhaul saw it, though it had seemed just another half-circle of red a moment ago. They resumed their combination-seeking with a will. At one point they got a configuration that looked – if they tilted their heads a little – like a mech making a very rude gesture. Beachcomber giggled. Longhaul cackled. Ruckus had definitely done that on purpose. 

“Have we…been underestimating Ruckus all this time?” Beachcomber asked, fingers still working the controls, letting his head tilt back, against Longhaul’s ventral plates. The low purrs of their engines transmitted back and forth through their metal.

“Yeah and no,” Longhaul said. “When you get him riled, he’s a violent slagbrain.”

Beachcomber gave him a look.

“Okay, we’re all violent slagbrains. Whatever. But, if you leave him alone, Ruckus has this…this quiet sorta…well, it’s a focused kinda mentality, right? Intelligence. He likes puzzles. Especially big physical ones like this.”

“Has he ever played the MYST games?” Beachcomber chirped a file. All the games bundled weren’t a very big file, to them, and the code was human-awkward, but Longhaul didn’t even unfold it before his optics lit.

“How’d you know?”

“Glen played them. They were like this; environmental puzzles. And beautiful.” Glen had been shy and embarrassed, telling Hound about them, but then Hound was one of the easiest people to tell embarrassing things to. They weren’t badass, shooter games. They were quiet games, sometimes eerie and unsettling, full of layers of stories. Miles hadn’t ever played them, being more “in the world” than on a computer. 

“We could be voors…uh, years, figuring this out, you know,” Longhaul said, gesturing at the enameled bronze of Ruckus’ creation. Beachcomber looked like he might be considering it, and Longhaul tried not to jounce from foot to foot. But then the little geologist smiled, and held out a hand, and Longhaul took it in his much bigger one and led him back into the great plaza, and then out again, down another long corridor. 

“So. Over here we have Tread and Trample’s park.” Longhaul was personally surprised they’d actually more or less finished the thing, the way the twins argued over every detail. Well. When they did finally agree, the thing they’d agreed to do was usually more fantastic than the things they’d wanted to do individually. 

“Oh,” said Beachcomber. His feet caressed the cobbled floor, and moved him inexorably toward the coppery disk in the center, but he, friend to Perceptor through all the megavorns of their lives, saw at once that the whole park was a representation of Cybertron’s native system. The copper-gold disk in the center of the floor their long-exploded sun, Hadeen; the magnetically-suspended spheres for thirteen planets, surrounded by crystalline trees instead of moons; the orbital pathways graven with gravimetric poetry.

“Kinda funny, innit,” Longhaul said, following leisurely until he came upon one of the half-loops of metal scattered about that could serve as benches. He sat down, content to watch Beachcomber. “A park’s for people to gather in. Lotsa people. Relaxing, playing games or music. But here this is, a kilometer down, nobody knows it’s here but us.”

“840 meters of that is mountain,” Beachcomber laughed. It was barely 97 degrees Fahrenheit at the main level of the complex; 37 degrees Celsius. The heart of the mountain itself was cold, only a few degrees above the freezing of water, but 160 meters below that the heat of the _planet_ ’s heart rose steadily. He set a pede-tip on the central disk, testing. Grinning with delight, he placed one foot full on, then, balanced carefully, skated out in a lazy curve, arms out, visor bright. “You could rebuild this place, if you wanted, on Cybertron,” he said. He missed skating. It was one of the few purely frivolous things he’d been able to get Perceptor to do on the regular. 

“Could.” Longhaul shifted his weight. He glanced at the fourth planet, Cybertron-that-was, hovering in its place, shaped of steel, with its two crystal trees, one twice the size of the other. “Probably won’t. We’ll build new stuff, once the first city’s secure.” He watched Beachcomber tip forward, arms out, one leg extended behind, leaning into a spin. Faster and faster, drawing his limbs in. Simple physics, Longhaul thought, smiling, but Beachcomber was good at it. Graceful somehow, despite his stocky frame.

“Sooooo, you’re just gonna leave all this here? And not tell anybody?” Beachcomber flung out his arms, slowing, turning the spin into gentle loops. 

“Humans’d cook down here,” Longhaul said. 

“No, though it wouldn’t be comfortable.” Humans had survived at almost twice this depth for short periods. He’d taken Miles down to the re-flooded Crystal Cave in Mexico once. The conditions didn’t bother Beachcomber at all, and Miles had coped quite well for about half an hour, enchanted by the giant selenite crystals. Dani would be fine, and there were a few hundred other humans with sophisticated enough systems to find the climate balmy. They’d have to ventilate better, but it was doable. Build a little funicular or tram from the entrance down to the main chamber. “You could charge admission.”

“Charge? What?” Longhaul got up, moved to the edge of the skating disk. “Oh. Money. Bah. The slag we do that for?”

“I’m kidding.” Beachcomber swooped by and Longhaul caught his hand, leaning out to let him slow, then reeling him in. 

“They’d just breathe all over everything. And shed dead skin cells. So gross!”

“Aww, dust motes are pretty in the sunlight.”

“Ugh. Gets in your vents and slag.” 

“Burns right off the filters, easy!”

“Gah. Come on, one last thing to show ya.” He let Beachcomber go, trundling off back once again to the main plaza, and the last unexplored tunnel.

They transformed, Beachcomber following closely as the convoluted ramps branched and rejoined, but ever spiraled downward. At last, about another three-quarters of a kilometer deeper, the tunnel opened up into a dark, rough staging area. Crystals glittered on the walls, seeming to be natural formations at first, but Beachcomber soon identified them as minerals that shouldn’t – couldn’t – have formed in this environment. On this planet. 

“Nara crystals? Where did you get…well, yeah, sure from Velantia, but…did you make them? They’re so pure…this is amazing…”

“Thought you’d figure it out,” Longhaul said, clasping his hands behind his back, pleased. “They’re from places we’ve been, the Constructicons. Places we built stuff or just visited. Not that we took a lot of vacations, y’know. Knew you’d look a little closer.” 

Beachcomber grinned. He stepped back from the walls, looking around. “Ahh! It’s a map, too!” If one took the center of the chamber as Cybertron, the crystals were a flat projection representing the relative positions of the planets they came from. Longhaul bounced on his pedes, optics flaring bright. 

“Yep!” He held out a hand and Beachcomber took it. “C’mon. One more place to show ya.”

Massive granite doors split into three triangular sections and withdrew into floor and walls. Another ramp led down for a last quarter kilometer, and the temperature rose to 62 C, 143 F. Un-augmented humans really would cook down here. There was another set of doors, opening by Longhaul’s command as they approached. Lights came on in the rooms beyond. 

“Oh my.” Beachcomber hadn’t seen anything like it since the Towers fell. 

The layout was simple enough. Oval foyer, cubic central chamber, round doors to either side leading to other rooms. But every wall and ceiling was plated in gold and copper, coffered, with bas relief panels in each wall, and constellation lights in the ceiling. Lamps hung in clusters, every one different, blues and purples and golds, casting vivid reflections over the metal walls. Gold was valued for its color, for its transmissive properties, for its acoustics. Beachcomber laughed the moment he realized what the depression in the center of the main room was.

“Is that a ball pit?”

Longhaul strode past him and rolled into the circular depression, which was filled with small granite spheres. Each sphere was a different variety of granite. Beachcomber wondered how exactly he’d collected them. 

“It’s my bed,” Longhaul huffed. The spheres made it comfortable even when his joints ached. 

“It’s a ball pit!” Beachcomber whooped and dove after him.

“Ugh, gerroff!” Longhaul pried Beachcomber off his midsection and rolled over. “Go look at the other stuff. I’m taking a nap.”

Beachcomber patted his shoulder. “Oh sure. You brought me down here to show off and you’re taking a nap. Go right ahead, hum hmmm…” He wriggled his way out of the ball pit, though he would rather have stayed, and ambled into the lefthand room. An oil bath, similar in style to the ~~bed~~ ball pit room. The bath was sloped like a human swimming pool, large enough for Longhaul to stretch out in and fully immerse. Or share, if the other mech didn’t mind cozy, or was smaller. Mmmhmm. Picks and steel pads and abrasives and special oils were arranged neatly to one side. He noted that Longhaul was still using that peculiar kind of joint lubricant. Hadn’t he ever gotten that fixed? Or self-repair should have taken care of it, but if there was a glitch in his nanocells…

Not his style to pry. And Longhaul was – used to be – a Decepticon. Pointing out a weakness wouldn’t go over well. Longhaul knew what he was doing. Hook would have taken care of it, if it was something fixable. Maybe the affected joints weren’t weight-bearing when they combined? But wasn’t Longhaul a leg? That didn’t mean his robot-mode joints weren’t compressed and locked during gestalt. 

Still none of his business. He dipped the obligatory pede-tip in the oil – plenty toasty, though that could be said of the air and the stone itself at this depth – and wandered back into the main room. Longhaul gave every appearance of recharge, including sedate, barely ruffling fields. Huh.

Across and through the other door. 

Oh, thought Beachcomber. Oh, this was the treasure trove. 

One the rest of the Structies might well tease Long about for vorns, if they had ever seen it. (Longhaul’s subharmonics had hinted that they had not. Why?) He had smelled the clay the moment they’d come through the door, and wondered about it, but there had been so much to take in today…oh. They’d been down there two days actually, playing and exploring. No sun to remind them of the passage of time, and Beachcomber was past master of ignoring his chronometer. 

The clay. Special clay, he knew. Kaolin, with other minerals. He’d smelled it before, in its raw, unfired state. Porcelain. High quality, too. Mined or made? There was enough of it here, in big, carefully wrapped blocks, to suggest Long had bought it somewhere. The blocks sat in refrigerated cabinets with clear doors. Transparent aluminum or plex, probably. Behind the Constructicon-scaled pottery wheel. Beachcomber resisted the urge to climb up on the thing and turn it on; it would be balanced just right and he didn’t want to mess that up. 

All around the room were floor-to-ceiling shelves, displaying Longhaul’s finished works, unfinished works, and a few epic failures. (There was a blob, with distinctive finger-indentations, that looked like it had been thrown against a wall while still wet.) The pieces seemed to be arranged chronologically, as symmetry and detail increased from right to left, bespeaking increasing skill at this very human art. Vases and bowls, things Cybertronians might find uses for. Then figures; sea creatures, dragons, sinuous smooth shapes, until those had become familiar enough to inspire a moving on. Simple but precise geometric shapes gave way to blocky Cybertronian figures, both robot and alt mode. Vague, basic frame types, then specific portraits. 

“Oh,” Beachcomber murmured, grinning. “It’s me!” And Perceptor, in scale with each other, glazed and finely detailed. The Perceptor figure was about two meters tall. A reasonable size for Longhaul’s big hands, though Longhaul had fine-manips like a lot of people did who worked with their hands. The Perceptor and Beachcomber figures were set facing each other, Perceptor looking down and Beachcomber looking up; at each other, their expressions soft. It was a stunning pair of likenesses.

Some of the shelves were underlit, as Longhaul experimented with translucency and relief, creating silhouettes or panoramas, then etching-like scenes on backlit panels - lithophanes. These were also mostly vases, and Cybertronian-scale chalices, but there were tiles and partially-abstracted figures, whose chest-panels bore scenes or symbols from the past. A few had decorative motifs from Earth. 

One corner of the vast workroom was devoted to glass, including an alarmingly sized blowtorch. Looked like Long had stuck mostly to lampworking. Beads and sculptures – flowers, waves, Devastator in full gestalt, planets and suns, Cybertronian construction forms, a miniature of Crystal City’s coronet of towers. 

It was astonishing, beautiful work. Delicate, a display of art and finesse Beachcomber wondered if anyone other than his brothers had ever seen. 

He wandered back to the figures of himself and Perceptor, wondering why just they two were here. Why not Wheeljack? Why not Prime? Or Megatron, as he had been, their beloved and respected Lord Protector. But this work had been done here, on Earth. And before the Structies had formally joined the space bridge effort. Beachcomber gazed at Perceptor’s face in porcelain, glazed to a very close approximation of the original’s pale silver. 

“How do you get along with him?” Longhaul asked, coming up behind him, genuinely curious. “You two are just about the strongest spark-friends outside of a gestalt we’ve met, and yet he’s so…so…” Longhaul made bitey motions with his hands. 

Beachcomber laughed. “He can be, can’t he.” He turned and wrapped his arms around Longhaul’s leg. “He’s not so hard, really. He knows he can’t make me do anything I don’t want to, but it’s not a matter of opposing him. Deflecting, more like. Heh. Bend with the wind.” 

“You both have strong personalities,” Long said, reaching down to touch his helm. 

“And we clash, sometimes. Our academic specialties are quite different, but they do kinda overlap. Chemistry and metallurgy. Stars exploding from iron poisoning, creating heavy elements for use in rocky planets.”

“Rocky planets your favorites, huh?”

“Maybe. Cybertron is sort of rocky. In places.” He tugged at Longhaul’s hand, leading him back into the bed chamber…aka the ball pit. 

“Sort of.” Eager enough, willing enough, Longhaul settled into the granite spheres, curling on his side, leaving room. He wasn’t used to clanging such small mechs, but as he was formulating a way to be careful, Beachcomber had climbed over his waist and was at his lower back, doing things with his hands and feet and mouth and fields, and Longhaul lay beneath him shivering with unexpected ecstasy. 

~~~~~~

Oh, full deep he lay, sinking to the vent; the plasmic bath no hotter, after all, than his own spark. Quiet, but for the stirrings of the mantle far beneath, when the generals did not pester him with their trivial concerns. In the peace and quiet at the bottom of the pool he lay, sending wires of himself down, down; mass and energy entwined, all of it his for the taking. Slow and careful, learning the taste of the planet. Nothing abrupt that would alert Optimus through the Allspark.

He was aware of footsteps on the banks of his pool. They watched him sometimes, his Decepticons, as he slowly writhed. Watched his body bathed in plasma, desirous. They would go away to interface, rushed and secretive, but he knew.

The generals thought him mad. They found him unpredictable of late, and that was useful. Dangerous, but useful. Galvatron was good at this game. He could logic rings around Shockwave, though it was a tactic best played subtle and seldom. Shockwave and his closed-loop lab. Runabout and Runamok, the fools, had gone in, and were alive, but had not come out. Nothing came out. Little went in. The systems recycled, reused. Very efficient. Very difficult to get any idea what went on inside. He left one thought thread open to that calculation. 

_My Lord Galvatron,_ said Dreadwing. _There is only a single Ishlorsinami ship in orbit around the human planet. You asked to be notified._

Galvatron considered shooting Dreadwing where he stood. He had, however, given that order. Very well. Perhaps it was time to again test the metal of humankind.


	81. New Dawn II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Optimus knows for sure what Shockwave is doing; the Greenhouse is built; robots dance, and there is the usual after-dance shagging. Or not so usual, as the case may be. ;D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening: [Anthem of the World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7KxQImzuVg) by Future World Music for the airing of the Greenhouse! [ Colors of Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuGiwDQEvDc) by Thomas Bergersen for the Dance!

2084 – November – black nights

With utmost care, Optimus set down the block of stone he had been carrying. Hom, humans and Val’Na scurried around him.

 **Runabout and Runamok.** The surrounding glyphs and subharmonics were those attending the dead. The cloud mind knew. There had not been mortalities on either side for a while, aside from Sentinel picking off half-deads, and those Prime had stopped announcing. It was too painful to learn that friends had been forcibly plucked from the Allspark into torment. 

_What happened?_ asked Ratchet from his new medbay, just off the central plaza. Prowl and Ironhide set down their own blocks and gathered near, Prowl touching Prime’s hand gently. 

**They are very angry,** Prime said. **I am attempting to…** This at least was easier, this fast slide deep into the Allspark awareness. They weren’t hard to find. Twin loci of rage, bitterness, betrayal, boiling in a curdled nest-nebula of dark/not-dark, the patterns around them keeping their distance, but watchful. At least they had died together, and were staying together within, each reinforcing the other’s pattern. They would be able to maintain personality coherence much easier than most. 

**May I assist you in any way?** Prime asked carefully. A double lance of wrath was directed at him and he dodged, but did not withdraw. **Runamok, Runabout…** Already, un-bodied, they were cooling. Soothing prominences from the other sparks reached out to them, offering and eliciting shared experience and knowledge. The twins were neither the first nor the last to die furious.

 **Welcome,** Prime said gently.

 _Welcome!_ the sparks of those already One said and sang and pulsed and danced. _Be with us! Speak with us! Bring us your thoughts and voices, words from the life-other! Tell us what happened!_

 _He took our arms and legs off!_ Runamok yowled. _Shockwave,_ his attendant glyphs said, embroidered with other glyphs that were not polite.

 _He kept us apart, shielded, for quartexes and quartexes!_ Runabout snarled. _Then he’d bring us into the same room and cable us together with…with some kinda medical overrides!_

_Wouldn’t even tell us what he wanted..._

_Took our chestplates off!_

_Damaged, tortured, for orns, separately, then shoved us together…_

_…watching, scanning, hooked things to our spark chambers…_

_After a voor he asked us to spark-share…_

_…with him watching! Right there in the room!_

_If it was anyone else…but…_

_…after what he’d been doing to us…_

_And we wouldn’t. He hurt us more and we still wouldn’t, and then he did something weird, more overrides or something,_ made _us want to, just being near each other again made us want to…_

_…just to have a little peace, just to have a little of each other…_

_Cables everywhere, all the thoracic ones…_

_…that’s fun but why? We went for it fast, hoping to get to the good place inside before he changed his mind. Went deep, deep as we could, if we were going to die like that, might as well, right?_

_And it still wasn’t the thing he wanted. We overloaded…_

_…tried to make it last but we’d been kept apart so long…_

_Old Shocks was slagged off! Doesn’t show it, but he forced us apart before we’d cooled off, left us alone, shielded, in the dark. Broke our chronometers._

_Then._

_Then he explained—_

_—Finally…_

_Gave us these…these protocols…slag you all already know about them! The merge thing! Prime’s doing it! Frag! Frag frag frag… But Shockwave said…_

_…said it was our duty, Galvatron’s orders, to increase Decepticon numbers._

_What the slag were we supposed to do? Production line, he said, double every interval, efficient…logarithmic…_

_…we_ tried _, we did! But something…we just—_

_—just bounced off…felt like we were gonna die! Explode!_

_So we veered off! Stupid idea anyway, but…Sh-shockwave…_

_…Shockwave said something about starting over…_

_And then he…_

_he!_

_he shot us…_

_He shot us because we couldn’t do what he wanted! Fragging Shockwave! Fragging spark pollution!_

_Nasty thing, organic thing, unclean…_

_…our sparks are pure, from the Allspark, as we were from the Beginning…_

There was a stirring at this, among the gathered patterns. Sympathy and condolence and comforting – and a bit of giggling, not unkindly, as Runabout and Runamok were brought up to speed on some very ancient history. 

_Not fair,_ the twins muttered, curling inward together. _Not fair…_ Knowledge and memory suffused them, offered as a balm. They had vast company in their former ignorance. No one blamed them. None of that mattered now, all are one, all are love. The twins uncurled slightly, offering prominences of their own, tentatively feeling out the first steps in their part of the great dance.

Optimus joined in the pulse of relief that swept through the gathered patterns. **If you wish it,** he told the twins, **I can bring you forth into new bodies.**

 _No!_ they shouted in unison. Embodied as an Autobot? By the apostate Prime? Or escape, to live as exiles, hunted by their own kind. Or ask Galvatron and take whatever body he saw fit to place them in. No and never. Stay in the Allspark, yes. In peace and at least contentment, learn to find their way to joy; free from constraint, free from time, reunited with old friends. They could shift the foci of their patterns to Galvatron’s moiety, take the statistically small chance of being yanked into half-deads; though Prime could divert that at least, and had. Stay. Stay in the Allspark yes and yes.

**Very well. Should you change your minds, you need only ask.**

Leaving them in peace, in the capable purview of those gone before, Optimus drew physical awareness forward in his consciousness. Prowl’s mouth was pressed to his left hand, which Optimus liked very much. Prowl’s dentae were unusually sharp, but he used them with uncommon gentleness. 

**Elita, Jazz, Ratchet, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Prowl,** he tight-beamed. He would send a précis of this conversation to Ultra Magnus later. He explained what Runabout and Runamok had said.

 _Sound went right to his brother with the info he pried outta Ranger,_ Jazz fumed, Ironhide growling in agreement. 

_But they’re keeping it secret, too,_ Bee said. _Like Galvatron is._ At least they weren’t going to be immediately overrun with Deceptibabies. 

_Stop that,_ Jazz said, pretending to bat at Bee’s accessory glyphs. _Gonna make them sound cute._

 _What if they_ are _cute?_ Bee retorted. _What will we do when they have…oh…_

 _They have newsparks,_ Prowl said, nodding. _Countermeasure’s “ravine kids”, though they are Allspark-kindled. Shockwave has not yet realized what he will view as the “price” of spark-merge kindling._

**I doubt they’ll adopt the practice.** Elita hefted her boulder and continued to the growing parapet wall. **They will refuse to be constrained in that way, once they realize what it means. But they will assuredly use our merge-bonds against _us_.**

Bee shivered, and dashed off to warn Wheeljack (and cuddle). Prowl looked down, seeming lost in thought, but Jazz was watching him, and so saw the flash of a vicious smile fleet across his face. 

Long game, Jazz thought, door-wings twitching. Long game on legs. Prowl had Shockwave in his sights. 

\\{~~~\\(o)/~~~}/

Grapple had fussed so much about not having a proper manufactory and assemblers that the Constructicons and Build Team had collaborated to build him one. A big one; big enough to make the parts needed for a structure 900 meters wide, three kilometers long, and a kilometer tall, a structure strong enough to resist storms and acid rain, flexible enough to stand through the frequent earthquakes as the planet settled into day/night cycles after so long frozen. 

Pale blue-tinted panes of diamond and transparent aluminum laminated together were prefabricated; raw materials literally shoveled in one end of the assemblers and components accumulating at the other, to be stacked by size and curvature, then carried the short distance to the site, and fitted to the verdigris-colored alloy frame.

“Legos,” Sam said. “What you’re doing there. Those’re Legos.” 

Grapple gave an offended and not-very-well-muffled squawk.

Mikaela snorted. Very fancy Legos, yeah, but… Cybertronians liked modularity, and they could get very, very sophisticated with it. Once the first primitive shelters were built, dug into the hill, facing sunrise as most Cybertronian buildings would for the next dozen vorns, Grapple had unveiled his design for the first human habitat – based on Rutile and Umbel’s old idea. A place where humans could for the first time walk upon the surface of their neighbors’ world without respirators and protective goggles. The Greenhouse, Hound called it, and the name stuck, to Grapple’s exasperation. A greenhouse like the Kew Gardens or Biosphere 2, or the Eden Project, or the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore were greenhouses. 

“They’re very beautiful Legos,” Mikaela said. She, Bee, Nate, and Sam had returned to Cybertron early to watch the Greenhouse go up, knowing it would only take a few days. Dani had never left, at home with the robots wherever they were, though Melissa, her husband and her daughter had stayed on Earth. 

Elsewhere, Brawn, Huffer, Gears and Windcharger – the Little Bastards, per Maggie – had been drilling and digging in the few veins of appropriate rock to be found. Grinding it down to powder and removing toxic elements, they had then added truckloads of organic material bought and brought from Earth, churned and digested by the farm’s worth of earthworms Hound had been cultivating at the Oregon base for the purpose. Humans needed green, growing, living things, and not just for the oxygen. Perceptor and Botanica would make sure the microorganism balance was correct. The Greenhouse was meant to be a garden, per Rutile and Umbel’s original plan. A bubble of fragile emerald on a cold, metal planet. 

Even the microorganisms would die, though, if the air wasn’t right. The Bots traded secret grins and wouldn’t tell her or Sam how they planned to fix that. Mikaela supposed from this behavior that it was something other than just a fancy scrubber in a box, or even a series of such. The interior volume of the structure was non-trivial: some 2.7 billion cubic meters. That was a lot of air to convert to 20.95% oxygen.

\\{~~~\\(o)/~~~}/

Afternoon faded toward twilight; thin, overlapping layers of clouds promising a sunset to rival Hot Rod’s chameleon mesh. Skyfire – the last living Cybertronian expert on weather and climate – reassured them there would be no rain that night, but the dust stirred by a level-collapse in Vos might seed such a storm by the evening after next. Alpha Centauri A was in the distant half of the binary’s mutual orbit, but both of Cybertron’s moons were near full, shining brightly over the gathering shadows on the eastern horizon. 

“It is finished!” Grapple said to the crowd gathered in front of the Greenhouse, rising on his pedes. “The exterior, at any rate. The airlocks and selectively-permeable shields are also operational. Now we need a suitable atmosphere within.” 

A lone mech, one of the Waterbabies – Fimbria – scampered to the main entrance. Grand and central since humans liked such things; a lofty arch, 61 meters high and layered like the doors of a cathedral. In this case, though, the insets were for shielding and a backup mechanical airlock. Lifting a delicate hand, Fimbria cycled the locks and stepped inside, the doors sealing behind her. With a frisky little leap, she ran to the center of the space. She was big, definitely a _she_ , but lacked the heaviness of armor that Chromia, Firestar, and Elita bore. Curvy, insect-like; a Rubenesque mantis. One of the unarmed ones, Dani thought, though there were so many now she couldn’t keep track without consulting her implants. That wasn’t safe or helpful information to have, so she avoided acquiring specifics.

Fimbria spread her arms, and pale, billowy cascades of…something…began to unfold from her sides and neck and the center of her back, frilled like the gills of an axolotl, but immense, spreading out across the floor and upward, wafting gently, breezeless. Then she opened her mouth. Wide, wider. The sealed and shielded diamond composite panes transmitted no sound, but her gill-membranes fluffed and fluttered as Fimbria swayed, drawing in huge quantities of air, filtering it, transforming it. Slowly the membranes changed color; pale lavender darkening to violet, shifting to heliotrope, fuchsia into ruby, then garnet. Hound shared an audio feed from Red Alert – who had a hand pressed to the green-copper frame – and Dani gasped, her vision blurring for a moment. Fimbria was singing with the air rushing through her body, singing an atmosphere humans could breathe. 

Dani ran calculations, consulting Wheeljack for some of the fluid dynamics. Fimbria was creating something on the order of 800 km per hour winds, blowing the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale clean out of the water. Sub-sonic at this elevation, but Primus! The Greenhouse was definitely a sturdy structure, and Fimbria herself much stronger than she looked. As was whatever her gill-membranes were made of. 

_Actually she’s been doing this for about a month and a half,_ Wheeljack tight-beamed. _We got the selective-permeables up first, built the hard structure around ‘em. Today’s the last day, just topping it off._

_Showoffs, the lot of you,_ Dani said.

 _Guilty as charged,_ Wheeljack replied merrily. _We’re checking for leaks, but don’t tell Grapple. He’d be offended._

_I’m sure it’ll be fine. You guys build space ships._

_Some of us_ are _space ships._

_That too._

Song complete, Fimbria gathered her membranes, retracting them into her body. Her chameleon mesh and armor changed colors, rippling like a cuttlefish, as her body reconfigured from the loss of oxygen and the acquisition of various other gases. She made a beckoning, welcoming gesture, and lights shaped like twining vines and leaves glowed around the doorway, turned green, and the physical doors opened. 

“Sam, Mikaela?” Prime bowed slightly, extending a hand.

Arm in arm, the first two humans to befriend Prime and his team on Earth strolled through the peculiar shields into the Greenhouse. The robots and their other non-robot friends filed inside after them, marveling at the blue moons-light through the shaped diamond panes, rainbow-struck around the edges; at the vaulted roof far above; at the sweetly scented, moisture-laden air, as the oxygen-breathers doffed masks and helmets and peeled out of protective suits. Smooth, palely glowing paths wound around strangely contoured hollows, branching like art nouveau swirls to a handful of structures-in-progress. Heavy stone rhomboids in rich ochres and siennas and rust browns for the Homomdans. Lacy, transparent composite gazebos with arching, linked lattice pergolas hung with glass wind chimes for the Val’Nainnamoinnen. For Humans they built in stone and wood, familiar materials to remind them of home, but in a rounded, organic, modern style that was a mixture of many cultures and times so that all humans could lay some claim to it. Arched windows and double doors and enough room on the ground floor for the robots to come in without ducking; part palace, part apartment complex, part embassy.

No one wanted to stay in the empty rooms, though, because around the buildings the robots were filling the weird hollows with soil, creating swards and hills as if time compressed, and with their fingers gently planting wild leafy gardens, tucking sculptures here and there, to be discovered over time and sought out. Complex mobiles and splashy fountains for the Val’Na; dark, deep pools bubbling from sources far below for the Hom; playful statuary in marble and bronze for Humans. Some commissioned from each species, some created by Sunstreaker and Oratorio. 

“It’s beautiful,” Mikaela murmured, climbing Ratchet for a wider view. “Beautiful…”

Giddy, Fimbria staggered at Kaibab and Avalanche, jumping them around in circles, even the dour Avalanche grinning and laughing. “Oh! Oh, that was fun! Let’s build another one!” Once her head had cleared somewhat, Fimbria veered away, her body flush with new molecules, scampering off to be kissed and caressed by her doting Prime. (Maggie added Fimbria to her private “Gonna Tap That When I’m A Robot” list.)

“Cybertronians,” said a Homomdan named Naha, crinkling the upper fifth of nir edges in a gesture of secondhand embarrassment. Ne was only 400 years old, a relative youngster. 

“Gently,” said Ar Me-Ra iNslipear, the new Homomdan Ambassador to Cybertron. Of all the species of machine-life in the Local Group of galaxies, Cybertronians were unarguably the snuggliest. The Hom themselves, despite being organics, did not go in much for physical affection, and so found it doubly strange in robots. Ar Me-Ra, like Ar Be-Ka before nir, not only tolerated it well but actually found it charming. 

“But…out in the open? Think of the humans!” Cybertronian influence over such a young, aggressive species couldn’t be an entirely good idea.

“Humans engage in Public Affection Displays as well,” said Elder Galallalanellia. “It is perhaps fortunate that the Allspark fetched up on Earth. The two species have quite a lot in common.”

“Hmmm,” said Optimus.

Mikaela side-eyed him. Hard. His fields had gone all whirly and contemplative. She was going to make him explain that “Hmmm” later.

There were Kuppies in the pools and streams, Libbies and solar spiders in the trees. The Libbies had been upgraded to sing, for humans would miss that, no matter how otherwise beautiful the forest. 

Like a bright-eyed sun deity, Fireflight came up from the underhill tunnels, bearing aloft a large, honey-colored, translucent globe. In the center of the Greenhouse he opened it, petals folding back, and out flew thousands of fireflies, winking and flashing as they spread through the gardens. 

“You…you’re going to end up with a new species of firefly,” Sam protested. “You guys know that, right?”

“Of course we are,” Perceptor said, pleased. “Imagine! _Pyractomena angulata cybertronens_!” There were other insects, too, chosen carefully; Worms and Botanica had taken delight in designing the ecosystem, which they would carefully monitor and adjust if necessary, and the Libbies, solar spiders and Kuppies could be programmed to “eat” things whose numbers were threatening to get out of hand. 

“But…” Sam began. Dani put a hand on his arm and grinned at him.

“Not gonna win this one, Dad.” She was pretty sure Perceptor and the others knew what they were doing. Humans may have fragged up introducing foreign species every single time they’d done it, but the robots ran sims and thought about things on so many layers at once. They were _careful_. And this was the ultimate closed system.

“To the plaza!” Optimus called, when the moment was right, transmitting through the cloud mind also. The Greenhouse emptied of robots. Mist screens descended from the ceiling, showing the new city’s central circle, so that the organics could watch without having to brave the outside.

Between the Greenhouse and the plaza, to one side of the expansive road, was the first new basking dish. Cybertron had once been dotted with them; broad parabolic bowls from nine to a hundred meters in diameter. (The Great Dish in Iacon had been a kilometer wide.) This one had gone in early, surfaced in what looked like brushed aluminum, though of some much tougher material, fifty meters in diameter – big enough to accommodate Sky-Lynx. Kup had claimed the sweet spot down at the bottom the moment it had been finished, and spent as much time there as he could get away with, despite Roddy’s jealous protests. 

“There’s the geezer roast now,” Hot Rod said as they passed him.

“Old man in a pan!” Cliffjumper said.

 _Kup-o-noodles!_ Sam offered from indoors.

 _I’m glad you’re all having so much fun,_ Kup muttered, giving Ironhide a warning glare as Ironhide paused at the lip of the dish, considering. Ratchet grabbed Hide’s arm and dragged him along. Kup bestirred himself and scrambled up to join them, though. If there was dancing to be had, he wanted a part in it!

Under their ancient moons and new constellations they gathered, forming concentric circles, engines and voices casting a low, multi-tonal hum into the thin, cold air. Vector knelt alone in the center, a small, begrudged space around him. Firstforged, he danced the beginning. 

The Allspark had made them, the first Thirteen, brought them to life, first matter in this universe to think, to wonder about itself; and they had crawled from crackling seams in the ground that the Allspark had also made. They crawled up and it was night, so that the first things they saw, aside from each other and the Allspark behind them on its stalk, were the young stars, only just learning to be a galaxy. 

More people rose from the interstices of the world, from the iron-rich, metal-rich ground, pushed upward from below like complex bubbles, light inside each. More rose and rose, and the foci, the lighthouse Primes, were nudged apart. (Optimus moaned, stricken, and those nearest caressed him and warbled softly to soothe him.) Tallest, the Primes gazed at each other in longing, though surrounded by love and devotion. 

Hives developed, infolding, growing in social complexity as bodies grew into specializations. Then…some of those specializations could _fly_. The stars had been their first unrequited love, calling to them with faint but beautiful voices. How could they not learn to rise to seek them? (The six deltas rose on their AG drives, arms stretched upward.) And for long and long the star-voices were the only ones who spoke back to them in the young universe.

The dance grew, as their civilization had, slow and measured, expanding, then contracting when the space between individuals became too great, their numbers now set at the three billion the Allspark would maintain. Waves lapping the limits of the circle. 

And then, at one edge, something changed. Cygnet, the smallest of the Waterbabies, stood alone, peering at the rest, both fear and curiosity in her pose. One near her, Bumblebee, reached out a tentative fingertip, touch and recoil and touch again, now with open palm. At last there was other life, singing across the vastness! The ripple of change went through them, movements swinging from one horizon to the other, and the dancers spun off into little clumps, each reacting to this new knowledge in their own ways.

Time passed, the galaxy spun. There was a flash and thunder – sound and light from Jazz – and they did not cower at first, but reached out in welcome, only to fall – so many – until the few left standing were taken and numbered and packaged and sold. The Quintessons had come. Rebellion rose in noise and fury, and Cybertron changed, forever turned now to preparations for war, even in intervals of peace. Primes were paired with Lord Protectors, and the Allspark grew warm with new life, to replace the many who had been lost.

Outward again they turned their faces and their curiosity, stretching to expand their defended borders, to find safety in empire, to settle colonies so that one planet, taken, would never reduce them to the edge of extinction.

And peace they had, age upon age, till few were left whose bodies had been scarred and repaired, though the memories propagated and were tended carefully. Aliens, organic life, were allies, trusted friends, partners in grand endeavors, and Cybertronians changed, adapted, learned each new way of being as their inherent adeptness encouraged them to do. They knew they were giants to most, they knew their metal bodies were strange, they learned the limits of smaller, watery life and were careful. Love between minds crossed lines. 

A new species arose in M100. Large for organics, tough, fast, and predator-smart, keenly honing themselves and their biotechnology at a pace rarely seen. They flew living ships into the void and were proud of their accomplishments. They met other spacefarers with great willingness to trade ideas, taking in every new innovation in medicine and genetics, but it was only after hundreds of years that any discovered the Penstirachtatoriafelexian’s great horror. They too had nearly faced extinction; the colonies within their own solar system alone had saved them. But their homeworld was gone, eaten. By a rapacious swarm of tiny machines. 

Cybertronians they did not like at all. 

Wave after wave the Penstir came, great fleets defeated, peace bargained for, then wave upon wave again. The Penstir reproduced fast. The Cybertronians maintained their set numbers. 

At last, Volant Prime and her Lord Protector, Alpha Trion, achieved what they thought was a final triumph. The Penstir were driven far from the reaches of the Cybertronian Empire, their culture driven, so was thought, back into the depths of their own history, never to climb to equal heights. 

Sam explained quietly to Ar Be-Ka as they watched, side by side. Each movement and flux of fields and the music of their voices even without glyphs evoked clouds of meaning, but it was clear to non-Cybertronian eyes only if one already understood the story. 

“How do you know this?” Be-Ka murmured. 

“Optimus told me some of it. Bee. I mean, it was just bits and pieces. Then Rewind came along— came to Earth, and he’s a big history nut. He’s the one who put it into perspective, all in the right order and stuff.”

Be-Ka shifted slightly on nir platform. “Samuel, please understand, Cybertronians have been very secretive about many things, including much of their history – especially their origins, aside from their claim of first life. To have imparted this to you, after so brief an acquaintance…”

“Uh…” Sam thought fast. “Ambassador, they…they thought they were dying. Dying out, right? When they came to my planet.” That was still weird to say. My planet. The implication that there was more than one that a person might belong to. “I think they’ve wanted us to understand how all this happened, especially the war, considering we got caught in the middle of it.”

“Oh indeed, indeed. I am simply astonished. I trust the dance is being recorded…I must ask dear Optimusa’s permission to relay this further information to interested parties amongst the academic community.” 

…

Cyclonus flew down from orbit by himself, past the figurative raised eyebrows of the Homomdans and the Val’Nainnamoinnen. The Ishlorsinami were impassive, neutral as always. He disregarded them. They would do nothing. They would only make their impartial reports. Strika and Turmoil were following in Strika’s shuttle. 

Seekerbane’s mad scheme had succeeded. Cybertron gleamed in the light of another sun. And in the intervening quartexes – Cyclonus and the others having to take the “long” way – the Autobots had begun constructing a new base. No, a new city. (Starscream had, predictably, ensconced himself in Vos. Cyclonus wondered idly whether the Air Commander had had explicit orders for that, or had interpreted things creatively.) And at the center of the little Autobot city, they were dancing. 

Cyclonus felt the pull. He could deny it if he chose. Yet, the brave newspark had shown them the way, as new people often did. New people like the three hundred that had been under the charge of Mez, until the Autobots had taken him in what had been a very strange attack. Dreadwing had them now, Galvatron having denied Cyclonus’ own request. 

“You would spend too much time asking them for prophecies and portents,” Galvatron had laughed. “Wisdom from the unkindled! Ha!” 

Cyclonus knew it would do no good to explain the misconception. Dreadwing was a good mech, honorable and intelligent. They would do well enough. 

_Truce,_ Cyclonus broadcast, knowing Red Alert would be listening.

 _You are cleared,_ Red Alert replied, appending cautionary glyphs and making no effort to conceal his unhappiness. Rude, but a swift reply. Prime must have anticipated their arrival. He landed on the indicated platform and transformed. 

Strika landed her shuttle in the same place as he vacated it, and she and Turmoil emerged. Turmoil cast an amused glance at the defensive turrets swinging to track them as they walked toward the central plaza. They passed jagged, unfinished spines of newly-begun buildings, surrounded by cleared spaces that would become roads, the structure-shells growing taller and more complete as they approached the city’s center. No one style, historical or modern (pre-war) predominated; the hab towers and communal spaces ranged from elegant simplicity to the wild grandeur of imaginations too long stifled by war and practical constraints. It should have been a clamorous, dissonant mess, yet it was not. The colors and materials blended, the arrangement of each structure in balance with those around it. 

To the west, between the plaza and the energy-vane-covered hill, flanked by shield towers, rose a set of immense, glittering, petalled domes, beautiful under starlight and the warm glows from within. A pity it was full of wet, grubby organics pressing their wet, grubby faces against the panes, despite the obvious presence of perfectly visible mist screens. It was in front of the dome assemblage, in a great circular plaza, that the Autobots were dancing.

Optimus was well-submerged in movement and complex emotional weaving, but he angled glyphs of welcome to the three generals, and to Obsidian, alert on Strika’s shoulder. **Dance with us, if you wish,** he said. But it was the larger mech beside him in the center that drew and held Cyclonus’ attention.

“Firstforged,” Strika said, and that was truth.

“Whatever,” muttered Turmoil. “It’s been seen on Chaar, fighting alongside Autobots.”

“And speaking with Shockwave,” Cyclonus said quietly. 

…

The last remnant of the Penstirachtatoriafelexians resurged, bolstered by covert aid, and were defeated again, but Megatron – a ghostly holo projected by Hound – began to change, becoming resentful and angry.

…

“Autobot propaganda,” Turmoil said.

“The truth as they see it,” said Cyclonus. “Which can be instructive.” 

…

They danced their civil war: disbelief, ages of faith shaken and destroyed, their population decimated, their sun extinguished, the Allspark deliberately lost. Optimus danced the call of the Allspark, and the long search, ending on a small blue world, now nearby. Jazz obligingly sank to the ground, motionless, optics off. Optimus’ fields flew wild with grief, meshing with Ratchet’s, Ironhide’s and Bumblebee’s, a grief they had not been free to show otherwise at the time. (Ranger and Rain keened, but lowly, knowing their parts were yet to come.) Optimus, quietly desperate, danced the merging of his spark with the shard, and Jazz rose, whole and alive again. The Graveyard Legion hummed. 

Borealis, Oratorio and Rutile danced the beginning of the wave of newsparks, though nothing in their movements or fields proclaimed their true origin. Atrandom, Countermeasure, Nightbeat, Blurr, the Protectobots, Blaster, joined by the tide of Waterbabies; every one wanted and welcomed and free to veer in whatever direction their curiosities and desires took them. Hound projected a silhouette of Metroplex around them, and Sky Lynx leapt to fly above, rolling and gyring in a boastful display until Silverbolt reached up to tweak his tail.

The circle of dancers wheeled; a great whorl of the planet-moving, and everyone flashed sunlight-colored chameleon mesh, brightest in the center, rippling outward, bouncing back from the outer ring, until with a final, jubilant shout, they leapt upward, arms outstretched, seeming to hover for a moment before surrendering to the gravity of their homeworld.

An ancient, traditional form then unfolded, shared from Mirage’s and Kup’s memories, following a set pattern of abstract shapes. The music from many speakers grew quieter, giving way to percussive slapping of their own and each other’s armor, and stomping of feet. 

Strika dove in with a low cry. She would not be denied, and Obsidian sleeked himself down over her back so as not to hinder her movements. She was soon surrounded by admiring Waterbabies. Cyclonus waded in, watching for a particular place, a particular face to come around, so that he could plot his course toward it.

Turmoil rubbed his mid-helm ridge. Clenched his fists, looked up at the stars. The complex, syncopated beat of the body-drumming seemed to pound through his armor, throbbing in his protoform, altering the spin of his spark. He vented hotly, then stepped into the pattern, compelled at last by naked, native joy and beauty. He aimed himself at Drift, but was intercepted, turned about, distracted by five newsparks. 

_Afterburner,_ one of the five tight-beamed. They were a gestalt, said the accessory glyphs, and they wanted to make sure Turmoil knew it. _Scattershot. Nosecone. Lightspeed. Strafe._ They surrounded him, moving in perfect synchrony with him as though letting him into the periphery of the gestalt link. They had flight-capable alts, engines powerful and fast, roaring in his audials beneath the drumming, rousing him as the end-state of this dance was meant to. Subtle as a kick to the helm. But the hands brushing his waist, his hips, the insides of his arms, felt soothing, curious, welcoming. 

From the center, Vector and Optimus unleashed fields and seismic rumbles, smoothing the pattern even as the energies were pulled higher, static beginning to arc off fingertips and sharp points of armor. Strika made a channel with her sheer presence, making for the center, opposite Elita and Chromia – near planets but in separate orbits. Three mechs danced around her, veiling her in their fields. Gestalt, she thought. Or something. Obsidian rustled on her shoulder. They were beautiful. Newsparks, Cyclonus would call them; his information tagged them as less than a vorn old. One lean and lithe, fast, blade-edged and bright. One more the typical _she_ build; tall and strong, symmetrical and balanced. The third larger and heavy like herself, built to stand up under great burdens, to bear armor and a weight of knowledge that would buckle a weaker frame. 

_General,_ they said, closing in as the pattern dictated, keeping only politeness distance. Strika suppressed a shiver, recognizing something in the harmonics of their voices. They must have been under Elita’s tutelage. They introduced themselves, using ancient formality, including Obsidian in their addressing glyphs. Skuld. Verthandi. Urthr. _We are called the Nornir. The Fates._

 _Human words,_ Strika said. Human concepts. Predestination was an idea held by a few cults now and then over Cybertron’s long history. Programming as destiny. Form as function. Chaos was a far more popular philosophy. She pulsed her fields, not so reserved as Cyclonus, inviting them closer.

 _Interesting that you recognize that right away,_ Skuld said, brushing spaulder to spaulder. _Most Decepticons don’t bother learning the languages of a planet they intend to destroy._

Strika laughed inwardly. They were testing her, these young little sparklets. How dare they, part of her thought. It is good, another part disagreed. There were layers to their question. She would not be provoked so easily into revelations the Prime could use. Her loyalties were not theirs to question. _Span of human knowledge is not so broad,_ she said. _Not so difficult to encompass._

The big one, Urthr, laughed at that, leaning nearer, sliding an arm along Strika’s, her form in the dancing perfect but the physical invitation plain. The Prime and the Firstforged were nearby, and their movements together were seducing the dance to its customary conclusion, raising the ambient temperature significantly. 

…

Ultra Magnus, well entwined with Metroplex's systems, smiled, watching – that interminable four second lag – and Scamper careened into the room to wind around his legs. 

“Coming up?” Magnus murmured. His arms were elbow-deep in the city’s jacks. Scamper scrambled up his body, wrapping arms around his neck, clamping legs across his chest. Head tilted for kissing, with Metroplex’s mind shining out of his optics. 

…

There was no field to warn Rutile, only the hot slide of a body against his, arms reaching, lifting his arms over his head, clawed hands moving slowly down his sides. He watched Prime there in the center, venting superheated air from his core, head thrown back with Vector's mouth on his neck, and everyone could feel them together, the Primes' fields untamed, flaring nova-bright as they opened their chests and sank into each other. 

Cyclonus' lips moved against the back of his helm. "Courageous spark. You are not trembling now." 

Rutile felt his fields bloom, but strove to pull them back. Wheeljack had explained about Tetrahexian politeness. It was rude to spray your emotional state all over the magnetosphere. Cyclonus splayed his hands over Rutile’s lower abdomen, moving only his fingertips, exploring between and beneath plates; curious, courteous, withdrawing instantly from an undesired touch. Rutile, arching, felt as though the fuel in his lines had gone cold – an interesting sensation when the rest of his body had grown so hot.

 _Hey, Ru,_ said Brawn, on a level of the cloud mind that was open to Autobots but probably still encrypted to the Decepticon generals among them. _Y’know what that black sword of his is? It’s a spark extractor! Suck the spark right outta yer chest. Doesn’t even have to pierce the chamber, just a main line. Sshhhloop! Out ya go like a light!_

 _Primus, Brawn,_ Rutile muttered. _Shut up! He doesn’t even have it with him!_

_Oooh!_ Borealis said, in a delta’s idea of a whisper. _Stormbringer!_

 _He’s not pale enough to be Elric,_ Rutile huffed. Cyclonus’ armor was near-ultraviolet, and would appear black to unaugmented human eyes. _Besides, if it really was such a thing, you’d think it would have worked better on Thunderwing._

 _Perceptor’s kid,_ Jazz laughed. 

Perceptor’s kid was already ignoring them, trailing fingertips down Cyclonus’ horns (hollow like bones, stronger for the hollowness; weapons, Rutile guessed, not sensory), tipping his head to one side to provide greater access to his neck cables, and the underside of his jaw. Cyclonus fanned hot gusts from his core vents through him, caressing cables and lines and fine-threaded nerve-wire, and the protomatter beneath, digging in his claws as Rutile gyred against him. From where they moved in the dance, Rutile could see Prowl shivering between Thundercracker and Strake, and the flash of sharp dentae. He could see Silverbolt twine with Skyfire, their great chests parting.

Rutile turned in Cyclonus’ arms, engine running high, fields blooming before he remembered to keep them close. He cupped Cyclonus’ helm, crimson eyes gazing down at him under the starry sky. Crimson eyes intent on his. He kissed the planes and hollows of that austere face; small, light kisses like Prowl gave, intending to draw another’s pleasure in slow, measured ways, but inquisitive and eager. Cyclonus was handsome, and interstellar-capable, and had chosen not to when he might have killed easily. Their lips brushed, a gentle tap, mouths opening like Rutile wanted their chests to open, to reveal the light within. 

Again he struggled to damp his fields, though the fierce, primordial lovemaking of the Primes encompassed the full diameter of the plaza. Maybe they should move to the field-shadow of one of the deltas, who were on the outside of the circle... Cyclonus laughed softly, a low, purring, thrilling sound that Rutile felt over the whole of his armor, deep into his chest. 

_Do not diminish yourself on my account,_ Cyclonus murmured. 

_But…_

_You have made an effort to be polite,_ Cyclonus said, drawing Rutile’s knee up his own thigh, palming the outer boss of the hinge. _To someone who by the lights of your elders is an enemy. I have flown long among those not from my city-state, I am not daunted._

 _Oh…_ They sank down, Cyclonus pushing between Rutile’s legs to bare the sensitive hip gimbal assemblies, kisses fierce and urgent, their hands strong on each other’s bodies, dentae retracted. Rutile kissed hard up under Cyclonus’ chin, and Cyclonus _shivered_ , vented sharply, claws digging in, and Rutile smiled, nibbling there, a small soft spot amid the jagged armor.

And then Cyclonus unleashed his fields.

Rutile shouted, arching off the pavement, heavy waves of charge pouring through his entire body, dancing under his armor, stroking his protoform and spark chamber with insubstantial tendrils, every part of him lit up like a gas giant’s aurora. Cyclonus’ fields caressed him like hands, drove through him like storms, rain-lashed and singing. Charge slipped their control, linked them, grounded, and they overloaded, Rutile clutching at the threads of consciousness as Red had taught him.

He unshuttered his optics to find Cyclonus offline, that grim, narrow face peaceful. Deadly Decepticon general, proud warrior, recharging with his head on Rutile’s chest. Ru eyed the horns, sharp enough to take optics out. 

A faint hum was all the warning given as Cyclonus rebooted, and Rutile felt that only because their bodies were pressed together. Optics lit, ruby and curious; and Rutile thought of Myanmar rubies, born of fire and marble and continents smashing together, not the red optics behind him on Enceladus. Cyclonus tightened his arms around him, rolling them over in a reflexive gesture to spare the smaller partner his weight (though Rutile outmassed the flier, and was, like Beachcomber, much stronger than his frame suggested), huffling a single, low, inquisitive rumble through his vents, nuzzling Rutile’s mouth. Ru grinned, and kissed back. He hoped there would be future opportunities to teach Cyclonus Red’s trick. 

Moonslight cast tourmaline rainbows as Vector extended his solar vanes. The watching Autobots braced themselves, securing a few more cables for good measure, preparing for critical mass. 

The Primes overloaded together, and beneath them the dance ground was shot through with beam trees. (Later, they would excavate down ten meters to replace the stone with special flooring capable of absorbing both the physical shocks and colossal grounding charges. Later yet, Beachcomber would contrive deep and subtle scans, and find the entire area beneath the new floor permeated with wire-thin fulgurites.) They overloaded together and took everyone on the dance ground with them.

Vector settled onto Optimus with a basso profundo purr, vanes stretching to full extension then furling into his flanks. The embodiment not of time but of smugness. 

_Borealis?_ Silverbolt, draped over Skyfire, tight-beamed.

 _Mmya?_ She was kind of sprawled, cuddling a lot of people, smooching with Hoist at that moment. Thundercracker had a very distracting hand on her foot. 

_Are you all right? With the, uh…mass Prime overload, I mean?_

_…Nng. That was kind of an area effect,_ she said. (Silverbolt’s wings bobbed in suppressed laughter.) _So, not really aimed at me particularly. And it was two-thirds Vector anyway. Mmmm. Vector…_

A joule of tension zipped through Cyclonus’ body, and Rutile smiled. Prowl was singing; a lullaby to soothe those who wished or needed to recharge, there in the plaza surrounded and immersed in a few hundred other fields and bodies. Ru lifted his head from Cyclonus’ chest, watching crimson eyes widen, feeling the sharp pin-pricks of Cyclonus’ claws. 

_When Prowl first came to Earth,_ Ru explained, transmitting quietly to not obscure the song, _when the memories of what he had done during the war became overwhelming, Prowl would go out into the canyons and scream. That was better than damaging himself in other ways, Prime hoped. So Prowl screamed his voice to ruin. But over the years of self-repair, and nearness to the Allspark, and Ratchet’s care, Prowl’s voice changed._ He wriggled a little, making Cyclonus hold him tighter. _Now when he sings it’s… it’s like this._ Clutch and flare, like fireflies winking, as people overloaded here and there across the dance circle.

 _Do you share first memories, after?_ Rutile asked, snuggling back down. Cyclonus was warm and the breeze was turning chilly. They were still cabled together, though the links had subsided to a low baseline hum. _We do, but it’s okay if you don’t._

 _We do not share_ first _memories,_ Cyclonus said, attendant glyphs indicating that was for more developed relationships, not first joinings. _But there is a memory I wish to share with you._

Rutile opened another firewall, trusting, his head resting on Cyclonus’ shoulder. Most of this was not Cyclonus’ direct memory. Some was Megatron’s, and that sat oddly in Rutile’s processor. Much of it was from the debriefing of all the generals, later, but it had been pieced together almost as seamlessly as one of Hound’s productions. Rutile slipped into the seeming, fascinated by a Cybertron he had never seen.

~~:8.9 million years ago:~~

“They asked for you to attend as well,” Optimus Prime was saying. “If you’d rather not I can make up some excuse. It’s going to be reasonably boring.” Optimus and Megatron walked arm-in-arm over a polished skybridge, flanked a step behind by Ultra Magnus and Jazz. Sunlight shimmered on the spires and swooping roadways of Iacon. The deep blue sky teemed with traffic. People went about their day on feet or wings or wheels or treads or hover-pods. This far up, though, the loudest sound was wind through the decorative fluting of the buildings ahead and behind. 

“How many more times can you cover for my disinterest without imperiling the trade agreement?” Megatron asked, his smile rueful. “I know I should go. If for no other reason than to keep you from giving them half the thorium production for nothing.”

“We do pull far more out of those asteroids than we use.” Optimus bumped his twin’s shoulder. “The Fegires’ own sense of obligation would put them socially in our debt for three of their generations.”

Megatron huffed through his vents, amused. “That is a lot of thorium, though. What if the brains in Xenon or Argon think of a new, important use for it?”

“Then we’ll…” 

Megatron turned, breaking contact, and stared intently through the sky, Ultra Magnus following his line of sight. 

“What is it?” Optimus caught the flicker of unease through their bond.

They saw the glitter of alien ships before the screaming roar of atmospheric-piercing engines reached them. Long rays of light lashed out, touching buildings, air transports, and people in vehicle mode, and where the rays touched blooms of plasma expanded like tiny suns.

“Get him below!” Megatron shouted at Jazz, as he and Ultra Magnus transformed; Megatron flying to engage the ships directly, Ultra heading for the lift behind them with a screech of heavy tires. The city’s automatic defenses were already online and firing back, and this seemed to be an aerial assault, but Ultra Magnus would coordinate damage suppression teams as well as prepare ground troops in case the aliens managed to land.

“Come on!” Jazz tugged at Optimus’ hand.

“But…” Optimus watched the whirling mote of silver amid the densest snarl of alien ships. Without thinking, he interposed his larger body between the fighting and Jazz, but Jazz climbed him, flung one arm – and his shield-gun – across Optimus’ chest—

 _IMPACTshock **PAIN!**_ blazed through the bond, and Megatron veered, slewing around in time to see Optimus stagger; vaporized metal, molten alloy and bright energon pouring from the hole where the bottom half of his face had been. 

_No…_

**Pull yourself together, Optimus,** Volant and the other Primes told him from within the Matrix. **You are damaged, not dying. Your distress impedes your Protector.** Optimus stumbled, blinded by smoke, but he let Jazz lead him inside, then down and down, to a subsurface level where they were met by a medical team and the Primal Guard.

Above, Megatron fought, joined by Cyclonus and his Aile, the Sweeps, every alpha and beta Seeker in Iacon, and Iacon’s Century Guardian, who became a dreadnaught-class battleship. 

Later.

“Let him through,” Pharma said. “The adjacent suite is prepared. My lord, please go directly in and remain there until your own wounds can be properly tended. I have delicate work to do yet, and you wouldn’t want to contaminate _his_ injuries now would you? Of course not.”

The sterile field between the room Megatron – dripping sparks and energon, trailing smoke, reeking of hot metal and plasma discharge – entered could be seen but not passed through. Optimus lay on the repair table, unconscious, while Pharma worked. Lathe and Remedy, second only to Pharma in skill, treated Megatron’s injuries. Megatron felt none of it. His optics, thoughts, entire being focused on his twin lying in medical stasis. Pharma’s torso obscured the damaged area, but Megatron’s spark spun irregularly, discontented. Too clear was the image of Optimus suffering under a direct hit. His twin was alive, he could feel that and little else, alone and separate, and he didn’t like it. 

“Just finishing the debridement,” Pharma said. “You can let Lord Megatron in here if you’re done with him.” He inclined his pauldrons to indicate a bow, continuing to work as the Lord Protector approached. “It was those filthy organics, I hear,” he said quietly. “They dared assault our Prime. Dared taint our atmosphere with their primitive vessels.”

“We will teach them not to trespass in Cybertronian space,” Megatron said, his tone neutral. “If we have not already.” 

“Oh, no doubt, my lord, no doubt. Aaaand…up we come. There, my Prime, gently, gently. Mostly cosmetic damage, nothing to worry about, yes you may sit up.”

“Nnnnnn...” Optimus’ vocoder whirred, ineffectual. **Mm? Meg?**

“I’m right here,” Megatron said, sitting next to his twin and helping him swing his legs over the side. Pharma hastily got out of the way, but Jazz stayed where he was, miserably huddled at the foot of the table.

“My deepest apologies, My lord,” Jazz said. “I tried to…” But there was no excuse. Jazz was physically strong enough to drag Optimus’ unconscious body if necessary, or could in theory lift the mere 4 tons above his head, but the Prime’s lanky form was unwieldy for a much smaller mech, and Optimus had been conscious. And obstinate.

“There is nothing to forgive,” Megatron said, cupping the small helm, one thumb stroking an upswept audial. “I saw. You protected his spark first.”

 **Better that than my mouth, eh?** Optimus said. 

“Quiet, you. I am speaking with your Jazz.”

Optimus wriggled on the edge of the table, hands obediently in lap, swinging his feet. Megatron fought to master the urge to kiss him. 

_What did you give him?_ he tight-beamed to Pharma.

 _I? Nothing. Largely, it is his own good humor. Although Primes do tend to have peculiar workarounds. No doubt the Matrix grants him some sort of… analgesic wisdom. Difficult to detect…_ Pharma desired greatly to study that, and many other things regarding the Prime, but one did not medically experiment upon the ruling dyad.

“We shall, however,” Megatron said, continuing with Jazz, “need to teach you more advanced techniques for, hm…motivating…recalcitrant mechanisms who significantly outmass you.”

Jazz went from penitent to delighted in 0.3 astroseconds.

 **I am not recalcitrant,** Optimus said, staring at the way his lateral pedal stabilizers moved. As if of their own volition!

“You are,” Megatron said. “Among worse traits. When things are exploding, you are to run _away_ , not stand there like a lump in a smelter!”

 **I am not lumpy.** Optimus didn’t giggle, but only just.

Jazz snerked. “How long until lumpy here gets kissable again?”

“Infusion is building replacement parts.” Megatron’s smile turned lopsided. “With an addition.”

**Oh? What is it, rivets to keep my mouth shut?**

“You have no mouth at all at the moment and yet you keep interrupting me. What good would rivets do?” 

Optimus twinkled at him with just his optics. 

“Hn. If you’re feeling that chipper, I’ll leave you in the hands of thy physicians. I have not yet received a preliminary report from anyone but Ultra Magnus, and Novawind I have not heard from at all, which worries me.”

 **Go, brother,** Optimus said, taking Megatron’s hands and squeezing them before releasing them again and making a shooing motion. **I’m fine!**

Megatron pressed his helm to Optimus’. Optimus who couldn’t speak aloud, not properly. Optimus who could not _eat_. Who was _not_ fine. But Megatron had a duty to their people too. 

The military command hub.

All inputs led here. All inputs were collected, collated, sifted, analyzed by Soundwave. Megatron strode to the central holo display as Soundwave projected the attack. He felt a Seeker enter behind him.

“Report,” Megatron said, without turning.

“My lord—”

Not the voice he expected. He held up a hand, cocked a glance over his shoulder. “Lieutenant. Where is Novawind?”

“Novawind and Saberfall are dead, my lord,” Starscream said, visibly shaken but professional. “They were on the perimeter where the Penstir fleet breached our surveillance net. Saberfall got a burst transmission through before he …was destroyed. We would have had no warning at all…”

Megatron sat down. His Command Trine, lost. Dear friends, sparks extinguished forever. Voices he would never hear, hands he would never touch again except in memory. He felt as though his own spark had dimmed, slowed, grown cold.

“Thundercracker is—” Starscream began, hesitant.

“Still in CR from wounds received during the last incursion, I know.” Some hope salvaged from this mess, but a cruel fate for one so faithful. Once they got him out of CR, how would they keep Thundercracker from killing himself? “Very well, Starscream. Proceed.”

It had been a swift, massive strike, employing new sensor-jamming technology that Radon University was already anxious to disassemble. Cybertronian casualties numbered in the hundreds, with five mortalities. None of the Penstirachtatoriafelexian vessels had been allowed to escape, and Ultra Magnus’ people had ensured that any environmental suits worn by Penstir soldiers that reached the planet’s surface did not remain intact for long. 100 percent mortality. 

Megatron nodded. “Very well. We will prepare a counterattack. No-one is to move without my express order.”

“Yes, my lord.” Starscream snapped to attention, and he commed the instructions to the proper command staff, but he did not leave immediately. Megatron lifted an orbital ridge.

“Was there something else?”

“My lord, if I may. Regarding Thundercracker?”

“Yes?”

“I…I would trine with him, if you and he agree.”

“Indeed? And who will be your third? I assume you have that planned as well.”

“We have taken losses, my lord. Will not the Allspark provide?”

“It should,” Megatron said. “I take it you petition for a third, in that case?”

“I do, sir. I have admired Thundercracker for vorns. I have no wish to see him deactivate.”

And place yourself neatly in the Command Trine, Megatron thought. But Starscream was that already, by default, with all they had lost. 

Later.

“There. You should feel the command string settle in? Yes, good. Retract for me? And now extend. Excellent!” Pharma withdrew his monitoring cable and nodded the suggestion of a bow. 

“Very authoritative,” Megatron said, pleased. The face shield was sharply keeled, to direct both solid and energy ordnance outward. There was enough blue in the lateral sections to blend harmoniously with the rest of Optimus’ helm, as though the mask had been part of the design all along, and the glyphs had been incised with Infusion’s typical artistic beauty and precision. 

Optimus retracted the mask again. “I can’t communicate effectively with people with half my face covered up.”

“You don’t have to wear it all the time,” Megatron soothed. “But until this Penstir business is finished, I want you to have it activated at the first sign of trouble.”

“Meg—”

“Please, Ops. Please. Promise me you’ll at least take this small step to keep yourself safe. Deepforge tells me you haven’t sparred in voors…”

“I don’t—”

“Just _spar_. You’re good at dual-wielding – those hyper-threaded processors of yours – it won’t hurt to…don’t frown so! I’ll spar with you myself. We’ll arrange something.”

Jazz brightened, and Megatron crooked half a grin at him. Jazz would line up a crowd of spectators eager to watch their Lord Protector and their Prime interact, even if it was to engage in a little friendly weapons practice. 

And no doubt they could arrange to have time for a different kind of practice, afterward. Later. Megatron steeled himself, ordering his thoughts.

_Optimus. I’m…I am afraid our victory this day did not come without cost._

Optimus bowed his head to his twin’s shoulder. Shuttered his optics. **Who?**

The list of injured was much longer, but Pharma was confident of their recovery. Megatron gave Optimus the list anyway; he would want to visit them all. Then, for his gentle-sparked, beloved twin, he must list the dead.

 _Coldweld. Backburner. Armorhide._ Worthy sparks, valiant warriors. Megatron paused before delivering the last two names. _Novawind and Saberfall._

**No… No…not both…** Optimus keened, curling around his twin. Megatron held him tight and relayed Saberfall’s last heroic act. 

“What about…?” Optimus whispered.

“Thundercracker is still in stasis…”

“He will blame himself. We must do something—”

“Yes. Starscream has volunteered to trine with him, but they will need—”

“A third. Have you—?”

“There do not appear to be suitable candidates at this time, but perhaps—”

“The Allspark. Yes. I’ll go myself. Now. If you—?”

“Yes, Ops. Yes.” Megatron kissed him tenderly, fiercely. How could any mouth be as wondrous and fine as Optimus’ original? And yet the new one was even sweeter.

~~:present:~~

Rutile gave a soft, single keen. It wouldn’t do to make anyone around them think Cyclonus was distressing him. _They loved each other so much! How… what went so wrong?_

 _There is, I think, no one alive now who has not asked that question._ Cyclonus held him tight and stroked his helm. _We have many answers. Or none. We have only to deal with things as they are now. Their love has nearly extinguished us as a species._

 _Love is saving us, now,_ Ru said, sure of it. It wasn’t the love between the ruling twins that had killed so many, but a twisting, a malformation of intentions, spurred by love at first, but transmuted. Gold into lead.

_Perhaps it is._

_My turn, then?_

_If you wish._

_Once upon a time, 60 years ago…_ Rutile said, and passed over a carefully edited memory.

~~:2024, July:~~

A gathering, a leap, selfness as incompletely distinct, consciousness as a function of the universe, a pale, liquid, blue-green glow in welcoming dimness, weight of atoms above below all moving. So much life nearby! Deep thrum of a world’s dynamo core. Joy through all the different kinds of waves! Comfort sought and found and a deciding flash of connection to so many things and a nearby life bright with recognition and making waves in atmosphere sound voice word noun _name_! Titanium dioxide, a brilliant white pigment, shining strands in quartz, the stars in star sapphires. 

Momentous but tiny movement, hands, a magnetic tube, then _splash!_ **sizzle!** and sinking down down in the warmsoft, and heavysoft coils spun closer, nesting, becoming, pleased, fading into a long sleepy twilight.

~~:present:~~

Cyclonus rebooted his optics and vocoder. “You,” he murmured finally, “you were spark-aware.” It was an old word, little changed in Tetrahexian dialect from ancient Cybertronian. 

“Is that what it was?” Rutile smiled. He’d been so happy to come into being there between Perceptor and Beachcomber under the mountain, with _Noctiluca scintillans_ the lantern guiding him into the mortal realm. He couldn’t explain that to Cyclonus, but Cyclonus’ reaction was intriguing.

“Such a thing is very rare,” Cyclonus said. “Once in a lifespan perhaps, the Allspark would provide a spark that had not been asked for, prepared for. The scientist-priests had rudimentary frames in temple storage in the event a spark and the body prepared for it were incompatible, so the rare wanderer sparks could be given homes, but once housed the spark often forgot the brief time between ignition and chamber-closing.”

“I’m glad the temple priests had contingency plans!” Rutile grinned. 

“Indeed.” Cyclonus stroked his face, bent his head to kiss him lightly. “Your construction seemed unusual. Was that a CR tank?”

Rutile chirped a fast query to Prime, who was being thoroughly distracted by Elita and Vector, but might still have the cycles to answer. 

**Explain that much.** Two glyphs, plus harmonics indicating “and no more than that.” Good enough.

“We didn’t have, well, the kind of resources Ratchet would have liked, when Borealis was built. So, yes, they jury-rigged a CR unit, and Prime donated protomass, adding more as she grew. I know it’s backwards from the way it used to be done, but everyone gets to spend a couple of years deciding what they want to be, pick a name, that sort of thing.” 

“A reasonable adjustment, given the circumstances.”

“We like it. Some of us have even taken on extinct frametypes. Skylark and Azalea are rho-subclass Seekers.”

Cyclonus propped himself on one elbow, scanning, and Rutile pointed him in the right direction. Skylark and Azalea waved shyly.

 _They attempt to correct their own mistakes,_ Strika tight-beamed from across the circle. _As well as ours._

 _It seems so,_ Cyclonus replied, hesitant to add more. The involvement with humans was difficult to accept. It felt wrong, and worse, appallingly dangerous. Whatever diplomatic bonds Optimus Prime thought he had forged, the humans would betray them. It was the nature of organics. 

…

Alpha Centauri B rose, casting long violet shadows, bathing the new city in pink-gold. Every Cybertronian stopped, and watched, many standing, as the sun rose. Every Cybertronian quieted their thoughts as their ancient world spun, and sunlight gleamed on their armor, warming them. Dawn brought pause, and as the morning progressed, contemplation. They remained on the dancing ground, entwined, settling back into affectionate clumps, enjoying the heat on their metal.

The three generals approached from separate directions, aiming for the center, for the Primes. Autobots watched them, some growling, dentae bared, but let them pass. The Primes watched them; Firstforged unreadable, Optimus more curious than anything else and not inclined to hide it. Cyclonus tried to ignore Rutile trailing close behind him, anxious and even more curious than Optimus. Seekerbane was sitting up, with targeting for his light cannon active, though the cannon itself remained unpowered. There had been truces made over the course of the war, honorably kept on the generals’ side. The Autobots had betrayed them, operating on the maxim never fight fair when you are fighting for your life. The Decepticons could afford to be chivalrous. 

Louder growls and sharpened dentae were bared from the knot of Constructicons intertwined with Autobots. Strika and Cyclonus ignored them. Turmoil had been the one to inform Lord Galvatron of the gestalt’s altered allegiance, though he had done so via transmission from the _Flay_ , well outside immediate grabbing and mauling distance. 

A particular handful of Autobots watched Turmoil, and he returned their regard thoughtfully. Seaspray, Hound, Atrandom, Smokescreen, Beachcomber. They had freed him from Kalis, and had let him go when he was weak, rather than attempt to capture or kill him. Prudence or mercy? Either way, he hadn’t forgotten. He didn’t like the connection, refused to think of it as a debt. After all, in return he hadn’t killed any of them; what else did they want? But he hadn’t forgotten.

“Strika. Cyclonus. Turmoil.” Names, no titles, and Optimus’ harmonics neutral, subharmonics formal and courteous, slightly archaic in respect to Strika and Cyclonus’ origin city-states. 

“Where is Ultra Magnus?” This was not the question Cyclonus had meant to ask first, but it could be of military importance, so he let it pass through his vocoder. He struggled to avoid the Firstforged’s optics, deep aquamarine at the moment. Once caught in the ancient’s gaze he feared he would be lost.

Optimus wondered whether this was a strategic or a personal question. He decided to answer as though it was the latter. “He remains on Earth, with Metroplex.”

“Your cityformer.”

“Yes.”

“Then it is unlikely I shall meet him again, outside the Allspark.”

“Perhaps,” Optimus said amiably. Strika and Turmoil were too cagey to react perceptibly to the security breach. Prowl’s chevron twitched slightly, but that was the only outward sign that he was recalculating. Jazz’s visor flickered at him, and one corner of his mouth ticked upward. 

_Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus…?_ Rutile tight-beamed to Silverbolt, remembering Mars, and the two of them back-to-back on Thunderwing’s dorsal hull, trying to hack through the shields.

Silverbolt replied in kind, wry. _Yes. Before the war._

_I ship it!_

_Ru…_ Silverbolt stifled a laugh, hiding his face in Skyfire’s flank. Borealis’ fault. Or Maggie’s. Nerds.

…

Starscream lounged upon the Great Throne of Vos (never mind that the welds were hardly cooled), seething, though he gave no outward sign. How dare they, he thought. How dare they build alphas! Autobot alphas! Sickening. How dare they dance, as though Cybertron was theirs, uncontested, merely because they had moved it.

They should all die.

The simplicity of the thought bothered him. It was too straightforward. This compulsion toward wholesale slaughter was uncouth, no matter how enjoyable it was to watch the energon of his enemies spread in vast pools across the ground. No. The game had changed, denying it would be foolish. It was time to reassess and plan. Watch and wait. 

He watched the spysat feeds, bypassing the surveillance techs in the chamber below this. The Homomdans remained in orbit. Not a threat per se, but a complication easily avoided with a little patience. Three Decepticon battleships in low orbit was interesting. None of them had attempted to contact him, though Starscream remained second in command. A shuttle went down, following…a smaller form, Cyclonus. Down to the Autobot base, down to the dance. Very interesting. 

Strika he had never trusted. She had followed Megatron with no useful ambition. Blindly, unswervingly, as long as Megatron’s methods adhered to her ideas about what was best for Cybertron. Annoying. Turmoil had long walked a precarious line, cultivating his own connections among command staff. Also annoying. Cyclonus, though. Cyclonus was unambiguous, with antiquated religious beliefs, devoted to Megatron himself, and, to all appearances, to Galvatron, without qualm. Foolish. But disloyal? Consorting with Autobots? That was very strange, and Starscream did not like that lack of understanding. 

Watch. And wait. And be ready to strike, when the best opportunity presented itself.

…

“Is it true you feel every death?” Strika asked.

“And every new life.”

“Yet you have created newsparks and sent them into combat,” Cyclonus said. “Was this not Megatron’s intention?”

An enormous hand wrapped around Cyclonus’ entire body. 

“We each decide for ourselves,” Borealis said, transmitting a basic file of what it felt like to be shot down by Galvatron and crash in the Canadian Rockies. For good measure she added the compassion shown by a particular human at that time. “Can you honestly say Galvatron would let us choose?” People reached up to pat her hull where she leaned over them. Fraser Benison had recently passed away at the age of 94, his mindstate preserved in First Aid’s core, awaiting a custodian. Borealis released Cyclonus and curled back into her cuddle with Airazor and Jury and Smokescreen and Serenity and her trine and Rapid Run. 

Brilliant, Strika thought. Not only had Galvatron failed to kill this one when that had been his obvious intent, but his actions had stirred der to have derself rebuilt much larger and more powerful. Decepticon leadership paving their own way right to the smelter.

“Many of us pursue other interests,” Rutile said. “Many of us are civilians.” 

Cyclonus took his hand and held it, smiling into earnest blue optics. 

“ _You’re_ armed,” Turmoil said.

“But that’s not all I am,” Rutile answered pointedly. Turmoil flattened a glare at him, but Strika grinned. 

“We create new life so that our species does not extinguish,” Prime said, his harmonics and subharmonics around the “we” generalized. “We create new life to regain things we have lost. We create new life to rebuild not our empire but our civilization.” 

“Same thing,” Turmoil began.

“No,” Prime and Strika said together.

Turmoil looked at her, aware of the battleground shifting beneath his feet. Strika had clearly been doing her own recalculating. Who had done the most harm? Sending the Allspark into deep space was unforgivable, but necessity-born alliances could be forged without forgiveness. Had she ever forgiven Megatron for killing Cybertron’s native sun, Hadeen?

“We create new life for love.”

“Do you kill ours for love?” Turmoil asked. “The last 300 Galvatron made weren’t fragged up like the half-deads, but your Wreckers killed some of them anyway.”

“Yes, Tuya and Rhyolite,” Prime said sadly. “They await within. I gave orders that the newsparks were to be avoided, but in battle many unfortunate things happen regardless of plan. Also, Shockwave tortured Ash in the name of research, who was then placed among the half-deads and subsequently killed.” 

“They are…aware? Within the Allspark?” Cyclonus’ optics glowed like volcanic vents. Rutile wondered if Cyclonus had known before what had happened to Ash.

“Indeed they are; together they have maintained pattern coherence, and other patterns are helping them. They have not decided whether they wish to be re-embodied or to await their siblings in oneness.”

“Is it possible to communicate with those within?”

“Yes. Ask Thundercracker if you wish confirmation.”

“Oh frag.” TC sat up, rather reluctantly. Prowl kept a hand on his portside thigh, and Strake leaned against his back, shooting Cyclonus a wary glower around Thundercracker’s wing. Cyclonus lofted an orbital spar at them.

“It’s not…fun,” Thundercracker said. Should he warn Cyclonus that he’d wanted to kill himself directly after? Or let the solemn old tau figure that out on his own. 

“Your old trine didn’t want you back, eh?” Turmoil sneered. 

Thundercracker snarled, Strake hissed and flared. Prowl stood in front of TC with his doors fanned over TC’s chest, face expressionless.

“Primus, Turmoil,” Jazz snickered, “you really wanna torque Prowl off like that? Really?”

“Idiots,” Strika said. “Come, Cyclonus, will you venture it or no? If you do not, I shall.” 

“Very well,” Cyclonus said. “What must I do?”

Optimus disentangled himself from the Firstforged and took to one knee. “For your part, it will not be very different from the usual method of spark-sharing,” – Thundercracker sputtered – “…albeit more intense,” Prime added, smiling. 

Cyclonus stepped closer and lifted a hand. Slow, deliberate. Telegraphed. Optimus leaned slightly forward, tipped his head to the side as Cyclonus reached out his fingers to press the line of bright Allspark matter on the side of Prime’s neck. Recognition, warmth, joy, _welcome_! The singing of billions of sparks. Heat and light shuddered through him as ancient scars mended deep inside his body. Cyclonus staggered, his other hand falling unnoticed to Prime’s chest. Never had he felt the Allspark so _alive_ , so responsive to a simple touch. 

Prime extended an arm, not quite touching his waist, curled to catch him if need be. 

It _was_ the Allspark. Nothing Prime had done, could do, had altered the essential nature of the Cube. Cyclonus stared at his hand where it lay on Prime’s chest, where Thunderwing had pierced him. Thunderwing that Galvatron had made. Rutile that Prime had made. The contrast in the use of the Allspark was a clear signal, even hazed through the bitter smog of three million years of civil war. 

Armor parted, shifting to reveal the enormous chamber required to house a Prime spark and the Matrix. Deep, labyrinthine gouges radiated outward from the central seam.

“What—?” Cyclonus pressed his lip plates together. Strika, peering over his shoulder, hissed in consternation. 

“I would like very much to be able to tell you what caused that,” Prime purred. “But until then…” The scarred chamber opened, revealing a once-familiar star, limning Cyclonus’ face in blue-white light. 

Turmoil’s gun-arm twitched. He throttled that right back. Shooting Prime – he believed Cyclonus about what had happened on Mars – would do nothing but provoke the Autobots, and he was heavily outnumbered here. Strika rounded a glare at him, which he coolly returned. He didn’t like that reflex to fire first and think afterwards, either. When next he had some unencumbered time, perhaps he’d spend some of it examining his tactical coding.

Cyclonus placed his hands wide on Optimus’ shoulders. Optimus tipped his helm upward, bending back, opening his torso wide, struts and armor creaking. Blue energy crackled through him, his internal structures more bronze than steel, glowing with glyphs. It was taking Prime over, Cyclonus realized, seeing the progression. He was sure the bright line of Allspark-stuff on Optimus’ neck had not been there on Mars. What was that doing to him? What was it _like_? Cyclonus opened his chest, dignified, purposeful. In no way giving in to unseemly haste. 

(Rutile bit his fingers. Cyclonus’ spark shone deep tanzanite blue-violet, the spectra unusually clear.)

Cyclonus leaned forward, armor overlapping armor. Living spark to Allspark. Infalling – his consciousness honed to a point, as Prime’s awareness unfolded around him – a sensation of immanence perfused him, imminent boundary, overwhelming threshold, and he could feel his mind failing to understand what he perceived beyond it. No words, no context. He reveled in it without understanding; made miniscule by the surroundingness, yet at the same time his wings encompassed the universe…no, there were more; vast, bubbling strands of them…a fleeting glimpse of spaces his processor was not equipped to comprehend. 

_Cyclonus!_ A host of voices, patterns – sparks – not only Tuya and Ash and Rhyolite, but others long dead; old friends lost before the war, during the war, the Novawind/Saberfall meld; Flamecoil, the general who had commissioned Cyclonus’ construction during the reign of Volant Prime and Lord Trion, and who had encouraged him to pursue his interests in subjects other than military strategy and combat. They wafted fronds of joy through his spark, old connections born anew – rekindled – though he could feel their gentleness with him; an immensity of grace and emotion he could not encompass.

 _Thundercracker,_ sang Nova/Saber. _Love! Thundercracker always love!_

_I shall tell him,_ Cyclonus said gently, in awe. These two magnificent sparks had not been lessened, had not lost any part of themselves; had instead gained so much by subsuming themselves in each other and all around them. They were transcended, they were too far beyond him, beyond mortal, to easily communicate with his limited, living mind. They were too beautiful to “look” at directly. Thundercracker had done this, must have asked to contact these two, who were no longer two. Prime could re-embody the dead, but they had not been. 

What had Thundercracker done? Untrined for the second time, yet Thundercracker lived. What had _Prime_ done? 

_Loved him back to life,_ Beta told him. _Tethered him to Prowl and Strake. Three who need each other._

 _Beta?_ A formidable opponent. They had been nodding acquaintances before the war. Her pattern pulsed bright and strong, emerald green, wafting only the merest edge of what she had become against his spark.

 _Careful in here, Cyclonus,_ she said. _Fly too far and you won’t want to return._

 _He seems to have acquired at least one reason to return,_ said Flamecoil, red-sparked, amused. _Go back, Cyclonus. You will travel here all you wish, in time._ Cyclonus wanted to embrace him but this was not as much like spark-sharing as Prime had implied, and he did not know how to extend his corona in the ways he wanted to. It occurred to him that trying too determinedly might result in more than was intended. He withdrew, falling back, up, out, through the layers of Prime and the world of ordinary physics.

He had not doubted the words of the priests in the Deep Temple in Tetrahex. He had not doubted his own experiences with the Allspark at Simfur. He had never feared death. But to know what awaited with such completeness…when death came to him he would welcome it. 

Was that dangerous? He did not think so. There was much yet to experience, much to see through the lenses of young optics… He knew his own nature well enough. He would take no more egregious risks than before, not with his own life, not with the lives of others under his command. Would he kill with greater impunity? _That_ was the danger. That he did not trust. He would need to be vigilant.

He closed his chest in sharp, reluctant jerks. Pushed himself upright, and out of Prime’s arms, ignoring the watchful, concerned look Optimus turned upon him. 

“I am well,” he said, resetting his vocoder to get whole words out. He turned to Thundercracker, whose expression was nothing short of guarded. “Novawind and Saberfall send their love to thee.” 

Prowl spun on his heel, he and Strake capturing Thundercracker’s wrists in motion that appeared simply comforting but was more. Thundercracker growled and pulled them both into his arms, lifting his head and aiming a glyph of gratitude at Cyclonus. Three who needed each other, as Beta had said. Trining, he was sure of it, despite Prowl’s ground alt. That, after all, could be changed. 

Optimus, having put himself back together somewhat, caught Cyclonus’ hand, drew him close once more, into his arms, and kissed him like he’d been waiting three million years to kiss him again. And Cyclonus, – in front of Autobots and Turmoil and Strika and Starscream’s spysats – allowed himself to be cuddled. 

Jazz was happy to see Optimus making old friends – enemies – into friends again, but he couldn’t quite let himself trust the hope rising in his spark. Yeah, major things had changed, but there was always the chance that this apparent winding down of hostilities was the calm before another battle, and another, and another. Regroup, recoup, and both sides now able to increase their numbers. He rested his forehelm against Oratorio’s. Bee nuzzled him from his other side, probably guessing some of his thought.

“Thank you for dancing with us,” Optimus said, letting go with obvious reluctance.

“One has been greatly honored to do so.”

As Cyclonus moved aside for Strika, he noted a humming pile of Graveyard Legion. Wisps of knowledge haunted his processor. Maindrive, Rutile’s naming data packet told him. Dragonfire and Damage. Westrun and Bonesaw. But those weren’t the names that went with those sparks, even if the energy signatures had been altered to disguise them. Or perhaps death itself did that. Was Jazz’s spark not changed? Was not Optimus’? And Galvatron’s? 

“Shove off, Cyclonus,” Maindrive said, from the center of the assemblage, where his team – no longer gestalt in the usual way – blended with Overdrive’s. Baryon, Blazetrail. Viper. There should be one more, Cyclonus thought…but no, Swindle was still alive. Seekerbane had let him escape. Had it been accident, that the one most able to survive such a stranding – the self-centered and cynical huckster, famous for once selling off his damaged gestaltmates for scrap – had been the one to escape, or had Swindle fast-talked, or fled, his way out of a swift death? Seekerbane was not ordinarily so merciful. Or had not been until recently.

Strika came forward, like Cyclonus deliberately telegraphing her intentions. Obsidian levered himself onto her back, powered down and respectful this close to the Prime-spark. Unlike Cyclonus, Strika had to kneel, matching Prime. She opened her chest smoothly, aware of Elita nearby but confident the guerilla leader would do nothing aggressive with Optimus in proximity. 

The teeming dead of Cybertron she expected, down all the ages of the universe; the sheer mass of knowledge contained within pressing on her mind, yet without opening specific doors. Questions could be answered, but one must know how to ask. Sound and silence, light and dark and neither, sensory data she would store for later analysis, ignoring for now what made no sense. Where were the unkindled? Where did new sparks come from, or were they – as the Aurea Rotam sect had insisted in antiquity – merely old sparks reconfigured?

 _Asking the existential questions, Strika? Thought you’d decided you knew the important answers a billion years ago._

_Beta!_

_Yep. And how did I end up the Allspark ambassador to the living?_ She’d had to bounce a quick query to Prime to get the time units right. Didn’t she have enough to do already?

 _You can’t help sticking your wheel in,_ Flamecoil said. 

_Love,_ said the Novafall shared self. _Love Thundercracker, love always, Strika, love waiting, Thundercracker, love forever!_

 _I shall tell him,_ Strika replied, feeling blinded, honored. 

_They don’t understand time any more,_ Beta said gently, affectionate, who just barely hung on to the edges of the concept herself. 

_Prime does not intervene?_ Interfere, she meant. Galvatron seemed bent on carving the Allspark to suit his purposes. A more extreme iteration of what Megatron had wanted. 

_He doesn’t,_ Beta said. _He has to work to contact us in here. This isn’t the Matrix, he doesn’t have constant, instant access yet._

_Yet?_

_Um._

_He is bridge,_ Strika said. _He brings forth newsparks and old._

 _The Graveyard Legion are all volunteers,_ Beta said firmly. _And a lot of them re-up if they’re killed again. Ask Raze._ The echoes of her harmonics said _Impactor_ , and Strika turned that over in her mind. Impactor? Defending organics?

_And humans?_

_The Allspark landed on their planet,_ Flamecoil said. _It was not their fault._

 _Maybe by chance,_ Beta elaborated. _We can’t tell, but there are…theories. There are no near neighboring worlds with anything more sophisticated living on them than algae. The Allspark found itself here, and aimed for a planet that had minds on it. Maybe. Optimus wants that to be true, rather than other things. He’s afraid of what the Allspark could do, could have done, on Earth._

 _Good thing it is no longer there, then,_ Flamecoil said.

 _Where is Deepforge?_ Strika asked, for other patterns she knew pulsed around and through her, but not that one. (Runabout and Runamok…never high in the hierarchy, never under her personal command; and indeed rough, undisciplined by her standards, but Decepticons nonetheless, and dead by Shockwave’s hand. She tabled that matter for now, but she would not forget. She had a _list_. She should not have to have a list.)

 _Galvatron took her,_ Beta said, bitterness a vile green twisting around her core. _Made her a half-dead._

 _Not without a fight,_ said Flamecoil. _They damaged each other, I think, and he only tried once more to pull so many unwilling._

 _And it was then Optimus intervened._ Strika caught rivulets of thought here and there, tenuous and connected to so many other thoughts they were difficult to trace to full understanding.

 _He held the kindling true,_ Beta said fiercely. _They are new sparks, each unique as they are meant to be._

 _Strika!_ Another coherent pattern, a “voice” in her mind with familiar resonances, flying near from what felt like vast distances. 

_Lugnut!_

_If you have aligned with Prime, the war is over?_

_No, dear friend, it is not. I consider my course only._

_But you speak through Prime’s spark, not…not the Devourer…_

_Yes. …Lugnut! Are you in danger?_ When she had first returned from her futile quest, she had asked after him. No one would tell her how he had died, but she could guess.

_You speak through Prime. If you call for me, I will come, I will ask to be reforged!_

_Then come! Come, dear friend, Obsidian and I miss you!_

_I shall!_

The ordinary world fell down around her like a veil, less vibrant, less real, compared to Within. Optimus lay strutless in her arms, optics lit but unfocused. A large, silvery hand – Vector’s – cupped the side of his face and he revived, blinking, pulling his spark chamber and chest partially closed. She gazed down at him. This had been pleasing, once. Then had come the time when she would have been proud to kill him. Now the entirety of their past together colored this moment, when she knew she had to protect him. He was the Allspark, the uncorrupted moiety. She did not understand what the Allspark was, sloughed of the billions of years of mythology built around it, but it was young again, new as the bright line of bronze running up the side of Optimus’ throat. 

She lifted her head, fans and cooling systems roaring.

 **If you wanted an inside perspective on the Allspark,** Elita tight-beamed on their old private channel, which neither of them had deactivated. **I’d have been happy to send you there.** She was watching as Optimus refocused, lifted a hand to touch Strika’s chest. Elita knew him, understood him. He had sounded the depths of Strika’s spark as the general had submerged within. 

_You had your chances,_ Strika shot back. 

Elita laughed. **Had. I’ll have no more.** “Turned by his spark.” Oh, she loved him. 

“No,” Strika said. “I have never turned. Many mistake this. To Cybertron, and her people, to that I am loyal.”

“Yet,” Elita said, “you stayed with Megatron after he killed our sun.” 

“And you stayed with Optimus after he launched Allspark into unknown space. Losing sun we can survive, losing Allspark meant slow extinction.” She paused. “But now,” she raked her gaze from Perceptor to Optimus and across all those around them, “you have brought our world to new sun. You endeavor to mend many things destroyed by both sides.” She looked at the Nornir. “You forge new life that is not twisted and broken.”

Optimus nodded. 

A sea of optics swung toward Turmoil.

Turmoil stepped back, snapped his battlemask into place. “Whatever you’re doing to them in there, I’ll pass.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Cyclonus said.

“Let him go,” said Strika. Turmoil would play his own game, but he could still be useful. “Let him choose, since these Primes so value choice.”

“So gracious, General,” Turmoil said, only somewhat sardonic. He sketched a salute. “I’ll come up with something to tell Galvatron. As usual.”

 _I have much to consider,_ Cyclonus tight-beamed to him. _I intend to do my thinking while investigating the ruins of Tetrahex._

 _Fair enough._ Turmoil paused, looking at Deadlock…Drift. They had never known for certain what happened. They had tricked him, left him to die on Carrach IV, sure, but then a long time later he’d popped up, _different_. And wearing an Autobot sigil. Turmoil wanted him back. He’d been a good officer when coherent, and not murdering half the crew. 

Approach him or open the old comm channel? Turmoil chafed at his own indecision, but Afterburner and his brothers stirred, poised themselves. He didn’t fancy getting jumped by a combiner. Drift’s unnaturally blue optics gazed back at him, acknowledgment from across the circle, but Drift was clearly disinclined to leave his comfortable tangle of Wreckers. 

Fine. Turmoil called up to Grindcore on the _Flay_ to send down a shuttle, and headed for the landing platform. 

“You,” Strika said, homing in on Vector, stalking closer. “You pull like blue giant star.” 

“That appears to be so,” Vector laughed, “though I am but a quiet, unassuming mechanism.” There was a good deal of sputtering and coughing and cog-grinding at this, which both Strika and Vector ignored. This was not false modesty. Vector understood immensity, understood the workings of time and the Multiverse well enough to place himself in it; and he had spent vast spans of his existence travelling between stars and times, alone; or carefully observing without interaction. Gathering wisdom, not solely for wisdom’s sake, but to be shared, and to be used – a weapon in the struggle in which he and others had been engaged since the Beginning.

“Quiet and unassuming my aft,” Optimus muttered, as Elita pushed him down against Ironhide’s clump. 

Ironhide chugged with laughter, watching one of the most fearsome, single-minded Decepticon generals become as thoroughly besotted with the Firstforged as the rest of them; and knowing what would be in the data packet Prime would give her the moment she reconfigured her sigil, and turned her optics to blue. He was looking forward to seeing her face when she realized whose kids she’d been snuggling, earlier.

Strika maneuvered onto Vector, Obsidian high and alert on her shoulder; Vector, courtly, accommodating them both. Astride his waist, in no way too weak to resist his gravity, in every way desirous of lying upon him. Legs and tank treads and rearranging of armor; giggling from the periphery, watching – the Nornir interleaving with the Furies, all very smug. 

“No cables?” Strika hissed, retracting her grille to bare sharp dentae. And so Vector opened to her, metal to metal, sharing as much of himself as was safe. (He knew he would not always need to hold so much back, and the contrast – then/now – was heady and fine.) He opened to her and she sank into him, galactic tides of energies rising, crashing, her engine thundering over his silent solar wings. She blazed through overload, reaching for what lay beyond.

Oldest memories, called to mind by the dance, here in this embodiment of Cybertron’s most ancient heritage. She flew over the hives, growing in complexity over millennia; some specializing, some generalizing, all evolving, spreading over the surface of their world, under their dusky orange sun. And at the heart of each hive, the focus-prime, the body in which the gestalt of each hive’s intelligence rested. 

Then she heard them, the resounding horn-calls of the primes, beseeching one hive to another, to merge for a time – kindlings rivalling the bright band of the galaxy arching overhead – and then separate, both hives stronger for the exchange. Midwives collected the new sparks, carrying them down to luminous caverns deep below the surface, or to starlit pools, from which new people climbed, as the waves of firstforged had climbed from their cocoons in the metal-rich ground.

Strika sat up. _You…gave this knowledge to Optimus Prime?_

 **The Matrix did,** Vector said. **I added somewhat of experience, to make the process less perilous.**

 _Not entirely without peril,_ she said, thinking of the scars on Optimus’ spark chamber. 

**No.**

“Look,” said Safeguard to Obsidian, and Obsidian to Strika, showing them glowing arcs of connection, Optimus and Perceptor forming blinding hubs, the centers of a web that touched nearly every spark there, shaded with every hue of love she could put words to, and some she could not. This was no reflective borrowing from organics. This was their own, unique, spark to spark – spark _from_ spark. 

No loss of an artifact could end them. 

**Galvatron knows as well,** Optimus tight-beamed from between Elita and Ironhide. 

_But tells no-one,_ Strika growled. Prejudice against organics she understood. This? Madness. Galvatron wanted to hold tight the reins of creation, keeping the ability to himself alone. Galvatron needed to be taken in hand. Supposedly he, like Prime, could no longer be killed, but so far as she had been able to determine, no-one had tried very hard. 

“Pretty sure you could join them if you wanted,” Rutile murmured, as Cyclonus withdrew, and pulled his fields tightly about himself, as Strika settled back down into Vector’s arms. 

“I…” Words would not come. Vector Prime blazed, a radiant being within and without. Cyclonus felt keenly the Firstforged’s nearness.

 _That’s okay,_ Rutile tight-beamed. _We’re all like that around him whenever he visits._

_Does…does he visit often?_

_Nooo… Not_ very _often._ (Subdued squeeing bubbled around among nearby Waterbabies at Cyclonus’ muddled expression. Rutile exercised great restraint.) _Not as often as Optimus would like – and everyone else, really. Silverbolt gets all befuddled…I don’t think I’ve heard him able to speak around Vector either. In fact the only one who can maintain half a wit around him is Perceptor…_ Although most of Perceptor’s wit was engaged at those times in flirting.

_I am not surprised. Seekerbane has wit enough for any seven others._

_Heh! Oh, but…please don’t call him that. He feels horrible about killing the last of the rhos. His reputation kind of upsets him._

_It is nevertheless deserved. …I see you esteem him greatly._

_I do._ And oh how he wished he knew how Cyclonus would react to finding out part of the why.

 _Then I will say no more on the subject._ He clasped Rutile’s hands. “I take my leave of you for now,” he whispered, dipping his helm for another kiss. 

“Be careful,” Rutile said. He wrapped his arms around Cyclonus’ waist and hugged him tightly, then let go and stepped away, gathered into the embraces of Hound and Trailbreaker and Fimbria and Kaibab. Cyclonus turned to go. 

(Countermeasure tried to jump up, meaning to ask Cyclonus how the rest of the Ravine Kids were doing, but Hot Rod pinned him down. _I’m going to overload you until you **stay** down! We don’t want them to know you were Mez! Cliff, Charger, come help!_ Which the two smaller mechs were happy to do.

“Sit on my faaaace and tell me that you love me…!” Cliffjumper sang.)

“General Cyclonus?” A soft voice, a ghostly waft of fields. “One wishes to inquire regarding the wellbeing of the three hundred newsparks on Chaar.” Cyclonus looked down at the slim blue mech in surprise. Turbofox…Mirage zhimself no less. With flawless Tetrahexian accent and intonation.

 _Towers survivor,_ Rutile helpfully tight-beamed. _Iridium._

 _Good,_ Cyclonus replied softly, surprised. One more thing he had thought lost, retained by the slimmest wire. “When last I saw them, they had excavated a system of caves for shelter. Unusual in fliers, but they were allowed little else.” Skyquake had not fought for better accommodations, but Dreadwing might.

“They remain together, as a unit?” Something about Mirage’s posture intimated this as a question of personal concern. 

“They do, as far as I am aware.” He leaned closer, voice soft. “Their intelligence is largely discounted, but I believe they cultivate this. They are canny. They are well.” He did not say that they were safe.

“One is gratified. One hopes…” Mirage bowed his helm, hands folded over his chest. He looked up, directly into Cyclonus’ optics. “One is most gratified indeed.” With another, deeper bow, Mirage slipped away. 

Cyclonus walked to the landing platform – walking because Red Alert had stipulated it, and it gave him the chance to observe the new city, and a little time to think – transformed there, and flew like a spear back to the _Vanguard_. His Aile met him just shipside of the airlock. 

“Well?” said Citadel. 

“He enjoyed the dance, at least,” Mangonel grinned, nudging Arbalest’s wing. 

“General Strika has joined Optimus Prime and his Autobots,” Cyclonus said. There were nods and considering looks. This came as no great surprise. They all knew Strika, general and friend, and she had been angry since her return to the fleet. What the Autobots had done was unprecedented, but the implications for Cybertron were clear enough. The planet was habitable again, if in ruins. 

“And we?” Citadel asked, formal and upright. Cyclonus was not prepared to give her a formal, absolute, irrevocable answer. 

“We must consider,” he said. “I have no wish to abandon Lord Galvatron. For the sake of who he was—”

“—And is no longer,” Arbalest said, not lightly. Arbalest who rarely spoke. It was a thought that each of them had held secretly, unwillingly. They had obeyed their Lord Protector as they always had. Until a newspark had flown alone to intercede with three battleships for the chance to save their home planet. 

“But could be again,” Cyclonus said, “if only we could understand how to help him. How to repair him.”

“We know your spark, old friend,” Recurve said gently. “Repair at this point may not be possible.”

Cyclonus shook his head. “It is our only hope. He cannot be slain.”

“That we know of,” said Mangonel.

“This has not been proven,” said Corvus.

“His twin believes so,” Cyclonus said. “His twin, who suffers the same fate.” The corridor went quiet.

“What do we do?” Ballista asked.

“We set course for Tetrahex.”

…

Optimus, youngest, bellowed first; the great, booming horn-call. Elita, knowing, laughed; collapsing dust into stellar nurseries. Vector, eldest, answered their call with the ancient form of his own; Prime to Prime, hive to hive – and the whole dance circle contracted, shivering on the edge of overload; a few tipping over who were close already. 

They enfolded Optimus between them, Elita and the ancient Guardian, hands brushing as they roamed the young Prime’s body. Elita liked being behind him, made the parts she liked best easier to reach; kissing each separate flange of his antennae, pressing her hands up under sections of his chest armor, the lower, lateral segments, beneath which were particularly sensitive nodes – she mouthed the back of his neck and he shivered. She liked to hear him groan into Vector’s mouth. Liked the feel of Vector’s long, slim fingers rubbing between hers, on Optimus’ body. 

Energy and flashes of visions flickered metal to metal; worlds, suns, universes spun; molten cores; two slagged planets, both being re-formed; the Nornir, three into one, their cruiser alt transforming into something else…an immense sword, spark-hearted, and around the hilt – around Urthr – a great hand curled…Optimus recognized the hand, the colors, the conformation of the fingers: Omega Supreme!

 **Alive!** Elita said, stroking Optimus in small circles; and Optimus knew approximately where he was. Not a reassuring vision, though. Poor Omega…

She buried her face in the corner of Optimus’ neck and shoulder. They would never have Cybertron again as it was. They could never go back. But they could go forward. Travel roads they had never thought of before, change, adapt – and they were doing it, wheels on that road now, whether some of them liked it or not. Had it taken so much to bring them here? Were they so close to the end of the war at last, or was this, as her cautious mind told her, yet another temporary lacuna. Near extinction. Alliance with organics. Catastrophic changes wreaked upon both Prime and Lord Protector. Vector’s presence. 

**Do not,** Vector said, **esteem my influence so greatly. Mark that I did not appear until the road had already been chosen. I did not bring you special knowledge, only modifications of it.**

**Then that is in itself significant. Primes do nothing for a single reason only.**

**As you also understand.**

**…Oh slag no.**

“When you two are done talking over my pay-grade,” Optimus said, wriggling onto his back and opening his spark chamber, extending all his thoracic cables. 

Elita huffed through her vents. She and Vector had been on the tightest of tight-beams, metal to metal; but Optimus knew they were conversing. Of course he did. Elita laughed. She had intended to entice Ratchet down to the growth tank chamber, but merging with both Optimus and Vector was not to be missed. 

**Very well, then,** Vector said, and the three plaited their cables, each to each, a nested circle at the core of which were three open chambers, three stars reaching out, coronae flowing into one another.

 _When single shines the Triple Sun…_ Borealis tight-beamed to Bumblebee. 

_What was sundered and undone…_ Bee replied, chirring happily into Wheeljack’s neck. 

_Shall be made whole…_

_The Two made One…_ Bee sighed. If only it was that easy.

 _Maybe we do need a Gelfling,_ Borealis agreed. Bee snerked, and Wheeljack tickled him until he confessed what was going on. 

_Don’t need Gelflings,_ Wheeljack said, nuzzling Bee’s antenna. _We’ve got newsparks. …In fact…been a while, eh, kiddo?_ Bee looked up at him, the considering tinge of his headfins, and bwooped in delight. 

Prime, Elita and Prime overloaded together, a light of combined suns too bright even for Cybertronian eyes – all but Perceptor’s, who watched and saw and knew what they had done, out in the center of them all, under the stars, under the sky of their old world, orbiting a new sun. The new spark snuggled into Optimus’ chest, smoothly concealed by his armor, cooling and closing. 

Amidst a sea of Nornir and Waterbabies, Strika watched, guessing at what she was seeing. Obsidian recharging, a warmth so familiar that she sometimes forgot he was there, forgot he had been separate from her, once. Would it be possible to merge with Obsidian? Could his spark survive the process? She would consult Ratchet. Her own CMO, Acanthulus, she trusted more, but Ratchet had practical experience. If not Obsidian, then Lugnut, when he re-embodied. Yes, that would be suitable. Elita had a head start, that was all. A trivial advantage easily overcome. Obsidian if it was safe, then Lugnut, then… So many choices. 

_This merging,_ she asked Urthr. _You have done this?_ Details of the image Safeguard had shown her, the lines connecting progenitors and progeny, had somehow become indistinct in her memory. 

_We?_ Urthr said. _Not yet. There were only three tanks on Cybertron for a long time; the three we grew in! It wasn’t our turn yet. But now…_ Urthr grinned. 

_Volunteering, General?_ Verthandi asked, nibbling the inside of Strika’s wrist.

 _In due time._ Strika kissed the side of Skuld’s neck. _Whose sparks made you three, then?_ Elita’s warriors were all strong and capable, any of them were bright enough to be these three’s progenitors. Beta, perhaps, before she had spectacularly died?

Skuld grinned, but carefully levered her neck away from Strika’s dentae before answering. _We’re Elita and Optimus’ kids._

 _In rapid succession,_ Verthandi clarified, _not in a batch like Perceptor does._

 _Three tanks, three of us,_ said Urthr. _I suppose we would have shared a tank if we’d had to._ No one had seemed to mind Elita and Optimus taking up all the tanks in their first go; indeed most of Elita’s battalion had spent as much time as they could down in the shelters, watching, humming, conversing with them once their comms were developed. Moonracer had told them about Norse mythology, so their names were kind of Moonracer’s fault. 

Ironhide, having kept an optic out, whooped with laughter. Strika composed herself, not about to give him further satisfaction. Bad enough Obsidian’s amusement bubbled through their connection. This, then, this was how the Autobots – Cybertronians – strengthened connections already forged in battle. She returned to the physical, pleasurable activity at hand, letting the layers of things she needed to think about settle into the deeper channels of her mind. 

…

 _Hello, love,_ Perceptor hummed, nuzzling Rutile’s cheek. _Coming down to the chambers?_

_Yes…yes… I hadn’t decided, but I want to…_

_Mmmm?_

_Show me,_ Rutile said, struck by inspiration. _Show me how you make a whole school at once!_

 _So you can show someone else, later?_ Perceptor wrapped all four arms around him. Rutile liked Perceptor hugs, not least because it was a bit like being hugged by Silverbolt and Prowl at the same time. Big arms, small arms. 

_Mmmaybe…_

Perceptor grinned. _I asked Prowl what he thought of Cyclonus, just now._

_Thanks, Mom._

_He said – the way you light up whenever we talk about Prowl is delightful, by the by – that you and Cyclonus were like the Protectobots – guide-cables in a bridge._

Rutile fluttered. Prowl’s field went low and complex when he forecasted, and his optics turned dim and pale. Very fetching. Strake thought so too, because his head was down, mouth over Prowl’s left hip, evidently doing something very interesting with the gimbal; Prowl was arched over TC’s chest, head thrown back, mouth open, optics shuttered, hands digging into Strake’s shoulders. Perceptor whirred, amused.

 _He also said be aware, be mindful. Think about what you will do to protect Cyclonus on the flank he cannot protect himself. Think about what you will_ not _do._ Perceptor paused to nibble along a curving lateral flange of Rutile’s helm. “But then he smiled, and said to trust you. Isn’t that lovely?” Perceptor beamed. 

The light of my spark, Ru thought giddily, must be bright enough to be seen on Earth. He offered cables to Perceptor, to share, but his progenitor smiled and patted them back into his chest, instead standing and offering a strong-hand. 

“Come,” Perceptor said. _Come, and I will help you make Waterbabies!_

There were others down in the kindling chamber already, bright clumps of mechs curled around each other, soft cries echoing to the vaulted ceiling; a few pairs limp and steaming from the aftermath, with Pipes – wearing his own pair of high-temperature mitts – ferrying new sparks from their progenitors to the waiting tanks. 

“Oh my god,” said Pipes, spotting Perceptor. “Twenty, then?” (Pipes was the first of a small handful of progeny of Red Alert and Inferno together. Inferno had previously kindled Hot Spot with Prime, and Red had kindled Goldbug with Bluestreak. Red and Inferno together had also kindled the spark-twins Heatwave and Firebreak. Red, Inferno and Firestar were one of the clumps in the process of merging now. Inferno and Firestar would take the bulk of the backlash so that Red could resume his station at the security hub as soon as possible.)

“Indeed,” Perceptor said. He and Rutile knelt, cabling together tightly, Perceptor wrapping all four arms around Ru, opening his chest wide.

Pipes blinked, looking between Ru and his progenitor. 

“It’s okay,” Ru said. “Every spark potential comes from the Allspark – the Allspark exists in all dimensions; the dimensions of space and time separating it from merge newsparks is literally inconsequential.” He smiled up at Pipes. “That also means that when we die – you and me and Borealis and all the others – our sparks will go to the Allspark, too!”

Pipes’ optics went wide. _You sure?_

“Yes,” Ru said. “I’ve thought about it a lot, after Enceladus. …Uh, and anyway, talked about it with Prime, and he feels our sparks in the same way he feels all the others throughout the galaxies.” There had been generations and generations of merge-kindled people during Vector’s time, but no-one then had been able to verify their resting state unequivocally – and those sparks were now so old that Optimus hadn’t yet found a way to communicate with them. 

“What do you mean, after Enceladus?” Perceptor asked quietly. Pipes scurried off, comming Analemma for help with transfers when the big batch dropped. Analemma wasn’t a medic per se, she was an experimental astrophysicist, but her hands could take the heat of carrying sparks for short periods. 

“Um,” said Rutile. “You know, that battle. After we got kind of scattered. Stalker was, um, chasing me for a bit. And I thought…well, it just crossed my mind later, that I …I only survived because I knew Enceladus’ geology better than Stalker did. And I was lucky. I led him over a cryovolcano and it blew him into orbit.”

Perceptor made an odd chattering sound.

“I’m fine!” Ru hugged him tightly, opening his armor and spark chamber. “Okay, yes, he shot me, but you knew that, you know Ratchet fixed it and there isn’t even a scar.” Their sparks lapped at one another. “If you’re still upset, we can talk about this later?”

“…Very well.” Six pairs of thoracic cables extended, seating their golden tips in the corresponding ports. “Happy thoughts, then.”

“Shagging deltas,” Ru agreed, sliding into the link. 

“Happy indeed!”

Happiness and bloom were impetus, fuel to reach the depths a merge demanded, and they descended swiftly; two keen minds bent on the same course. Their sparks expanded, their minds joined, blossoming into a spinning, singing galaxy, a bright, humming atom awhirl with immensely complex orbits. 

_Choose,_ said Perceptor, gentle, holding the merge-state firmly, preparing himself automatically to take the backlash.

_What? But they all deserve—!_

_Oh, I agree, but we must choose. No more than twenty._

_Why only twenty?_

_Any merge causes some physical damage to our sparks and bodies. Choose, dear one._

Rutile cast his mind about the circling potentials, searching for some set of characteristics, some measurement to guide him. And yet, how did one measure souls? How did one categorize new lives? He chose wildly, picking any that seemed somehow more _different_ than himself or Perceptor. Had Beachcomber chosen that way? He bet he had…

Possibilities condensed, collapsed, _ignited_ – a deafening solar roar – twenty pulls at their sparks, drawing the very fabric of their being in twenty directions at once in a glorious, exquisite wrenching; out and _up_ , fountaining from their well, the ordinary world crashing in on them, chiming bright sparks spilling around them, laughter as Pipes and Analemma bustled about, gathering. 

Rutile stayed aware long enough to see the first few snuggling into their protomatter; his entire body ached, his spark chamber felt half-slagged, and he thought – part alarmed, part elated – that his spark itself was thin and small and insubstantial, and yes he understood why only twenty dear Primus what was this like for little _ae_ Beachcomber… Perceptor’s armor and chamber glowed hot with extensive merge-scars…

“Heyyy…” Rutile muttered, then fell helplessly into recharge.

…

Prowl lay on the ground between them, chest armor parted just enough to see the gleam of his composite spark chamber, heat pouring off him in waves. Desirous. Thundercracker knew what he wanted. Strake understood a moment later, blinking between Thundercracker’s face and Prowl’s.

Yes, thought Thundercracker. Yes, but. Not yet. He cast about surreptitiously in the cloud mind, not wanting Prowl to sit up and laugh at him, not wanting others to tease them about alphas and their weird proprieties. When they were trined properly, then they would do what Prowl wanted. What their trine leader desired. And it would be wonderful. But not yet. 

Who, Thundercracker insinuated, using subtle glyphs and sideways referents, would like to merge with Prowl?

A flash of silver, a flying leap. TC caught Jazz and nuzzled him hard, lowered him onto Prowl, where they snuggled for a moment, before racing off to the Underhill. Down in the dark where they would kneel, sparks their light and life, heat and lightning from the others there gathered for the same purpose, coming down from the dance by twos and groups, in the cool dark away from aliens and Starscream’s spysats. There were no recharge tables there yet, but clean, smooth floor with plenty of room all around the growth tanks. Prowl knelt, and Jazz, smaller, sat astride his thighs, wending arms about his neck.

“Here’s a thing you and I ain’t done together.”

“Mmmhmm.” Kissing Jazz was the most important thing in the universe right now. Prowl spread his knees, spreading Jazz wider, bending him back; curled one arm around his waist, the other hand sliding down Jazz’s body, down his thigh, to dip fingertips into the spaces around knee armor, keenly enjoying the pleasured loops of Jazz’s field, the hum of Jazz’s powerful little engine. 

“Haaah…mm…” Jazz had never been shy about letting everyone in the vicinity know how good a time he was having. “Hhhh…Prrrrowl…” Prowls mouth hands body fields on his felt so good, making him so hot, and Prowl was moving down, kissing beneath Jazz’s bumper, and that was Prowl’s chest between Jazz’s knees, open enough for spark-heat to sizzle over sensitive places. “Aaahmmmm…”

“Mmhhhaaaaaa…” Prowl echoed him, sending his voice into Jazz’s body as their fields began to mesh. Jazz hummed, drawing that voice out, leading Prowl into the pentatonic scale – flexible enough for Jazz’s improvisation, precise enough for Prowl to take the melody Jazz gave him and hold to it, fast and deep like an anchor as Jazz spun around him. 

They sang together, falling deep into their link, into their sparks, utterly unaware of how their voices and fields might affect the others around them. Opening, lit from within, their sparks sang, thrumming through the cables slung between them, and Jazz added the electromagnetic ringing of planets and stars, wheeling in their courses about the _basso profundo_ beat of supergiant black holes. Arcs and coils of sparkmatter danced out from each, joining, embracing, plaiting together, woven by the song, called by the song, caught, _ignited_ and Prowl let go the melody and laughed, and laughing fell back, merge scars smoking, caressing Jazz’s face, neck, shoulder before falling offline.

Jazz stared down at him. He’d never seen Prowl conk out with that big a smile on his face. Nice, but it made him wonder. What did we just do? Who did we just bring into the world? Half dizzy with the possibilities, half delighted. The new spark, a beautiful deep aquamarine like a tropical lagoon, whirled and bobbed and bounced off an edge of Prowl’s armor, zipping away in search of adventure.

“Where ya going, little bit? Wait…whoa…” His hands felt like they belonged to someone else. How did bare sparks even _move_ anyway? “Bibitty…little bobblet…hang on a—ouch! Wooo hot!…ow ow…help.”

Analemma’s hands swooped into his field of view and scooped the inquisitive spark up. Safe. Jazz let his helm thunk onto Prowl’s shoulder.

…

 _I ask permission of formidable Red Alert to enter._ Strika stood at the main door to the Greenhouse. _I wish to speak with human Wttwkki._ Best believe that Red Alert had swarms of Wheeljack’s little Spybot-eaters. Little Brown Birds, Urthr had called them. Libbies. Solar spiders. Best believe she was watched. 

“Primus Below…” Red whispered, in his newly-built security hub under the hill. _Granted._

The door slid aside and the general strode through the selectively-permeable fields to the oxygen-breather-friendly atmosphere inside. Two Guardian-class _he_ s flanked her, following from the dance. A chirped query to Prime gave her their names. Rain and Ranger. Newsparks. Memory custodians. That last sat uneasily in her processor, but she would deal with that after she had learned more, firsthand, about these humans. 

“Do you imagine yourselves capable of stopping me?” she asked Rain and Ranger as they walked. 

“You wouldn’t do anything here we’d feel we had to stop,” Ranger said.

“That would be rude,” Rain agreed. 

Strika gave them both a very thorough up and down. The youngsters angled their armor into formal lines, though their bearing had already been on the polite side of parade rest. Primus Below, she liked them already. 

It was earlier in the morning than Sam liked for this sort of thing, but, forewarned, he and Mikaela, Maggie and Glen gathered on the third story speaking-balcony of the Terran embassy; last of the old guard. One memorable helicopter ride, 77 years ago. (Miles and Beachcomber had gone back to Earth before the Greenhouse had been completed. There was still a lot of Earth Miles hadn’t seen, and Beachcomber could be very thorough when it suited him.) Ambassador Chen and her aide joined them, taking diplomatic position behind and to the left of Sam. One of Prime’s battle gnats was sitting on Mikaela’s shoulder. A keen interest taken in this conversation, then. 

The famous general approached. Big. Tall as Elita and more massive. Strika looked like a tank made out of knives. And guns. Guns and knives. Guns made out of knives. Knifeguns. And not just to be ostentatiously dangerous. Strika was clearly all business, and if looking like standing too close got you stabbed got the job done then she was all about that. Sam leaned on the railing and looked up into red, red optics. 

“Wttwkki.” The way she said the name made it sound almost Cybertronian. “You are fleshling who came closer than any in seven billion years – save Lord Megatron himself – to killing a Lord Protector.” Her voice was more resonant than he’d expected. Melodious almost, in a brusque way. He’d expected something like heavy treads over cobblestones.

“Yes, he is,” said Mikaela, her tone implying _and you should remember that._

Strika looked at her. This one had also fought in that battle. Pair bonds. Interesting. Or had they formed some sort of trine with, yes, there he was, emerging from the embassy to stand beside Rain. The scout. She regarded Wttwkki again. 

“You are first fleshling in all our history to lay hands upon Allspark.” 

“Sort of? Maybe? No, look, it landed on our planet twelve thousand years ago; I mean, the people who lived there since the last Ice Age might have seen it before it sank in the Colorado River mud. And then Sector 7 crawled all over it. They had catwalks and energy taps and everything. But I was, I guess, the first to touch it after Bee woke it up. Me and Mikaela.”

Ambassador Chen’s expression remained judiciously attentive. Witwicky had been dealing with Cybertronians since before she’d been born. Whatever he chose to reveal to Decepticons, or former Decepticons, had no doubt already been cleared by Prime. Who had more diplomatic experience than all of humanity throughout history combined. 

“Sector 7,” Strika said. “They would have much to answer for, were those involved not already dead.”

Sam nodded, keeping his hands on the railing. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, okay? I was pretty upset when they captured Bee…even though it turns out he kinda engineered that whole thing…”

“I didn’t think you’d fall in love with me so fast,” Bee said. The ploy had gotten him close to the Allspark, but… That whole day had been a wretched mess. “I didn’t plan for humans’ tendency to get their pack affection all over everything.” 

“You,” Sam said, pointing at the center of Bee’s face. “You’re making it weird.” He turned back up to Strika. “Anyway, I’m curious which particular things you have in mind, there. I mean we – we humans – had these conversations with Optimus a long time ago.”

“Imprisonment and torture of Lord Protector Megatron, a sovereign head of state, for over 100 of your local years.”

“We found him like that,” Sam said. Ambassador Chen closed her eyes. Mikaela patted her shoulder. “No, but seriously, that was…we were straight up just wrong there. Given the era, and the men who decided to do that, even if Megatron had looked human, even if he hadn’t looked like an evil death killing machine, even if we had had any idea back then that machines could be _alive_ , and even if he hadn’t immediately killed a bunch of people when he partly woke up when they moved him from the Arctic? He probably wouldn’t have fared any better. We’ve done awful things to each other in the name of ‘research’, up until…just recently, actually. Willowbrook, Tuskegee, all over World War II. Unit 731, what the Nazis did in the camps. Bioethics didn’t really exist as a thing until after WWII, and we Americans didn’t fully get on that bandwagon until the Aughts – MKUltra, human radiation experiments. Even then, stuff wasn’t enforced until Optimus and Smokescreen started leaning at our government pretty hard.” Optimus, and through him, Cybertronians in general, had gotten abject apologies, but no reparations. Optimus hadn’t pushed for the latter, since they didn’t even need to breathe Earth’s air, and they had successfully negotiated via other channels for the handful of things humans had helped them with. 

“We did these things because we could,” Sam continued. “Even when we knew better, we did as much as we thought we could get away with. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, the Salt Pit. All of it shut down 60 years ago. Syria, China, North Korea, Nigeria, Myanmar, Indonesia. Presented with a big enough outside threat, humans stop poking each other – mostly – and turn those sticks outward.”

“Your species changes so much, so quickly?”

Sam was sure this wasn’t a compliment. “We’re what you call ephemerals. We don’t have time to sit around in stasis for millennia.” That wasn’t exactly a compliment either.

“Before Optimus and his team arrived,” Mikaela said, “our species went from the invention of powered flight to manned landing on our moon in less than a vorn. Give us another vorn and the Decepticons better learn to run.”

Obsidian fluttered on Strika’s shoulder, uncurling his head to bat his optics at Mikaela. The human squeezed her eyes back at him. Strika let her engine hum audibly.

“The Allspark – sacred object – was kept hidden; its signals, its calls for aid deliberately muffled, while your people attempted to ‘vivisect’ it as well.”

“We didn’t know what it was.” Sam shrugged. “When we finally found out, we _gave it back_.” Not willingly, on the part of certain persons now deceased, but they had in the end returned the Cybertronian object to Cybertronians. 

“After murdering every life you forced it to kindle.”

“That was hideous,” Mikaela said. The little kill box, and Glen’s phone. And Bee being tortured, just down the hall. She’d had nightmares about it for years. 

“Unfortunately,” Sam said quietly, “those lives did killing of their own; they had no proper core programming and the Allspark was vaguely trying to protect itself. Mission City was a mess. Optimus was upset. His twin was…dead. Ish. Jazz was dead. Our military had just _barely_ fought off a hostile alien incursion – our first, remember, this was our ‘first contact’ – and everyone was trigger-happy.”

“There were a few more accidental kindlings after that,” Maggie said, tapping her cane. “We treated them with love and kindness. Prime gave them full and proper coding.” Strika turned to her.

“You say _treated_.”

“They didn’t live long. Because they were so small. But we loved them while we had them. They were our friends.” 

“When they extinguished…?”

“To the Allspark,” Maggie said. “Prime said they coalesced, so they aren’t exactly individuals anymore, but…that happens a lot in there, apparently.”

Strika tapped fingertips on thigh plating, thinking of NovaFall. She narrowed her optics at Maggie. “Pets?”

 _Friends,_ Maggie transmitted, surrounding glyphs indicating friendship-love and mutuality.

Strika’s optics shot wide. Glyphs! Correctly deployed, if simplistic. Since when were aliens allowed to learn their written language? What _was_ all this with humans? She had a great deal more to discuss with Prime, and think about, than she’d thought. 

“ _Thank you for your honesty,_ ” she said, in Cybertronian, to see if they understood that as well. 

“You’re welcome,” Sam said, and the others beside him nodded.

Slag.

At least they couldn’t _speak_ it. She turned to leave, aware of presences approaching.

Prowl was behind her, hands clasped behind his back. Very correct, very polite. Optics very bright. His trinemates arrayed at his shoulders. The singing one, with a voice to shatter sparks. Obsidian rustled on her shoulder, and she cocked a glance at him. Her small consort was more active, more distinct, than he’d been for vorns. 

“General,” Prowl said.

“Sunkiller,” Strika said.

Before he could loop, Thundercracker sank claws into Prowl’s waist. _You do **not** bleed in her presence,_ he tight-beamed, the transmission like a whip-crack, distracting Prowl’s mind enough to derail the loop. Prowl replied with a first-order glyph of gratitude/understanding/affection.

Strika regarded them coolly. “You have become ex-Decepticon collector. You attempt to add me?”

“Hey!” Thundercracker and Strake protested. “He’s ours!”

Sam cackled. “A Decepticon with a sense of humor!”

“Hey!” TC and Strake said again. 

“TC, hush,” said Strake. “You don’t have a sense of humor, you’re the quiet, brooding type.”

“Heeeey!”

Drift strafed by on what Sam couldn’t help but think of as heelys, spaulders flared to best advantage. Sam cracked up and Mikaela and Maggie snickered. Glen put a hand over his eyes, deep in secondhand embarrassment. Drift had swords! Drift was a cool, dignified samurai-bot! Not a goofy fanboy!

“Surrounded by lovesick idiots,” Strika said. Did they behave so because of Vector’s proximity, or had this become normal for Autobots? Prime replied to her query on the subject with a noncommittal hum.

Drift made another pass, but this time she caught him by the helm and held him up for inspection. “Deadlock.”

“Drift,” he said, smiling cheerily at her, though her thumb obscured one of his optics. They were too quick to trust her, she thought. Too quick to be happy to see her. They acted like they wanted her there, with them. 

Oh, she thought. Oh no.

“If you want the full specs on my body,” Drift was saying, “just ask Perceptor. He knows all about it.”

“No,” she answered, not paying him full attention. “I will be asking you. About sword.” She was tempted to toss him away over her shoulder, but set him down gently instead. Primus. Primus and Solus give her strength. Seductive, this wanting. Prime’s interest and kindness. Compassion in the face of their war had been a weakness. Now Prime would have her believe compassion and forgiveness would end their war and rebuild their civilization. They had a chance to do more than survive. What do we want to do? Prime asked of her, of everyone. What will we choose to do now? 

_We_ are not ephemerals, she thought. We have time to think, and to choose wisely.

\\{~~~\\(o)/~~~}/

Tetrahex had been a tall, elegant city; towers fluted and faceted like tourmalines rising from great depths to great heights, shimmering dark with subtle colors. More unified in architecture than most city-states, infused with tradition. They had quietly taken pride in their lacy domes, which filtered sun and moonslight into contemplative patterns; had enjoyed the challenge of flying through complex hexagonal openwork.

Now, in stark daylight, the extent of the destruction could not be ignored. Nothing stood. The entire area had sunk spans lower over deep collapsed levels and undercity; a shallow, shattered bowl, lined with shards that didn’t even glitter in the sun, blanketed in thick layers of mildly radioactive dust. They had known it would be like this; they had taken scans from orbit, not long ago – but seeing it from the ground, feeling the chill air over their plating, hearing silence where once had been engine thrum and conversation and music, was different.

Cyclonus and his Aile stood on a fallen structural beam, near the edge of what had been the border with Helex.

“The Autobots did this,” Arbalest said.

“And we destroyed Praxus,” Cyclonus said. “And Uraya, and Hydrax. And why did Prime not establish his new stronghold in Iacon, where more infrastructure is intact than anywhere else? Because of the plagues we seeded there.” He cleared air through filters and over foils. “Corvax, I want a preliminary engineering report as soon as possible. No one is to venture into enclosed spaces until you have cleared them. Mangonel, split everyone else into groups of three, save minimum crew on the ship. Full scans, be wary of mines and other traps, and of Shockwave’s sentry turrets. We’ll have to take those down rather than reprogram them, I suspect.”

There were only fifty of them on the _Vanguard_. Galvatron alone, outside their cadre, knew this, as far as Cyclonus was aware. They had re-engineered the ship to hide their disadvantage. They would have to make do here as well. 

“We should slag it and start over,” Ballista said.

“Probably have to,” Corvax said absently. She was already surveying the first hexar around them. The gravitational fluxes of moving the planet – and Primus Below she wanted to mine Seekerbane’s brain – had probably settled most of the structural instabilities, but could just as easily have introduced a host of new ones. 

“We will need a small ground base,” Cyclonus said. Starscream was rebuilding Vos, which was a sixth of a circumference west and south of the equator from Tetrahex. It would be no bad thing to have a foothold in the northern hemisphere. “At least initially. Survey with future resettlement in mind.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cyclonus lingered for a moment, optics (Mangonel suspected) no longer seeing the remains of their dead city, one hand creeping up to touch the center of his chest.

 _Look at him,_ Mangonel tight-beamed, bumping shoulders with Recurve. 

_Good to see,_ Recurve said. _Good for him._

\\{~~~\\(o)/~~~}/

“Optimus.”

Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, 17th Prime, legendary intergalactic ambassador, stopped in his tracks. Not – quite – flinching. He steeled himself and turned to face Ratchet. 

_Are you,_ Ratchet tight-beamed, harmonics patient beyond reason, _going to put that one in a tank properly? Or are you determined to carry it around? Gestating? Like a mammal?_

Optimus halted the motion of his hand toward his own chest, clasped his hands behind his back instead. **She’s fine. I’ll take her down to the tanks in a bit.**

 _Uh huh._ Vector had disappeared that morning with his usual profound lack of fanfare. Ratchet could hardly blame Optimus for wanting to hold a spark of Vector’s spark close for as long as possible. Though, to be honest, Ratchet didn’t actually know what effect a delay on embodiment would have on the newspark, why take chances? _Define “a bit”._

“Ah. Excuse me,” Optimus said. “Grapple needs help lifting a particularly delicate panel. Must go.” **I’ll visit the chambers right after, I promise.**

 _You’ll go to the chambers and **put her**_ in _a tank. Promise!_

**Yes, Ratchet.**

Ratchet swatted the Prime’s backside as the latter scurried off. “Delicate panel my aft.”


End file.
